Here’s the good news: Microsoft is once again selling the Surface Laptop for under $1,000 in 2026. The bad news: with last-gen performance, there’s only 8GB of RAM (half of the previous ones).
As seen Windows CenterMicrosoft quietly released $850 Surface Pro 12 inch and a The $950 Surface Laptop 13-in with returned RAM, Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus chips and 256 GB of SSD storage. Company previously inflated prices On all Surface devices before 2026 starting with 16GB of storage.
Of course, for the Surface Pro to function as a 12-inch convertible laptop, you still have to buy a separate $150 keyboard, which brings the actual total to $1,000.
These prices are higher than in 2025 – for worse features. The Surface Pro 12 inch It went on sale last May for $800. The 13-inch Surface Laptop with the same chip and 16GB of RAM was originally released for $900, but then Microsoft raised it to $1,200 in April. This new 8GB model is cheaper than the new MSRP, but also more than the original price.
Each new Surface configuration seems like a worse value than other lower-priced PC options. The $600 MacBook Neo. For example, the new Dell XPS 13 It starts at $700 with 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.
The the ongoing RAM price crisis has already destroyed the entire PC pricing landscape. Even the father of Windows is no better than other laptop manufacturers if AI data centers are eating up all the memory space. The irony is that Microsoft pushed 16GB of RAM in Windows 11 for new AI integrations like Copilot. Under previous standards, none of these 8GB laptop models could be considered Copilot+ certified.
Since the launch of Windows 11 in 2021, Microsoft has set 16GB as the default for the OS. Now it has to compromise for low-end systems. Windows Center reports that Microsoft is trying to optimize Windows 11 for 8GB machines. It can even disable certain widgets to keep systems running smoothly. Gizmodo has reached out to Microsoft for more information about its plans for 8GB Surface devices and Windows optimizations, and we’ll update this post if we hear back.
last week, Microsoft has debuted the new Surface Pro 13-inch and Surface Laptop models with a newer one Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 platform. The new 13-inch Surface Laptop starts at $1,600 with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Microsoft obviously knows it can’t sell low-end models at such obscene prices, but its Surfaces struggle to make sense to the consumer who can’t afford a $1,000-plus device.
