Microsoft Surface Pro announced: price and release date

Microsoft has just announced the new Surface Pro, the latest in its line of hybrid tablet/laptop devices and the first in a new generation of what Microsoft calls Copilot Plus PCs. The numbers have disappeared from the model numbers, which appears to mean a complete reboot of the line. “Compared to previous Surface generations, it’s not even close,” Brett Ostrum, vice president of Microsoft Surface, said at a launch event.

Powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon It also has optional 5G, which usually comes with Qualcomm support. As does better battery life: Microsoft says the Pro will get up to 14 hours of video playback, which isn’t as good as the 20 hours advertised for the new Surface Laptop, but still a good sign for the ‘device.

There’s also a new optional OLED display, support for Wi-Fi 7, and a new keyboard called the Surface Pro Flex Keyboard. It has two USB 4 ports and comes in four colors, including a very pretty new shade of blue. It also comes with significantly improved cameras: an ultra-wide quad HD system on the front that Microsoft intends to use for many AI purposes, and a 10-megapixel sensor on the back.

The Pro starts at $999, which gets you an LCD screen, X Plus processor, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. If you want the $2,100.

The new Flex Keyboard, which costs $450 and comes with a Slim Pen, works both attached and detached from the Pro and should be more robust than the previous model. Microsoft says there’s also a new option with bold keys and a 14 percent larger touchpad, in an effort to make the devices more accessible to more users.

The Surface Pro’s hardware has been solid for a while now: the full keyboard and pen kit can be expensive, and power users are asking for more ports, but the Surface Pro 9’s design and build quality have not. not really deceived. The problem, as always, was the chip. You can buy a Pro 9 with a Qualcomm processor inside, packed with extra camera features, 5G connectivity, and a series of pretty brutal performance compromises. Windows on Arm has steadily improved over the years, but it was still a slow, glitchy, and problematic experience even in 2022. The Intel model offered significantly worse battery life, but significantly better performance and more reliable.

The new Pro, in theory, is the best of all worlds. With the Snapdragon Microsoft seems confident that this is the year that Windows on Arm will actually work.

All of these performances are of course at the service of AI. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella kicked off Monday’s event by talking about building computers that “not only understand us, but anticipate what we want” and said the next phase of Windows and IT starts with Copilot. The event also included a new AI feature called Recall, more Copilot integrations in File Explorer, notifications and elsewhere around Windows. With better devices, Nadella said, you can solve latency and privacy issues and give better power to AI systems. He called the Copilot Plus PCs “the fastest, most AI-ready PCs ever built.”