Weeks after hiking the price of every modern Surface PC, Microsoft is now back with an upgrade that’s built for IT workers stuffed inside their lonely cubicle stacks. If you wanted something a little less business-focused and less pricey, we won’t know how much a Surface built for the average Joe or Jane may cost for a while yet.
Microsoft decided to refresh the current Surface Pro and Surface Laptop lines from 2024 with its “for Business” lineup. That includes the 13-inch convertible Surface Pro with its removable keyboard and touchscreen, as well as the 13.8-inch and 15-inch Surface Laptops. Capping off the new models is an all-new 13-inch Surface Laptop for Business. If that last laptop looks familiar, it’s because it’s essentially a revised version of the 13-inch Surface Laptop, just with an anti-reflective coating on its PixelSense touchscreen.
Everybody in the new eighth-gen Surface for Business family is getting access to Intel’s latest Panther Lake chips. The previous seventh edition laptops came with an ARM-based Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus or X Elite. The new Surface Laptop for Business 13-Inch is the only one to support a last-gen Snapdragon X Plus chip, not the newfangled Snapdragon X2 Plus. In her blog post announcing the new units, VP of Surface for Business Nancie Gaskill said Microsoft will have Snapdragon X2-based Surface for Business devices later this year.
For the Surface Pro, you’ll have the option of mid-range Intel Core Ultra 5 335 or Intel Core Ultra 7 366H chips. It maintains the same 13-inch touchscreen and a Flex Keyboard that’s still sold separately. Buyers also have the choice between an OLED or IPS LCD model.
If you want solid graphics performance from your new Surface, just know the Intel Core Ultra X7 368H chip is restricted to the 13.8- and 15-inch Surface Laptops. The highest-end Intel chip of the pack comes with the larger GPU for business-type folks who want to handle some real-time rendering tasks and definitely not slack off with a few hours of gaming in their office.
A spokesperson for Microsoft confirmed to Gizmodo that the company didn’t have anything to share on consumer devices just yet. Recent leaks suggested we could see similar Surface Pro and Surface Laptop models as well as the Surface Pro 12-inch convertible, but with Intel’s and Qualcomm’s latest chips inside.
Every new Surface Laptop arriving this spring is all of the “for Business” variety, which features an extra security suite and other software like Surface Management Portal and Microsoft Intune. As such, they tend to have a higher price tag. The 13-inch Surface Laptop for Business starts at $1,300 with 8GB of RAM, but will cost $1,500 with a 16GB configuration. The 13.8-inch Surface Laptop for Business starts at an enormous $2,000. That’s $500 more than the starting Surface Laptop 13.8-inch with a Snapdragon X Plus chip.
At this point, I assume you’re making some kind of sneering expression at your screen. Those prices are not exceptional. A Dell XPS 14 with the same Intel Core X7 356H chip and a high-quality OLED display costs $2,730. When Gizmodo first reviewed that laptop, Dell set the price closer to $2,200. The XPS 16 was originally $2,350 with that same chip. Now, the XPS 16 with the high-end OLED screen costs $2,950.
