New Surface Laptop to be called the Surface Laptop Go; 12.45-inch PixelSense Display, up to 13 hours of battery life and Windows 10 in S mode for US$699.99 laptop

More details about the next Surface Laptop have been published - once again by Roland Quandt. As we have already reported, the next Surface Laptop will not be the fourth-generation of Microsoft's popular laptop series. Instead, the company will be releasing a new 'budget' option appropriately called the Surface Laptop Go.

As several Geekbench listings have already demonstrated, the Go will feature a Core i5-1035G1 processor, a 15 W chip from Intel's Ice Lake-U generation. According to Quandt, this will be the only processor that Microsoft will offer with the Go, which it will pair with 4 GB or 8 GB of RAM. Oddly, Geekbench had pointed to Microsoft testing a 16 GB model, but this may be a business variant. Additionally, there will be SKUs with 64 GB, 128 GB and 256 GB of storage. Quandt stresses that the 64 GB option will have eMMC flash storage, which Microsoft continues to use on the Surface Go 2. Presumably, the 128 GB and 256 GB SKUs will have NVMe drives, instead.

The Surface Laptop Go will also have a 12.45-inch PixelSense display that will operate at a resolution of 1,536 x 1,024 pixels. Unsurprisingly, this resolution means that the Surface Laptop Go will have a 3:2 aspect ratio. Similarly, the device will retain Microsoft's Surface Connect port, along with USB Type-A and Type-C ports. A 3.5 mm headphone jack will be on board too, bringing the device's total weight up to around 1.1 kg.

Apparently, Microsoft will market the Go with up to 13 hours of battery life. This figure may be helped by the fact that the company will ship the device with Windows 10 in S Mode, which is lighter on battery life. Hence, battery life on Windows 10 Home or Pro may be a touch lower.

The Surface Laptop Go is expected to launch for US$699.99, with prices rising to US$1,199.99 for the flagship model. Quandt claims that Microsoft will offer the Go in Blue, Gold and Silver, although it is unclear whether these will have aluminium or Alcantara finishes. The 12.4-inch device is expected to launch later this month alongside a revamped Surface Pro X.