By Microsoft has secretly increased the prices of its older Surface devices to make up for the lower-priced, smaller Surface devices that were introduced this week.
A new 13-inch Surface laptop and a 12-inch Surface Pro were introduced by Microsoft, with prices starting at $899.99 and $799.99, respectively. Both the Surface Pro 11th Edition and the current, older Surface Laptop 7th Edition have starting costs of $999, making them somewhat less expensive and slightly smaller than the current Surface Laptop and Surface Pro.
According to XDA Developers, Microsoft has now increased the price differential by $200 between the current devices from May 2024 and the smaller Surface Pro and laptop. However, that is also not exactly the case.
Rather, the cheapest 13.8-inch Surface Laptop is no longer available on Microsoft’s website. According to the price list Microsoft gave us in May of last year, a 13.8-inch Surface laptop in Platinum with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage cost $999. Currently, the most affordable 13.8-inch Surface laptop is a Black model that includes a bigger 512GB SSD and 16GB of RAM. Its MSRP is $1,199.99, although one of those units has also been reduced to $1,031.47. (Microsoft occasionally provides military or educational discounts; however, I verified this information using an incognito browser.) Other than that, the model’s MSRP is unchanged from May of last year.
Additionally, it seems that the prices of the remaining models in the current line of 13.8- and 15-inch Surface Laptops have not changed.
According to Microsoft, the least expensive $1,299 model of the 15-inch laptop—the Platinum model, which comes with a Snapdragon X Elite, 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD—is currently sold out. However, the next rung on the ladder stays at $1,499.99 for a black laptop with a 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, and an X Elite. The most expensive model, which costs $2,499 and is currently sold out, is comparable to the other models.
It looks like Microsoft is also making minor adjustments to its Surface Pro lineup. Once more, all of Microsoft’s Surface Pro 11th Edition devices with 256GB of SSD storage seem to have been discontinued. That essentially made last year’s least expensive $999.99 model obsolete. These days, the least expensive 13-inch Surface Pros with Wi-Fi, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD retail for $1,199. Even then, Microsoft has discounted the Sapphire edition by $170 to $1,029.99.
Other than that, it appears that the costs of the OLED and LCD versions of the Surface Pro are unchanged. (The $1,299 Platinum variant is currently sold out.)
