Microsoft’s boring Surface laptop update has one feature I actually want

Microsoft announced new Surface for Business laptops and tablets on Tuesday. Sadly, you already know what to expect: three new Surface Laptops, in 13- and 15-inch display sizes, and a new Surface Pro tablet, too. What’s inside them? Intel’s Core Ultra 3 series mobile processors, Panther Lake.

That’s not entirely all, to be fair. Stealing a page from Samsung’s recent Galaxy phones, Microsoft has added a “privacy screen” of sorts, engineering a rather nifty way of preventing a nosy neighbor from peeping at your spreadsheet. I like the concept!

The privacy screen is a bright (dark?) spot in an otherwise rather plain, ordinary update. But some tap-dancing on the price at least is worth talking about. In January 2025, Microsoft launched the 13-inch Surface Pro and the 13.8-inch/15-inch Surface Laptop for Business for a starting price of $1,499 apiece. Today, Microsoft drove the price of the 13-inch Surface Pro for Business sharply upward to $1,949, but is offering the brand-new 13-inch Surface Laptop for Business at the same $1,499 price as the prior generation.

Microsoft charged $899 for the consumer version of the 13-inch Surface Laptop that it shipped in May 2025, designed as the cheaper, Surface Laptop Go-like alternative. Unfortunately, there was no 13-inch Surface Laptop for Business at the time, but it still feels like business customers will be paying a substantial premium. Even worse, if a business wants to save a buck, it can — but with a cheaper $1,299 option that trims the available memory to just 8GB. Otherwise, Surface Laptops for Business will be priced at $1,949.99 on up — and Microsoft isn’t even hinting at the price of the 15-inch Surface Laptop.

Microsoft

It would be unfair to write off the new Surface devices quite yet. (Consumers can expect versions of the Surface Pro and Laptop based upon the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite processor later in the year.) But it also feels fair to characterize them as more of the same, with the privacy screen as the only significant difference from one generation to the next. On paper, this is airline food: nutritious, mildly tasty, formulaic. Would you like your compute cubes boiled or fried, citizen? Try our new privacy flavor!

Everything’s the same, save for the processor, price, and privacy screen

Even parsing through what Microsoft is shipping feels like flipping through a corporate purchase order or tax return.

Microsoft is launching the 12th iteration of the Surface Pro for Business (Surface Pro for Business 12th Edition) with the Intel Core Ultra Series 3 (Panther Lake) chip inside. Microsoft is also announcing the 8th Edition of the Surface Laptop for Business in 13.8-inch and 15-inch screen sizes, again with the Core Ultra Series 3. Finally, Microsoft is shipping its first 13-inch Surface Laptop for Business with the Core Ultra 300-series; technically, the previous 13-inch Surface Laptop for Business included a Snapdragon X1 chip inside.

To be fair, Microsoft’s new privacy screen technology sounds genuinely useful. It’s unclear whether Microsoft developed the technology independently, but it sounds identical in concept to the Privacy Display feature on Samsung’s new Galaxy S26 phone. Unfortunately, the privacy technology is built into “select configurations” of just the 13.8-inch Surface Laptop for Business.

Still, tapping the new “Integrated Privacy” screen will turn it on, minimizing the amount of light that the screen will project to either side of the display, without the need for a physical screen protector. How well it will work versus how much light the display will generate is unclear.

Otherwise, everything looks very familiar, with no real changes to either the Laptop, Pro, or the accompanying pen or keyboard. Weirdly, Microsoft’s spec sheet lists the (defunct?) Surface Connect port as available for the Surface Pro for Business as well as both of the larger Laptops.

Microsoft

Microsoft hasn’t broken down the prices or processors the 13-inch Pro tablet will use, though the inclusion of Panther Lake has two benefits: The tablet can now officially support three external monitors, rather than two; and battery life has now been bumped up to 17 hours of video playback. (Traditionally, the size of the battery is 50Wh, though Microsoft isn’t revealing the actual size quite yet.) Customers also have the option between a 2880×1920 OLED and LCD display, and can also add 5G as an optional feature like they could in the previous generation. A 64GB RAM option has been added, too.

According to Microsoft’s spec sheet, you’ll be able to configure both the new 13.8-inch and 15-inch Surface Laptop for Business (8th Edition) with up to 64GB of RAM, too. You’ll have a choice between the Core Ultra 5, 7, or the powerful Core Ultra X7 processors with Intel’s integrated GPUs. While the 13-inch Laptop will ship with a 60Hz screen, the larger models will ship with 120Hz LED options, supporting three displays.

The Surface Laptop has some tweaks, however. The battery life has decreased slightly, from 22 hours in the prior generation to 21 hours here. Microsoft also cites the 13.8-inch Laptop as having more battery life (23 hours vs. 21 hours) than the larger 15-inch model. Microsoft removed 5G as an option, too.

Everything else appears to remain the same from the prior generation: the pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4. Nothing has really changed internally, either, as Microsoft is encouraging users to use Copilot, as well as the Microsoft 365 Researcher tools that offer more powerful AI capabilities along with its existing suite of AI-powered Windows tools.

Some might argue that Microsoft has nailed the look and feel of the Surface lineup. Some might say that the company has given up. Either way, if you’ve had a chance to own or play with a Microsoft Surface from the past few years, expect more of the same this time around.