Microsoft’s next-gen Surface Pro and Laptop leak, with key upgrades

Microsoft plans to launch the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 in a few weeks’ time, boasting a new OLED screen as a key upgrade to the Surface Pro tablet, according to a report.

Windows Central, usually a reliable source for Surface leaks, reported that the two Surface devices will launch on March 21. Unsurprisingly, they will include new Core Ultra processors, and also a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite option — which will also be available to the Surface Laptop 6, which would be a noteworthy change. (Update: The Verge contradicts this, saying that the March Surface update will be for commercial versions, and the consumer refresh will come later.)

In fact, it appears there will be other changes to the two devices. According to Windows Central, the Surface Laptop 6 will boast a pair of what are presumably Thunderbolt ports, along with a USB-A port; the Surface Pro 10 will boast the new OLED screen, which is becoming more common across new laptops, plus an NFC reader and improved webcam. OLEDs boast inky blacks due to their excellent, per-pixel contrast, which may boost battery life.

Hardware changes haven’t been common for the Surface lineup, whose generations have been virtually indistinguishable from one another over the years — I’ve affixed sticky notes to our review units to make them easier to identify. Microsoft’s last Surface Laptop, the Surface Laptop 5, debuted two years ago in 2022, the same year that the Surface Pro 9 launched as well. Otherwise, new generations of Surface hardware are often differentiated by just internal upgrades to the processor. The real change came with the Surface Pro X: no relation to the Surface Pro 10.

That’s significant here, too. Our review unit of the Surface Pro 9 included an Arm chip, which has been traditionally plagued by compatibility issues and slow execution of X86 apps. But Microsoft has also rewritten virtually all of its key apps, including Office, to run natively on Arm. For me, that meant that the Surface Pro 9 lived up to its name. Other reviewers disagreed, basically stating that they were fed up with giving a pass to Arm and how slowly apps executed.

Now, Windows Central believes that, unsurprisingly, Microsoft will begin offering Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips inside the new Surface hardware, just more towards the summer. It’s an exciting development; though Qualcomm only allowed “hands-off” testing of the Snapdragon X Elite platform, benchmarks showed that it kept up. Intel’s 14th-gen Meteor Lake hardware offers exceptional battery life, however, and one test we’re looking forward to running will be a head-to-head comparison of the Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) and the Snapdragon X Elite platform.

There’s one other angle Windows Central’s report brings up: AI. It appears that Microsoft will be pushing an enhanced version of Windows Copilot that incorporates the Timeline features of years past; you’ll be able to query it about things you worked with a while ago, and it will be “smarter” about finding things you’ll need. Whether it will run natively on the Surface hardware is another question, too.

Oh, and you should see Copilot keys, too. In any event, it sounds like it won’t take long to see it in action for ourselves.

Updated at 10:36 AM PT with some additional reporting from The Verge.)

Laptops