Microsoft unveils new 13-inch Surface Laptop variant with noticeable downgrades

Alongside the new 12-inch Surface Pro, Microsoft has launched another cheaper Surface Laptop variant. It comes with some serious downgrades and not that much of a price reduction to justify said downgrades. Its only saving grace is it advertised 23 hours of video playback on battery, which is a tad higher than that offered by the other two Surface Laptop variants.

The new Surface Laptop variant comes with a 13-inch 16:10 FHD (1,920 x 1,080) screen with a peak brightness of 400 nits. Unlike its 13.8 and 15-inch siblings, it refreshes at 60 Hz (vs 120 Hz) and lacks HDR functionality altogether. This, combined with the somewhat anemic 8-core Snapdragon X Plus X1P-42-100, make the laptop look vastly inferior to its other counterparts.

To make matters worse, the 13-inch Surface Laptop is limited to just 16 GB of LPDDR5x RAM and 512 GB of UFS (version unspecified) storage; a noticeable drop from 64 GB and 1 TB found supported on other versions. For I/O, the Surface Connect port is gone, but you get two USB 3.2 Type-C and a USB Type-A port. Other connectivity features include Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

The 13-inch Surface Laptop weighs 2.7 lbs and is available in three colourways: Ocean, Violet and Platinum. Its price starts at $899, just $100 shy of the 13.8-incher that features much better hardware. The laptop can be pre-ordered from Best Buy, Amazon and Microsoft's website. General availability will commence on May 20.