Lastly, as mentioned before, the Surface Laptop 8 shares the same design as its predecessor, the Surface Laptop 7, but there's one upgrade under the hood that Microsoft is calling "advanced haptics." The trackpad will now intelligently simulate clicks with tactile feedback, such as steps in a volume slider or snapping windows to corners. Beyond Windows 11 , third-party apps can also take advantage of this feature.
Last up is the Surface Pro 12 , and it comes in the same 13-inch configuration as the previous Surface Pro 11. It's a 2-in-1 tablet that comes with a detachable keyboard that works with Surface Connect magnets, so you can use your old accessories with it. It also starts at $1,949 and features the same Core Ultra 5 335 CPU and 16GB of memory, along with the removable 256GB SSD.
The specs page says you can upgrade it to a Core Ultra 7 366H, but we didn't see that option in Microsoft's device configurator, nor could we find the 1TB storage or 64GB RAM models. There's an option for an OLED display listed, too, but once again, it's not actually available when you go to buy the device. Instead, the Surface Pro 12 gets a 13-inch version of the same "PixelSense" display you see on the Surface Laptop.
For connectivity, there are 2x Thunderbolt 4 ports and that's it, but there's also Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 support. The Surface Pro has two cameras — a 10-megapixel 4K shooter on the back and a 1440p webcam up front. The battery life is rated at up to 17 hours.
Microsoft is targeting the business and enterprise segment with these new Surface products, so they cost a bit more than their consumer counterparts. These business devices come with extra security features, more thorough remote management, and generally better stability since professionals are supposed to rely on them for critical work. The consumer devices stripped of these extras should be a bit cheaper.
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Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he\u2019s not working, you\u2019ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun. ","collapsible":{"enabled":true,"maxHeight":250,"readMoreText":"Read more","readLessText":"Read less"}}), "https://slice.vanilla.futurecdn.net/13-4-23/js/authorBio.js"); } else { console.error('%c FTE ','background: #9306F9; color: #ffffff','no lazy slice hydration function available'); } Hassam Nasir Social Links Navigation Contributing Writer Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.
usertests Tolerable if it could be user upgraded. Otherwise, it's a mockery. Reply
BillyBuerger I was buying laptops with 8GB for some of our employees for longer than I should have. These people were just doing office work and nothing overly taxing so I thought it would be fine. But even with basic stuff like that, I started having people with performance issues. Just web browsing can eat up that 8GB of ram pretty quickly. These laptops have almost all been retired now as they aren't very usable. Apple might be able to get away with it because they seem to actually manage memory better. Or at least that's what they claim. Either way, Microsoft obviously does not so unless they actually improve Windows to be better at managing memory, this is going to be a hard fail. Reply
ezst036 Microsoft's recent announcement that Windows 11 now has a 16gb minimum system requirement was poorly timed. Reply
Gururu Its interesting that the 8GB version makes the headline and its not even on the launch roster. Reply
Li Ken-un The developers really gotta make their code leaner. And the companies that hire them have to let that happen. My experience has been “Oh, it does the job? Great. Let’s move onto the next project.” Once the code is done, nobody brings up optimizations. The hours are immediately booked for the next thing. I hope this pain and pressure makes optimization a priority again. Reply
usertests Li Ken-un said: The developers really gotta make their code leaner. And the companies that hire them have to let that happen. My experience has been “Oh, it does the job? Great. Let’s move onto the next project.” Once the code is done, nobody brings up optimizations. The hours are immediately booked for the next thing. I hope this pain and pressure makes optimization a priority again. They don't have to do anything if the pain isn't enough. Are businesses struggling to run applications with 16 GB RAM, or acquire computers with 16-32 GB? In the case of this Surface laptop, you are only saving 15% when going to 8 GB. Where there may be real constraints, like microcontrollers at the low end or high performance supercomputing at the high end, the talent may be better at optimizing and more motivated to do so. If anything could change the status quo, it would probably be AI coding. Which could make the situation better or worse. Reply
kealii123 How on earth do they justify that pricing? Half the chip performance, worse displays, but at least you get Windows! :sick: Reply
thesyndrome DOA product Microsoft really have no idea what the consumers want, they keep ignoring complaints and then acting confused when their latest product fails to gain market traction (be it W11, co-pilot, microsoft 365, xbox, windows store, etc etc etc). It feels like they come up with ideas in a vacuum completely removed from consumer feedback, and don't bother checking if this is actually something people want until they are about to release the product. Reply
S58_is_the_goat I was just using a 10 year old laptop with win 10 and 8gb of ram the other day, omg fcuk no. Whoever came up with these specs should be forced to use these daily. Reply
Gururu S58_is_the_goat said: I was just using a 10 year old laptop with win 10 and 8gb of ram the other day, omg fcuk no. Whoever came up with these specs should be forced to use these daily. No choice, you have to buy it and enjoy it! Reply
Key considerations
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/new-microsoft-surface-for-business-pcs-pair-panther-lake-chips-with-as-little-as-8gb-of-ram-13-inch-surface-laptop-goes-light-on-memory-but-still-starts-at-usd1-299#main
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