If you’re looking to retire your tired old laptop that’s clunky and decrepit, you might want to head over to Office Depot and grab Microsoft’s Surface Pro while it’s 50 percent off its original price. Now costing a mere $499, the duration of Office Depot’s current major price slash is two days – and the clock is ticking. The offer is cheaper than the same model Microsoft currently has on sale for $799 — only they’re completely sold out.
The Surface Pro is technically a detachable given the screen/tablet and keyboard components are two separate units. Don’t let the product photos fool you: the keyboard cover is not included with either the Office Depot or Microsoft offer. That’s an annoying aspect with the Surface Pro pitch: it looks like a cool thin and light laptop in product shots, and you can actually have that experience, but you’ll need to hand over an additional $129 or more for the keyboard cover. The Surface Pen is yet another $99.
The huge discounts provided by Office Depot, Microsoft, Amazon and other retailers are a good sign that they’re clearing space for the next Surface Pro product. We’re currently in the fifth generation, and the sixth-generation model may very well be revealed during Microsoft’s BUILD developers conference next week. The current model made its debut on May 23, 2017 so a refresh should be right around the corner.
The Surface Pro variant on sale at Office Depot sports a 12.3-inch “PixelSense” screen supporting 10-point touch input and a 2,736 x 1,824 resolution. It’s backed by Intel’s seventh-generation Core i5-7300U two-core processor with a base speed of 2.60GHz and a maximum speed of 3.50GHz. It also includes 4GB of system memory, which isn’t great, along with a low 128GB of speedy SSD storage that’s partially eaten by Windows 10 Pro. You’ll eventually discover that 128GB simply isn’t a lot of capacity for all your apps, programs, files, and media.
Luckily, Microsoft helps with those storage woes by providing a MicroSD card slot. It’s joined by a full USB-A port (5Gbps), one headphone jack, one Mini DisplayPort connector, the keyboard cover connector, and a Surface Connect port. Wireless connectivity consists of Bluetooth 4.1 and Wireless AC networking. Unfortunately, there’s no Ethernet port for wired networking, but you can use a USB-A adapter or USB dock to physically connect to your local network.
Finally, Microsoft’s detachable Surface Pro provides an infrared camera for facial recognition, enabling you to log onto Windows 10 Pro with your good looks. There’s also a 5MP front-facing camera supporting 1080p Skype HD video, and an 8MP rear-facing autofocus camera supporting 1080p video. All of this is powered by a battery promising up to 13.5 hours of video playback.
Right now, Microsoft is only discounting two of its eight current configurations, both of which are based on the Core i5-7300U processor:
Core i5 / 128GB SSD / 4GB RAM = $799 ($200 off)
Core i5 / 256GB SSD / 8GB RAM = $1,099 ($200 off)
Meanwhile, Office Depot’s 48-hour slash-a-thon can be viewed here with discounts on laptops, desktops, printers, and more. Surprisingly, the biggest slash hack of the group is Microsoft’s Surface Pro.
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