The Surface Laptop Studio is one of the best 2-in-1 laptops money can buy — especially if you’re a digital creator who needs an impressively versatile machine. However, that category is packed with similarly impressive devices, and it’s high time Microsoft showed the Surface Laptop Studio a little love to keep it competitive.
Thankfully, we seem to be on the cusp of an announcement for the Surface Laptop Studio 2 — and we have plenty of details to share already.
Surface Laptop Studio 2 release date
The Surface Laptop Studio 2 is expected to be unveiled at this week’s Microsoft Surface Event, and it’s here that we will likely get a concrete release date for the Surface Laptop Studio 2.
However, a recent leak has revealed that we can expect to see the Surface Laptop Studio 2 arrive in stores at the beginning of Oct. 2023. It’s worth noting that this information comes by way of European retailers and might not be accurate for all countries. That being said, it seems like the most likely release window given the timing of Microsoft’s event.
Surface Laptop Studio 2 price
The same leak that clued us in on the Surface Laptop Studio 2’s release window also offers us some important information about its potential pricing — and it’s not great news for anyone who thought the original Surface Laptop Studio was a little pricey for what it was.
European retailers have reportedly revealed the Surface Laptop Studio 2’s starting price as €2,249 — roughly $2,396. And that’s just the base configuration featuring Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics. Ouch!
In contrast, the original Surface Laptop Studio launched with a starting price of $1,599. That could be a ~$500 bump in price just for the core model without all of the bells and whistles of higher configurations — which, as we noted in our review of the original model, can become quite expensive and hard to justify.
Surface Laptop Studio 2 design and display
While the overall look of the Surface Laptop Studio was pretty stunning, it was quite chunky and short on ports. Even the convertible’s gorgeous 14.4-inch display and unique Dynamic Woven Hinge weren’t impressive enough to paste over those particular irks.
So it comes as no surprise that these are the things that many people were hoping to see improved upon when it came to a follow-up. To those people, I say this: “Keep hoping.”
According to leaked renders of the Surface Laptop Studio 2, the overall design of the machine is practically identical. Place the new model alongside the original and you’d be hard-pressed to tell the two apart.
The Surface Laptop Studio 2 features the same 2400 x 1600-pixel, 14.4-inch display with a 120Hz refresh rate and the same hinge as its predecessor. In fact, the only way in which the two can be separated is by port selection — and even then, it’s not exactly the changes that many hoped for.
The Surface Laptop Studio 2 features two Thunderbolt 4/USB4 Type-C ports, one MicroSD card reader, a single USB Type-A port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and the obligatory magnetic Surface Connect port. That’s a grand increase of one legacy USB port and a single MicroSD card slot. But I guess something beats nothing, right?
Surface Laptop Studio 2 specifications
Once again, drawing from the European retail leak, we expect the Surface Laptop Studio 2 to feature Intel’s 13th Gen “Raptor Lake” processors — namely the Intel Core i7-13700H and Intel Core i7-13800H. These powerful CPUs are great for maintaining performance under heavy load, fantastic for multitasking, and fine-tuned for high-performance graphics.
Balancing all of that processing power is the inclusion of Nvidia GeForce RTX 40-Series discrete graphics in higher configurations. The Surface Laptop Studio will feature RTX 4050 graphics or RTX 4060 graphics with 6GB and 8GB of VRAM respectively while a core model will be available with integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics.
That power is backed up and rounded off with up to 64GB of LPDDR5X RAM and up to 2TB of SSD storage.
| CPU | Intel Core i7-13700H, i7-13800H |
| GPU | Intel Xe Graphics, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 (6GB), RTX 4060 (8GB) |
| RAM | Up to 64GB |
| Storage | Up to 2TB SSD |
| Display | 14.4-inch, 2400×1600 @ 120Hz |
| Ports | 1 x Type-A USB, 2 x Type-C Thunderbolt 4/USB4, 1 x MicroSD, 1 x 3.5mm audio jack, 1 x Surface Connect port |
Outlook
From everything we know so far, the Surface Laptop Studio 2 is looking to be a bit of a mixed bag. While there’s a serious improvement on the device’s internals, being refitted with a bounty of powerful new components, the rumored increase in price doesn’t bode well for the affordability of those higher configurations.
It’s best to keep in mind that regardless of the source of these leaks and rumors, we won’t know anything for certain until we hear it from Microsoft during Thursday’s Surface Event livestream. So we’ll prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
For breaking news and updates on all things Surface Laptop, and Microsoft, follow Laptop Mag on Twitter, Facebook, and Flipboard or check out our Microsoft Surface Event 2023 Live Blog for the latest word as it arrives.
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