Microsoft has reportedly announced the UK pricing for its brand new Surface Laptop running Windows 10 S, but it might dampen Brits’ early enthusiasm for the education-focused product.
While Redmond confirmed the $999 price tag during the launch event, it failed to confirm what Brits will be paying when it goes on sale.
That news is now in: it’ll start at £979 for the Intel Core i5 configuration with 4GB RAM and 128GB storage, Neowin reports, although there’s no sign of the pricing on the UK store listing right now. We’ve reached out to Microsoft for confirmation
The top-end Intel Core i7/16GB RAM/512GB storage option is reportedly going to cost a whopping £2,149, compared to the $2,199 cost in the US.
The current exchange rate would give us a direct conversion of £772 and £1,700 respectively. Although tech firms rarely use that metric when deciding on pricing, the trend of practically swapping the currency sign is a relatively new and troubling one for UK tech fans.
Brits are also being short changed in the style department, with only the Platinum option listed on the Microsoft Store. The US market will also have Burgundy, Cobalt Blue and Graphite Green to select from.
Microsoft’s UK store lists all four configurations as ‘coming soon’ and isn’t offering the opportunity to pre-order just yet, so it’s unclear whether we’ll be getting it on June 15 like those in the US.
t’s likely the lack of daylight between the sterling and USD pricing can be attributed to the recent collapse of the pound against the dollar.
In February, the company hiked Surface Book prices by at least £150, with the top configuration rising £400 (around 15%).
At the turn of the year, Microsoft put the prices of its Azure cloud service up by 22%, with Microsoft claiming the move was being made to “more closely align with Euro pricing.”
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I’m a little bit confused, actually I’m shocked, Microsoft say this is a direct competitor to the Mac Air but the Mac runs a full operating system and is not restricted whilst this does not. It is therefore an iPad Pro competitor without the millions of Apps that the Apple App Store has. It will be interesting to see if it is I that is stupid or Microsoft… They already tried this once and pulled the RT OS.
I have two sons, 15 and 17, who need upgrades and this has missed the mark, even more so at the price. Oh and they are Students…. I’m disappointed as I wanted this to real open up the choices available given that Apple is stagnating as well.
You can upgrade to the full Windows though, so it’s still fair to compare to other laptops.
Without the upgrade, a good comparison would be a Chromebook Pixel. As for an ipad, most of those applications are designed for a phone operating system, with few optimised for keyboard/mouse/laptop use; large numbers are also merely apps for websites/services where on PCs you can use the website – consider how on Windows and Chrome OS you can run a full office suite in the browser, but an ipad needs an app for a regular website! So it’s still a PC level operating system in that sense, even if applications only come from Windows Store. If there were so many other useful applications for ipads, why are apple to themselves going up the ability to run Office.
Surface RT was at a time when there were far fewer Windows Store applications (by an order of magnitude), they only run full screen, and your couldn’t put Win32 applications on Windows Store (even so, as limited as a Surface RT was, I wouldn’t consider a Chromebook or ipad any less limited). It also couldn’t be upgraded to full Windows.
If you want full Windows, take advantage of the full upgrade. If you wanted a cheaper price, buy one of the many other laptops out there – the point of the Surfaces is not to price compete with their own OEMs.
But…the Windows store is full of buggy ad serving rubbish apps. If MS is trying to put sys admins in education at ease by removing full Win32 apps they really need to curate their app store better and start paying a few high level iOS/Android apps to port.
Because none of those mobile applications have ads in.
Maybe its just my opinion, but I think there is no competition with the Chromebooks at all. In fact I think maybe MSFT should concentrate more on their phone hardware and market share and when that takes starts to take shape if ever then they could move forward with this Windows 10s. As for Apple well their greed and arrogance is finally catching up with them and will be their downfall. They are becoming less the tech company of choice now.
Windows S cannot run MatLab because MatLab isn’t on the Windows store. I don’t think this Windows S will appeal to many students since students also like to run chrome. I hope one can install windows 10 pro on this to justify the hefty price tag!
Apparently you can upgrade any Win 10S laptop to 10 Pro for free as a student/teacher, or for a one time fee of $49 for everyone else
smells like a mac book pro victory
I’m a bit confused. So is Surface Book finished or is this another line? If it is another line, what’s the difference between this and the Book?
