Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Microsoft serves up the sleek Surface Laptop, its first traditional notebook

Read our early impressions in our Surface Laptop first take.

In an unusual twist for Microsoft’s hardware reveals, its newest Surface product, the Surface Laptop, was leaked the night before the company’s May 2 education-focused event. While most of the surprise was therefore lost, Microsoft still managed to create a little excitement with its introduction of the new Surface Laptop.

Recommended Videos

As rumored, the new machine is the first in the Surface line to function as a simple clamshell notebook. Nevertheless, the Surface Laptop supports the Surface Pen and Surface Dial, and so can provide some of the extra convenience both afford, along with the ability to support Windows 10 Ink. As with the other members of the Surface line, the it offers a 3:2 ratio PixelSense display with a 13.5-inch Gorilla Glass 3 panel supporting 3.4 million pixels. Microsoft brags that the display is the thinnest LCD touchscreen available today on a notebook.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

Microsoft focused on craftsmanship in designing and manufacturing the Surface Laptop:

Microsoft Surface | Craftsmanship

Microsoft announced the Surface Laptop alongside the new Windows 10 S that’s aimed at the education market, but the hardware doesn’t quite follow the same low-cost mentality. The Surface Laptop will start out at $999 for an unspecified configuration — Microsoft is clearly leaving it to its manufacturing partners to produce low-cost Windows 10 S machines for the classroom. The Surface Laptop will ship with Windows 10 S, and Microsoft is offering a free upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for a limited time.

Microsoft is offering four colors for the Surface Laptop: Platinum, Graphite Gold, Cobalt Blue, and Burgundy. The color scheme will apply to the all-metal chassis as well as the cloth-covered keyboard deck.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

In terms of specifications, the Surface Laptop will support seventh-generation Intel Core i5 and i7 processors, and up to 1TB SSD using NVMe technology. In spite of the high-end components, Microsoft estimates battery life at up to 14.5 hours. The company is aiming the Surface Laptop directly at the Apple MacBook line, perhaps the most popular of the extremely thin and light notebooks used in higher education today, and Microsoft highlighted the better performance and battery life of the Surface Laptop.

In terms of build, the Surface Laptop offers a tapered design, moving from 14.47mm at the rear to 9.9mm in the front. It weighs 2.76 pounds. The keyboard base uses the Alcantara material used in the company’s high-end Surface Pro 4 Type Cover, and the backlit keyboard offers 1.5mm key travel for a comfortable feel. The speakers are located underneath the keyboard at the front of the device, and utilize unique technology to radiate the sound through the cloth for an immersive experience. Connectivity is limited to a single USB Type-A port, a DisplayPort, and the standard Surface connection — surprisingly, there’s no USB Type-C port in sight.

More details will come at some point, but for now we know that Microsoft is taking pre-orders starting May 2 with delivery starting on June 15. At $999, the Surface Laptop offers a thin and light machine that’s optimized for Windows 10 and that competes directly with Apple’s MacBook while maintaining the Surface design aesthetic.

Updated on 05-02-2017 by Mark Coppock: Added additional details and updated images.

Pre-order Surface Laptop on Microsoft

Mark Coppock
Mark Coppock is a Freelance Writer at Digital Trends covering primarily laptop and other computing technologies. He has…
Microsoft just turned 50, can its dominance last another half a century?
Microsoft at 50.

Microsoft is officially half a century old and what a half a century it's been. It went from being a small scale software company to dominating the world of personal computers, to today where it's worth over $3 trillion -- or at least it was until some recent tariff shenanigans. It's not the only name in the game any more, with Google's Android platform the most popular operating system on devices, but Microsoft's Windows still forms the backbone of the professional and gaming worlds, and that's not the only pie it has its fingers in.

From trying to wrestle control of the AI hype train, to endeavours in Quantum computing, Microsoft is looking to form the zeitgeist of the next 50 years. Let's take a look at some of its big wins over the past few decades, and what it might do in to secure some more in the years to come.

Read more
Microsoft is working on something new, but it’s probably not Windows 12
The Surface Pro 11 on a white table in front of a window.

Microsoft appears to be working on a new major update, but if you're hoping for Windows 12, I wouldn't hold my breath. The company has confirmed that it's testing new content via the Insider program in the Dev Channel, and those changes might lead to a patch that's set to be released later this year. However, we're most likely looking at the successor to the current 24H2 build -- namely Windows 11 25H2 -- and not a whole new operating system.

This was first spotted by Windows Central. The publication cites its own sources as it claims that Microsoft is backporting some platform changes to offer better support for Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon X2 chip. Those changes will allow devices that house that chip to run Germanium-based Windows 11. Germanium refers to the platform release that the current Windows 11 build is built on, and it looks like the upcoming 25H2 build might also be based on Germanium -- but nothing is fully clear at this point.

Read more
It’s go time: Pre-orders for the SteamOS Legion Go S model are up
The Lenovo Legion Go S with SteamOS installed.

The first third-party gaming handheld to get SteamOS is now up for pre-order, with prices starting at $550. The Legion Go S was a big hit at CES thanks to its new OS option, giving users the freedom to choose between Windows and SteamOS (the Linux-based operating system that powers the Steam Deck.)

The battle between the Steam Deck and every other gaming handheld has been an interesting one -- while the Steam Deck hardware isn't powerful enough for some people, its OS is widely accepted to be the best around at the moment. Windows on gaming handhelds, on the other hand, is widely accepted to be wildly suboptimal. And while the company has expressed plans to start improving performance and usability, it looks like that's still a while away.

Read more