2024 has been a strong year for Microsoft’s Surface hardware, laptops and tablets designed to get the most out of the company’s Windows 11 OS.
We dubbed the Surface Pro 11 “the best Surface in years” while calling the Surface Laptop 7 “a true MacBook Air rival”. Both prominently featured Microsoft’s Copilot+ features, putting AI front and center, and generally elevating the experience further.
Now Windows Central’s Zac Bowden has given us a taste of what Microsoft is planning for 2025. According to Bowden’s sources, Microsoft isn’t just planning on the usual annual Surface Pro and Surface Laptop refreshes, but intends to release a new Surface Laptop Studio and possibly a new 11-inch device of some kind.
Tackling those in reverse order, the 11-inch model is the most mysterious. Bowden’s sources describe it as a “Surface Go-sized Laptop Go hybrid that uses premium materials and components,” which certainly sounds intriguing. If it does see the light of day, it’s expected to use the Snapdragon X Plus SoC, but that’s all we know for now.
Next up is a new Surface Laptop Studio — a follow-up to 2023’s solid Surface Laptop Studio 2, with its unique hinge design that allows the screen to move beyond the keyboard as a canvas for doodling with the pencil, or just watching a movie in style.
There’s no word of specs here, though Bowden has heard talk of a 16-inch model being considered — quite an advance on the 14.4-inch screen that the current version has.
After this year’s Qualcomm-powered Surface Laptop and Surface Pro, Microsoft is apparently set to put Intel back in the mix with the 2025 models.
Specifically, both devices are tipped to get Lunar Lake variants. And while our Lunar Lake benchmarks show somewhat weaker performance than the Apple M3 and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X on single and multi-core tests, they handle AI tasks significantly better.
Bowden isn’t expecting a design change for either, given they were updated relatively recently. But he believes Microsoft may bring the anti-reflective coating from the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 back, after it was oddly absent from last year’s models. He also thinks the laptop might have an optional card reader, and that there may be a 5G version this time around.
The ETA for all these devices is up in the air. While Bowden believes new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop will be here in the first quarter of 2025, the other products could be as late as fall. Hopefully they’ll be good enough to shake up our list of the best laptops, whenever they arrive.
