Techtober is off to a running start. Wasting no time, Microsoft had their Surface event at 10AM EST this morning. It was full of exciting products – most destined for a late October launch, but a couple were a holiday-2020 preview. Without further ado, here’s what is coming up;
Surface Pro X (“ex”, not 10)
New for 2019…a new naming moniker…the Pro “X”. What is it…it looks like a Surface Pro doesn’t it?
The Surface Pro X is an Arm-based tablet using a custom chip called the SG1 developed by Qualcomm. This chip consumes a paltry 7 watts of power allowing the SPX to be a lightweight, thin laptop – 5.3 millimeters thin to be exact – with longer battery life. The performance story is just starting though as it offers 3x the performance per watt of the Surface Pro 6. It also comes with LTE support out of the box to ensure on-the-road connectivity,
Other additions are the keyboard on the SPX has a nice hideaway spot to store and charge your Surface Pen, type-c connector, a revised hinge, a 13″ 2880×1920 PixelSense display, and all in 762 grams of goodness.
Pricing will start at $999 USD for the Surface Pro X.
Surface Earbuds
Everyone is shipping smart earbuds now…Microsoft doesn’t want to be left out. With up to a 24 hour charge, these earbuds integrate tightly with Windows 10 devices offering a 1-tap pairing process. They also work well with Android and offer controls over audio as one would expect – no mention of iOS compatibility. They come with the obligatory charge case and look a bit…angular which seems to be the going trend for smart earbuds.
Surface Laptop 3
New for 2019 – a 15″ Surface Laptop 3 to compliment the 13″ model. Fortunately, it doesn’t stop at cosmetic differences.
Inside the 13″ model, you’ll find a 10th-gen Intel CPU which Microsoft claims is 3x more powerful than the best CPU in a Macbook Air. A Type-C port also makes it appearance on the left side of the chassis and a 20% larger trackpad area.
Pricing to start at $999 USD.
Welcome to the Surface party…AMD. That’s right! AMD Ryzen, specifically the Ryzen Surface Edition, will power the 15″ Surface Laptop 3 along with integrated AMD graphics. They combine to form “the fastest processor for any laptop in its class today.”
Pricing for the 15″ model will start at $1199 USD.
Surface Pro 7
No surprise here that we’d see the next iteration of the wildly successful Surface Pro lineup. It’s a tablet, it’s a laptop. Not much has changed aside from the addition of…yup, a type-c port. We can also expect better mic’s for audio capture.
While on-stage claims of better performance were made, we had to wait for the Windows blog post to know we’ll see 10th-gen Intel chips on the 10nm process powering the Surface Pro 7.
Pricing for the Surface Pro 7 starts at $749 USD. This is also telling when compared to the $999 price tag on the Surface Laptop 3…maybe we won’t be getting all the latest goodies…
