The company held a Surface-centric streaming event today and started with the long-anticipated Surface Pro 9 hybrid tablet. The Surface Pro basically invented the detachable tablet market, and the Pro 9 brings more advancements to the table, including a snappy 13-inch display with a 130Hz refresh rate, stylus support, and your choice between chipsets. There’s an Intel option and an ARM option, with the latter powered by Qualcomm and Microsoft’s SQ3 chip. The SQ3 chip is the more powerful choice here, as Microsoft says it is capable of 15 trillion calculations per second. Also, these tablet/laptop combo meals finally allow for aesthetic diversity. The only way to customize previous iterations was via the keyboard cover, but the Surface Pro 9 is available in multiple color options, including platinum, sapphire, graphite, and forest green. The gadget is available on October 25, with Intel models starting at $1,000 and ARM models starting at $1,300. The Surface Laptop 5 also launches on October 25 with a starting price of $1,000. This is an Intel-only laptop with Core i5 and Core i7 chips to choose from. The biggest additions with this iteration include a forest green color option and Thunderbolt 4 support. The laptop is available in two sizes, 13.5-inches and 15-inches, and supports Dolby 3D spatial processing. Finally, there’s the gigantic Surface Studio 2 Plus, a massive 28-inch version of the standard Surface Pro experience. This refresh sports Intel’s 11th Gen Core H-series processors, Nvidia’s RTX 3060 GPUs, three Thunderbolt 4 ports on the back, and plenty of other bells and whistles. The Surface Studio 2 Plus launches later this year and starts at $4,300, which is enough money to buy four Surface Pro 9 tablets.
