Microsoft's budget Surface returns with 8GB RAM configurations, which PCWorld notes can cause performance issues when running multiple applications and browser tabs on Windows devices. Microsoft justifies 8GB as sufficient for basic productivity tasks and is working to optimize Windows' memory footprint, including reducing usage for features like Widgets. Apple's integrated hardware-software approach provides superior efficiency advantages over Windows devices in similar budget scenarios, offering better performance even under demanding conditions. After shipping the Surface Laptop and Pro for business customers starting at about $2,000, Microsoft has come down to earth. Microsoft is releasing a smaller Surface Laptop and Pro for under $1,000, but with a callback to the bad old days of 8GB of system memory.

Microsoft launches Surface Pro 12 and Surface Laptop 8 with Snapdragon X2 processors, starting at $1,499 and $1,599 respectively, marking significant price increases from previous models. PCWorld reports Microsoft's strategy focuses on premium Windows-on-Arm devices rather than competing across all price points like other PC vendors. The new Surface models feature improved graphics performance, enhanced webcams, and long battery life, positioning Microsoft to compete directly with Apple's premium laptops. The Microsoft Surface premium: for years, laptop buyers have criticized Microsoft for charging more and delivering less. Now Microsoft is preparing to ship the Surface Laptop 8 as well as the Surface Pro 12 with Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 processors inside.

PCWorld reports Microsoft's new Surface for Business lineup features Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors and a notable privacy screen technology for protecting sensitive information. The 13-inch Surface Laptop maintains its $1,499 price while the Surface Pro increased significantly to $1,949, offering up to 17 hours battery life and triple monitor support. The standout privacy screen feature prevents others from viewing displays, making these incremental updates particularly appealing for business security needs. 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.

Microsoft's Surface Laptop Is Marked Down by $350 While Apple may have the first-party laptop market cornered with the MacBook lineup, Microsoft's Surface laptops have been steadily improving over the past few years, and are now an increasingly appealing option. Last year's seventh-generation Surface Laptop is currently marked down by $350 on Amazon for the base model, bringing the price down to a tantalizing $849. While the screen is a somewhat rare 3:2 aspect ratio, it's an excellent panel for everyday use and productivity. It can reach a decently bright 600 nits, which should be plenty for a quick work call from the park, and it has a 120-Hz refresh rate, which should smooth things out a bit, even if you don't plan on gaming. It's a touch panel as well, in case you like to get physical with your Windows, but I'm still not super enthused by the touchscreen support in the Microsoft OS.

It's been one future that sci-fi has promised since Star Trek. Microsoft now says that that future is arriving, at least within a small corner of Windows 11. Microsoft is promising that you'll be able to use natural language to change aspects of your Windows 11 Settings menu, and Windows will go out and make those changes for you using "agents," or small bits of AI that will work on your behalf -- at least if you own a Copilot PC with an AI-accelerating NPU onboard. Microsoft has begun to use its Surface devices as a showcase for its latest software, and the new 13-inch Surface Laptop and 12-inch Surface Pro are no exception. They'll serve as launch vehicles for Windows Recall, semantic search, and Click-to-Do, but also brand new features like agentic AI and relighting features for Photos, object editing and sticker generation for Paint, and more.

Live Captions are more useful than I thought they'd be. They not only caption any video you have (like a video of a wedding or graduation, say) but they will also translate any audio -- whether that's on the screen or via the tablet microphone. Just make sure you enable that in the app's settings.

It's the dawn of a new era in Microsoft's eyes as the first wave of Copilot PCs are now available as of June 18. This "new class of Windows PCs," as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella describes them, contains hardware designed to run as many generative AI processes locally as possible, rather than having to rely on data centers. These laptops all have an Arm-based Snapdragon chipset from Qualcomm that includes a neural processing unit (NPU) to handle such tasks. Microsoft has stipulated that Copilot PCs need to have at least 40 TOPs (tera operations per second) of NPU performance, and 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage at minimum. The systems each have a dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard and they're all slated to have strong battery life.

Microsoft made some unusually major moves ahead of its Build developer conference: It announced a new Copilot initiative for powerful AI PCs, which will be led by the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop. These machines are powered by Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Plus and Elite chips, and they come with a special version of Windows 11 optimized for Arm mobile chips and AI. Basically, Microsoft is doing for PCs what Apple did with its M-series Macs four years ago. We still don't know how well these new machines will perform, but it sounds like Microsoft has certainly heard our complaints about Arm-based Windows devices. Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcast, Engadget News! Devindra: Hey everyone, this is Devindra here. I had a chance to chat with Pavan Davuluri, the head of Microsoft Windows and Devices, basically the team in charge of Surface and Windows. And we talked about the new Copilot Plus Surface PCs, the Surface Pro and the Surface Laptop, and the whole new Copilot Plus initiative in general. We've reviewed quite a few of the ARM based Windows PCs and you know, they have not worked out so well. So I think this could be different, at least from the benchmarks we've seen.

We knew more computers were coming that would feature a native version of Microsoft's AI Copilot toolset, but we didn't quite know how many were set to be announced. Companies like Dell, Acer and HP have all just announced computers that have adopted Microsoft's AI software and NVIDIA's AI hardware. The age of the AI PC is upon us. These Copilot PCs could really change how we interact with computers, bringing natural language nuance to a bevy of everyday tasks. The PCs all feature a dedicated key to bring up Copilot and are stuffed with Arm-based Snapdragon X CPUs, which include powerful onboard neural processing units (NPUs) for AI tasks.

Every trip around the sun, we prod, poke, and test hundreds of products here at WIRED. Most of them are just fine. Not boring--few things are truly boring these days. But a lot of what we see doesn't register more than a notch or two on the excite-o-meter. However, every so often, we get a product in our hands that clearly stands out, either by pushing its category forward with some new innovation, or perfecting an established and already noteworthy design.