Yesterday we witnessed Microsoft’s September event and there we witnessed the arrival of the Surface Laptop Studio. It is the successor to the Surface Book line of powerful laptops. It presents a total redesign for Microsoft’s flagship laptop, and the company has decided to ditch the removable display in favor of one that pulls forward to transform from a laptop into a tablet, or to put it in Microsoft’s terms, Studio Mode.
“Surface Laptop Studio is the most powerful Surface we’ve ever built,” says Pete Kyriacou, vice president of devices at Microsoft. “It is the culmination of years of Surface innovation – on hinges, display, silicon, and more – and brings the best of the Surface heritage together in one powerhouse device.”
the most obvious upgrade brought to the Surface Book successor is the display and hinge we will have the 14.4-inch PixelSense Flow display (2400 x 1600) that supports up to 120Hz and Dolby Vision. The software giant is using a new flexible Dynamic Woven Hinge, and according to Microsoft the Hinge is durable and allows the laptop to transition between modes much like the larger Surface Studio. The Surface Laptop Studio supports three modes: laptop, stage, and studio.
In laptop mode, the display is arranged just like a regular laptop, with a full keyboard and a new touchpad with haptics. Coming to the stage mode, you can pull the display forward to an angle that’s designed for gaming, streaming, or presenting, now that’s something new. The display in Stage mode will cover the keyboard, and the angle is also more suited toward watching Netflix or playing games, touching the display, or using the new Surface Slim Pen 2 for digital inking.
Finally, we have Microsoft’s new studio model, and similar to its name, it’s designed for writing, sketching, and anything else creative. Microsoft is carefully avoiding calling this “tablet mode,” as the Surface Laptop Studio isn’t exactly lightweight and weighs nearly four pounds, and is 0.7 inches thick.
The Surface Laptop Studio is powered by two processor variants which are Intel’s quad-core 11th Gen Core i5 and Core i7 processors, you can choose between any of the variants, of course, the cost will differ. The Core i5 models will ship with Intel Iris Xe graphics, while the Core i7 variants will include Nvidia’s RTX 3050 Ti GPU with 4GB of VRAM. We also get options to choose between 16GB and 32GB of RAM, and up to 2TB of removable SSD storage.
All of these specs do make the Surface Laptop Studio very capable of running the latest PC games. However, the company has carefully not placed the Surface Book as a full gaming laptop, but it still leans into the idea of high-end gaming with the Surface Laptop Studio.
Other specs include two USB 4 ports with Thunderbolt 4, and the usual Surface Connect charging port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Microsoft is accepting preorders for the Surface Laptop Studio today, and it will ship on October 5th priced starting at $1,599.99.
