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An even better Surface Laptop may be coming soon

By Luke Larsen October 16, 2024

The Surface Laptop 7th Edition on a white table. — Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

A new leak has hinted that Microsoft may be exploring an Intel version of the Surface Laptop 7th Edition. A listing for the device was spotted on Reddit, and it will supposedly coming with a Core Ultra 7 268V processor. The listing has since been removed, but the original listing reportedly claimed that it wouldn’t officially be available until 2025.

A Lunar Lake version of the new Surface Laptop has since been supported by Windows Central’s own sources.

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But let’s not forget: It was a big deal that Microsoft debuted its flagship laptop exclusively on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X platform. Full-throated support of not only Qualcomm, but Windows on Arm as a whole, was the shake-up the PC industry has needed in the wake of Apple Silicon.

Seeing how good Intel’s recently launched Lunar Lake (or Core Ultra Series 2) is, however, it’s not too surprising that Microsoft might want to get in on these new chips. Intel needed a very impressive response to Qualcomm, especially in terms of battery life, and that’s exactly what it delivered.

The idea of a Lunar Lake version of the Surface Laptop 7th Edition is intriguing to me \\. The Qualcomm version has been my favorite new laptop of 2024 so far and quickly secured a spot at the top of our list of best laptops you can buy. It’s been my daily driver since its launch this summer, thanks to its great design and the incredible efficiency of its Snapdragon X Elite chip inside.

But there’s a problem. Since then, the Intel Lunar Lake chips have launched, and they have even better battery life than the Snapdragon X Elite. It was quite an accomplishment to have made in just a single generation, and the latest Surface Laptop would be a perfect vehicle for that extra battery life. Intel’s new chips also have significantly better integrated graphics than the Snapdragon X Elite.

Broader performance comparisons between the two chips depend on the use case, but you could certainly make the argument that Intel’s option is better overall for this type of device.

It’ll all come down to price, however. The Qualcomm version of the Surface Laptop 7th Edition started at $999 and came with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. This represented a small discount in price compared to previous iterations of this laptop. How the Intel model will fit into this pricing scheme, however, should be interesting, especially if it ends up costing more.

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Senior Editor, Computing

Luke Larsen is the Senior Editor of Computing, managing all content covering laptops, monitors, PC hardware, Macs, and more.

Computing

Intel decimates Apple to take battery life crown

The Surface Laptop 7 on a table in front of a window.

It's no secret that a big reason you'll find MacBooks among the best laptops is the insane battery life that Apple's machines are claimed to possess. Intel may have just snatched the battery life crown with its new Lunar Lake mobile CPUs, though. According to a battery test released by Lenovo, its Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition, packed with a Core Ultra 7 258V chip, lasted 23 hours and 54 minutes in a local video playback test, beating both M2 and M3 MacBooks by over five hours.

It's a bold claim, and one that comes shockingly ahead of schedule. Laptops packing Intel's latest chips are set to go on sale on September 24, so reviews should go live around that time. But Lenovo seems to have jumped the gun a bit with its battery test. Although Lenovo doesn't clarify if its test was using a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, it shows a dominant lead for upcoming Lunar Lake laptops. The M2 MacBook lasted 18 hours and 19 minutes, while the M3 MacBook pushed ahead to 18 hours and 32 minutes. Still, they're far behind the nearly 24 hours of battery life Lenovo laptop saw.

Computing

Intel’s CPU lineups might get even more confusing

An Intel Core Ultra Series 2 chip embedded in a piece of glass.

Intel's list of processors constantly grows, and its whole new naming scheme just got even more confusing. Today's leaks imply that Intel might be working on another Raptor Lake refresh, this time under the Core 200 name. That's right -- just Core 200, without the Ultra. We also spotted some more budget-friendly, previously unheard-of Arrow Lake chips.

With Intel Arrow Lake right around the corner and Lunar Lake CPUs freshly out and available, Intel's got a lot going on in the CPU department right now, and there's more to come. Some non-Ultra Core 200 chips appeared in various Business Applications Performance Corporation (BAPCo) benchmarks, including the Core 7 250U, the Core 7 250H, and the Core 5 220H. There's also the Core 7 Ultra 255H, which is likely an upcoming Arrow Lake-H CPU set to appear inside next-gen laptops.

Computing

Intel may have been right about killing Hyper-Threading after all

A Core i9-12900KS processor sits on its box.

Intel is getting rid of one of the features that has defined most of the best processors for more than a decade -- Hyper-Threading. It's the branded name Intel uses for simultaneous multi-threading, or SMT, and the company has already confirmed it won't use SMT on its upcoming Lunar Lake mobile CPUs. Rumor has it the company is also ditching SMT for its Arrow Lake desktop CPUs. Surprisingly, according to new leaks, killing SMT might have been the right call after all.

A handful of benchmarks have leaked for Arrow Lake CPUs. Starting off, the Core Ultra 7 265K and Core Ultra 9 285K both popped up in the Geekbench 6 database. The flagship Core Ultra 9 is a 24-core part, and it achieved a score of 21,075 in Geekbench 6's multi-core test. That's slightly above what you'll see with the Ryzen 9 9950X and on-par with the Core i9-14900K, both of which come with 32 threads due to SMT.