Microsoft just announced what is arguably its best Surface Pro yet. The 12th Edition of the Surface Pro 13-inch brings meaningful upgrades across the board, including both CPU and GPU performance, and, at the same time, the battery life.
All the upgrades surely make it an easy recommendation for someone looking for a capable 2-in-1 laptop that functions as a tablet when required, but allows you to attach a keyboard for getting things done even faster. There is just one thing standing in the way, and that involves your wallet.
What’s new in the Surface Pro 12?
The biggest change is that the Surface Pro 12 features Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 family of chips, either the 10-core X2 Plus or the 12-core X2 Elite. It’s the latter that delivers up to 53% faster graphics than the 11th Edition.
Battery life also climbs from 14 hours to 15.5 hours, which is a welcome improvement. You also get a 1440p Quad HD camera with an ultrawide field of view and faster wireless connectivity with Wi-Fi 7.
The device is available in the usual Platinum and Black finishes, alongside the new Dune colorway, with a color-matched Surface Pro Flex Keyboard.
How much is Microsoft asking for the device?
This is where we’d have to hit the brakes and take a minute to re-evaluate everything that the new Surface Pro offers.
Microsoft’s latest Surface Pro starts at $1,499 for the base configuration with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, a full $500 more than the $999 starting price of the 11th Edition. If you want to bump up the screen to an OLED panel, that will cost you another $300, bumping the price to $1,799.
That is not a small jump for a device that looks nearly identical to the one it replaces. Part of that price increase comes from the AI memory crisis that has pushed LPDDR5x RAM costs up industry-wide, hitting premium Windows devices across the board.
To ease the purchase, Microsoft is offering a free Surface Pro Flex Keyboard through June 30, up to $900 of trade-in credit, and 50% off Microsoft Complete protection.