Edit – oh it’s to compete with Macbook Air AND Chromebooks? Aren’t these extremely different products? And the specs/price suggest it’s more of an Air comparison that Chromebook. Who would pay this much for a Chromebook alternative?
I have an SP3 and looking to buy an SP5 when released before anyone accuses me of being an Apple fan. I just don’t see the market for this product.
Surface laptop will compete with ultra portables (of which apple’s netbook is just one of many). Google’s Pixel Chromebook is also high end – but lower priced Windows 10S machines will come from OEMs, just like it is for Chromebooks.
And then it doesn’t do well enough and MS cans Windows 10S like it did Windows RT.
MS can iterate but it can’t innovate. I’ve been waiting a long time for them to prove me wrong and I don’t think this is the idea to do it.
But at least when MS does can 10s (does that look awfully like I0s?) you can bail into Win10Pro for £50, or – if they have any decency – for free?
It’s obviously catch up time with Chrome / Android clamshells – what’s surprising to me is no noise at all from Apple, that already has a huge app ecosystem for its proprietary Store. Don’t know why it didn’t launch an iOS laptop, like yesterday. It’s not as though its Mac line is booming sales.
Which core i5-i7? 15W or 28Watt like the more powerful MacBook Pro 13?
4GB of RAM and 128 GB of SSD LOL my 700$ smartphone is better XD
No thunderbolt 2 or 3, no USB C, non USB 3.1, no SD card….
No windows 10 Pro…. bah
There is an SD Card Slot… right?
No that is the Surface Connect Port
£1000 for a windows lite laptop?! no thanks!
you can get full fat windows ultrabooks for less than that. And as for taking on Chromebooks, not a hope at that price.
Not sure who would choose this over a Surface Pro 4/(5 when it updates).
Honest question – which cheaper ultra books are you referring to, that have a touchscreen? There are some, e.g., the Asus Flip, but a lot of them only offer touchscreens on the more expensive models, or you’ll be looking at devices with poorer battery life – that includes SP4 (which is the big reason why I’ve put off getting it, real world reviews suggest it’s poor in practice – of course we’ll have to wait for reviews of the Surface laptop to be sure).
(If you don’t care about a touchscreen, well of course there will be cheaper models available.)
Well you can alway buy a nice fat Dell laptop for cheap if cheap is all you care about.
didn’t say I wanted something cheap. I’m saying for £1000 there are better specced alternatives that already have full fat Windows without the £50 upgrade.
the connections on this are woeful.
did you even read the article? $999 for a well specified i5 laptop. Windows 10S is an OS for devices to have installed to bring them in at the sub £200 mark, just like Chromebooks
yes I did read it, or I wouldn’t comment.
it’s not an overly well specified i5 laptop compared to the competition. It’s pretty average ultrabook spec, but with a cut back Windows OS. Hence the comment, why would you choose this over similar or cheaper full fat Windows models?
And as for the £200 comment, where is that written? You have no idea how much those devices will cost. If Microsoft wanted to make a statement and grab market share it would bring it’s own device in at a competitive point. This isn’t going to tempt anyone. Too expensive, just like the Surface Book.
$50 to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for this device.
If this device is “pretty average” name 3 better ones with a 15+ hour battery life, touch screen, running an i5 CPU, then…
Bet you can’t find 3 that make this look “too expensive”.
14.5 hours of battery life in a 1.25KG chassis is NOT “pretty average”!
Surface Pro has 9 hours, FWIW. I have one, and it doesn’t last a working day for me.
Regarding the £200 comment: If you watch the announcement video then you will see that Microsoft partners have undertaken to Produce 10 S devices at under $200.
People who talk about the Surface Book being “too expensive” make me laugh…
Yes, they are quite expensive devices, but they also are cheaper for what they offer compared to the MacBook Pro counterparts…
I bought my Surface Book this past November and it was the 1st gen. It has an i7, 16 GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD and the 1GB NVidia gpu. It cost me $ 2200. (Also the Pen is included, retail value of $60)
At the same time, my sister got her MacBook Pro 13″ with Touchbar, i7, 16 GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD for $ 2300…
The Surface Book with Performance base would have been more expensive than the 13″ MacBook Pro but not so if you compare it to the 15″.
And with the 13″ you will have the top of the line Iris graphic, which beat the HD found on the Clipboard part of my Surface, but the dGPU beats Iris when I have it attached to the base.
In my opinion, the value is about the same that you would get if you buy an Apple device… the quality is top notch and the configuration is also great.
