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The Surface Laptop Studio has a flexible hinge that lets you pull the screen out over the keyboard. [credit:
Microsoft ]
The Surface Pro 8 got a major update today, but the biggest reveal was the all-new Surface Laptop Studio, a high-end convertible with dedicated graphics that provides a step-up in speed from the regular Surface Laptop. The “Surface Studio” name is borrowed from the (aging, and still not updated) Surface Studio desktop, and the Laptop Studio’s screen bends forward and uses the laptop’s base as a stand in much the same way. Most of the time, the Laptop Studio just looks like a regular laptop, but its display can be pulled out over the keyboard into “stage mode” and tilted to whatever angle is most comfortable for what you’re doing. It can also fold all the way down into “studio mode,” which covers the keyboard and trackpad entirely and makes the laptop into one big tablet.
The Surface Laptop Studio starts at $1,600 and is available for preorder today. The first preorders will begin shipping on October 5, the day Windows 11 launches.
Microsoft is positioning the Laptop Studio as a replacement for the old Surface Book, and there are some similarities—the all-metal keyboard decks, the ultrabook-class Intel processors, and the low-power Nvidia GPUs in the Laptop Studio should all be familiar to current Surface Book owners. But the laptops differ significantly in form and function. The inability to completely remove the laptop’s screen from its base will undoubtedly be a negative for some Surface Book owners, though using the Surface Laptop Studio’s display stand to prop up the screen is its own kind of useful, and I’m not sad to see the death of the Surface Book’s weird, bendy-straw hinge.
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