Microsoft's Refreshed Surface Laptops Get Better Specs, But Higher Prices
Microsoft’s Thursday today didn’t give us any bold new hardware ideas. Instead, the company settled for only modest updates to the Surface Laptop Go and Surface Laptop Studio.
The newly unveiled Surface Laptop Studio 2 is essentially a refresh of a product that now starts at $1,999, instead of $1,599.
The company says the Studio 2 is "the most powerful Surface we’ve ever built." It supports Intel’s 13th generation Core processors and Nvidia RTX 4050 and 4060 laptop GPUs. The consumer model will run Intel’s i7-13700H processor while the business model will come with the i7-13800H.
The upgrades promise to deliver a two-times increase in graphics performance and up to 18 hours of battery life. (The first-gen Laptop Studio reached 14 hours of battery life in our tests.)
Interestingly, Microsoft said during the event that the Laptop Studio 2 will feature an Intel-powered “Neural Processing Unit” designed to smoothly process AI-based workloads, such as Windows Studio effects. (The product's spec sheet specifically mentions a "Gen3 Movidius 3700VC VPU AI Accelerator," which seems to be what Microsoft is referring to here.)
The laptop’s 14.4-inch screen should also be more vibrant than before, boasting a so-called “PixelSense Flow” touch screen. Other changes include the addition of a microSD card slot, and the option to max out the RAM to 64GB or buy it with an Nvidia RTX 2000 Ada GPU.
The second product, the more affordable Surface Laptop Go 3, is also getting a refresh. Microsoft updated the specs for the 12.4-inch laptop to run Intel’s 12th generation Core processors, specifically, the i5-1235U.
The big change is that you can now buy the laptop with 16GB of RAM instead of merely 8GB. The product’s battery life
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