Microsoft Build 2024: New Surface Laptop 6, Surface Pro and Copilot+ PCs announced

Microsoft has announced a bunch of new Surface laptops, along with a new device category called Copilot+ PCs at its Microsoft Build 2024 developer conference. The new launches solidify Microsoft as one of the major players in the AI PC space moving forward. But what exactly is new with the new Surface products, and just what is a Copilot+ PC? Let’s take a closer look.

Microsoft Surface Laptop 6, Surface Pro

The Microsoft Surface Laptop 6 takes on the MacBook Air and is powered by the Snapdragon X Plus and Snapdragon X Elite, a couple of ARM processors, which are great for lighter and simpler workloads, and as a result, offers great battery life. As per Microsoft, the new Surface Laptop 6 outlasts the M3 MacBook Air with about 20 per cent more battery life.

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The Surface Laptop comes with 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD storage will be available in the US from June 18. It will also be available in both 13.8-inch variants and 15-inch variants, which are available at $999.99 (approximately Rs 83,300) and $1,199.99 (approximately Rs 1,00,000) respectively.

Microsoft Surface Pro

The Microsoft Surface Pro is the more powerful laptop-tablet Hybrid/2-in-1 PC, which can now work with an independent keyboard that you can type away on even when the attachment is not tethered to the laptop itself.

The new Surface Pro is also powered by the Snapdragon X Plus and X Elite processors, and Microsoft claims that the new Pro offers up to 90 per cent more performance compared to the last Surface Pro. Benefiting from a Qualcomm-made chip, the Surface Pro also comes with 5G support.

Other features on offer include an OLED display panel, Wi-Fi 7 support and two USB 4 ports. There is also a new ultrawide camera on the front and a 10MP sensor on the back.

The Surface Pro 2024 starts at $999 (approximately Rs 83,300) for the LCD model with an X Plus chip, while the top-end model will go up all the way to $2,100 (approximately Rs 1,75,000).

Microsoft announces Copilot+ PCs

Microsoft also announced Copilot+ PCs at the launch event, which is an umbrella term for a standard of PCs across manufacturers which will be equipped for AI-use-cases on the hardware level.

Thanks to an NPU on the inside, Copilot+ PCs will be able to hit 40 TOPS (trillion operations per second) and of course, will feature a deep integration with the Windows 11 operating system.

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Microsoft also stated that Copilot+ PCs will also soon have access to OpenAI’s recently launched GPT 4o model, which supports advanced speech understanding, among other capabilities.

Those were the highlights from the Surface launch event, and while the availability of the new Surface laptops in India remains a mystery, we will surely get Copilot+ PC certified laptops from other manufacturers including HP, Dell, and Samsung, among others.