If my sister wanted to do something similar with her ecosystem, she would need to get an iPad Pro, the Apple Pencil and the whole package would set her back about $3500.
I’m not comparing it to Apple products, because you are either in one ecosystem or the other. If you are already invested in Apple, you won’t have any interest in this regardless of price. And comparing this to the biggest rip off overpriced company on the planet to make an argument on value is quite amusing.
I’m comparing this to existing Windows ultrabooks that have higher specs for less money, because that is the direct competition. They also have full fat Windows 10 which will let you do anything and have none of the restrictions of Windows RT – Sorry, windows 10s, same thing though.
Seriously, who will spend £1000 on an underpowered (compared to other similar priced laptops) laptop that won’t even let them install their own software?!
I can understand a student at £200 to just use Office online, but not at this price.
You DO know that you can upgrade to the regular version of Windows with these new devices?
your point is completely lost.
RT was atrocious but this “rebranding” has something interesting to entice students… it is upgradeable, and while the Windows Store is still crap, its relatively better than 4 years ago.
I agree that this is absolutely NOT for many, and definitely not for me… I am a professional and when I was a student I actually had good devices with full capabilities…. However, these offerings are meant to inspire OEMs to make similar devices.
The Surface line became a success the moment you started seeing copycats such as Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Dell, etc because that was its purpose all along.
This new Windows 10S will compete with Chromebooks and the restrictions exist on both systems… and the devices that will carry it will be cheap ones just like most Chromebooks….
However take a look at the price of launch of the Chromebook Pixel and compare it with this. They are reference devices, not mass adoption.
What I do like is having the OS developer, create the hardware of my device as well… so I dont have to jump through hoops with different companies when I have an issue.
I love my Surface Book and for what I use it, it already paid itself.
The title of this article is “Microsoft Surface Laptop release date, specs, price and more” but the bit about the price seems to be missing
Sorry, was mid update! You’ll find it there now
What about availability date and price?
And since when do Full HD screens have 3.4 million pixels?
Have to hand it to MS that they get the threat of Chromebooks and not sitting on their thumbs. But I have now purchased several CB for my kids and they are a far better user experience, IMO.
Been fighting an issue with one of my boys Win 10 machines he uses for gaming. Try to shut down and it indicates updating 1 of 3 and do not turn off. Then 12 hours later still indicates the same thing. What do I do? This is a horrible user experience for people.
CB updates transparently and you never even know. Would never, ever have such a message as the Windows box. Google has two copies of boot image where one updates while the other runs and then when you boot you get the new one without even knowing as it should be.
Now with Android apps on CBs it makes them that much more attractive. I suspect Google is going to go after software development next with the CBs.
So you’ve used Windows 10S then, to know how it compares?
Re software development – allowing some Android applications to run on Chrome is a long way to making it a fully fledged development machine, even on Android itself, whilst there are some development environments, it’s very limited (and Google themselves don’t support using Android for Android development). Would love to be proven wrong though.
Try a Mac. There’s always that.
I think the fact that you have referred to your children as “boys” probably means that they aren’t the target age for this device. ChromeOS is not an ideal platform for college and university age students, because of the relative paucity of applications with an educational focus. Windows has over 20 years of educational software development for the platform, and I know teachers who are still using content that was developed over a decade ago. You should watch the announcement video, though. Your criticisms may have been addressed by the announcement of Windows 10 S.
Both my eldest have gone, or are going, through University using a Chromebook and quite successfully. Sociology and Biological Sciences. Collaborative working using Google Docs, Slides and Sheets. Not as high powered as other office suites but just fine for higher education workhorse devices.
The American experience demonstrates that Chromebooks are an excellent device and, crucially, affordable.
I can see this laptop as a high end competitor to Apple products, but MS don’t appear to know how to compete with Chromebooks.
I must say that your comment surprises me. Particularly the Biological Sciences part. I know a Biochemist and he has a monster of a laptop and a desktop that is running twin nVidia GTXs and an Intel Phi.
I don’t disagree that Chromebooks are excellent for earlier years education, but scientific modelling; statistics; medicine; engineering; design; et al don’t have meaningful Microsoft-competition from any ecosystem, excepting Linux.
The likely fusion of the Android and ChromeOS operating systems, under Google Andromeda/Fuscia will be interesting…
Maybe they went to Rutgers.