- Microsoft has cut the price of last year’s Surface Pro 12-inch and Surface Laptop 13-inch models
- The freshly introduced entry-level models have 8GB of RAM and provide some relief from recent major price hikes
- This isn’t a compromise that some people are happy about, and they’re arguing that 8GB isn’t enough for a laptop these days
Microsoft has given us some more affordable Surface devices, models that are back under a grand in the US due to price cuts – but there’s a catch, and that’s the compromise made to achieve this pricing.
Windows Central reports that Microsoft’s chosen tactic here is to push out new variants of the Surface Pro 12-inch and Surface Laptop 13-inch from last year with just 8GB of RAM to cut the cost. Previously, the baseline models had 16GB of system memory.
These new 8GB versions are priced at $849 for the Surface Pro and $949 in the case of the Surface Laptop on the Microsoft store in the US.
Note that there aren’t fresh 8GB models for the recently introduced new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, which remain with a 16GB loadout at the entry-level.
The new prices for last year’s models follow major price hikes for those devices in April 2026. The Surface Pro 12-inch (with 16GB of RAM) was jacked up to $1,049 in the US, whereas previously it started at $799. And the Surface Laptop 13-inch rose to $1,149 versus the original base MSRP of $899.
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While the new prices are a fair old drop down from the painful hikes that happened a couple of months back, Microsoft has sacrificed half the system RAM to get that reduction. This means these Surface devices are no longer Copilot+ PCs with exclusive AI features, as 16GB of RAM is required for that (although not everyone will miss these AI trimmings).
What else is a bit of a downer here is that the new low prices for half the RAM loadout are still $50…
