Microsoft has quietly stopped selling its $999 entry-level configuration of the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 as it ushers in a new wave of smaller and cheaper Surface PCs.
The new Surface Pro 12-inch and Surface Laptop 13-inch that were announced yesterday start at $799 and $899, with the flagship Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 now starting at $1,199 on the Microsoft Store.
This new starting price for the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 came into effect this week, conveniently timed with the launch of the company’s cheaper Surface Pro 12-inch and Surface Laptop 13-inch.
So what has Microsoft done? Has it raised prices due to tariffs? It doesn’t appear so, at least not yet. Instead, it looks like Microsoft has outright removed the original $999 configuration from its store, with all other SKUs remaining intact at their original prices.
At launch, the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 could be configured with a Snapdragon X Plus, 16GB RAM, and 256GB SSD storage for $999. But now, the base configuration comes with 512GB SSD storage for $1,199.
Microsoft has always sold this configuration for $1,199, and with the removal of the 256GB SSD model, the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 now start with double the storage at $200 more than they did before.
Given the timing, this appears like an attempt to make Microsoft’s new smaller Surface PCs seem like better deals.
Had Microsoft continued to sell the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 at $999, the price delta between the new smaller devices would only be a $100-200 difference, depending on the model you get.
With the new $1,199 starting price, the price delta is now much larger, with a $400 difference between the Surface Pro 12-inch and Surface Pro 11, and a $300 difference between the Surface Laptop 13-inch and Surface Laptop 7.
It’s a sneaky tactic to make the new smaller devices seem more reasonably priced, as the $999 flagship Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 have always been incredible deals, especially during sales where they’d often be discounted for as low as $799.
For the new Surface Pro 12-inch and Surface Laptop 13-inch to make sense, the flagship Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 can’t exist on sale for $799, and so it seems Microsoft is quietly removing the SKU that allowed those flagship devices to be sold at that low of a price.
The good news is that third-party retailers still stock the original $999 configuration, at least for now. So you should still be able to find the Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7 for $999 (and less on sale) in places like Best Buy and Amazon if you’re in the market for one.