Even though it’s been over a year since its release, the Surface Laptop Studio is still one of the coolest laptops Microsoft has ever made. Folio-style laptops weren’t new when it launched, with the Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel being another great example, but the Surface Laptop Studio definitely made them a bit more mainstream, and it’s such an interesting form factor. It makes it easier than ever to go from a laptop to a tablet, and it doesn’t sacrifice power to do it, so it’s got plenty of performance. With that being said, the Surface Laptop Studio is over a year old at this point, and it’s starting to show its age. As such, it’s pretty exciting to think about what’s next for this product, and what might be in a Surface Laptop Studio 2.
The Surface Laptop Studio is great, but it does have 11th-generation Intel H35-series processors with just four cores and eight threads, so it definitely falls behind what we’re getting these days with the 12th-generation and the upcoming 13th-generation models.It also has Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti graphics, and up to 32GB of RAM and 2TB of SSD storage. The most unique thing about it is its display, which has a second hinge allowing you to pull the screen closer to you, or to fold it down over the keyboard and use as a tablet. The concept is great, though it could use some improvements.
When is the Surface Laptop Studio 2’s release date?
The first thing you’re probably wondering is when we can expect the Surface Laptop Studio 2. With this being a new lineup in Microsoft’s Surface family, this is a particularly hard question to answer. The rate at which Surface devices come out largely depends on their popularity. The Surface Pro line gets a new model every year, but most of the others take between one year and a half to two years to get new refreshes. That’s looking to be the case with the Surface Laptop Studio, which didn’t get a refresh in 2022.
At its usual fall event in October 2022, Microsoft only introduced the Surface Pro 9, the Surface Laptop 5, and the Surface Studio 2 Plus, so it looks like we’ll be waiting a while for a potential Surface Laptop Studio 2. The most likely time frames for it are the spring or the fall, which could give Microsoft time to further test Intel’s 13th-generation processors and potentially new Nvidia GPUs.
What new features will the Surface Laptop Studio 2 have?
So, when a Surface Laptop Studio 2 does launch, what can we expect it to include? It’s probably safe to assume we won’t see huge design changes in this lineup’s second iteration. Microsoft typically waits for a couple (or more) of generations to make significant changes to the design of its Surface devices. There’s also nothing necessarily wrong with the Surface Laptop Studio as it is right now, and no rumors to indicate any big changes to the design.
A spec bump
The one thing you can surely expect with a new Surface Laptop Studio is upgraded specs. That’s the one thing you can almost always count on with a new device launch, and there’s some new hardware on the block that Microsoft could end up using. For one thing, Intel has already launched 12th-generation processors in early 2022, and with 13th-generation models likely to launch in early 2023, we would hope to see Microsoft using those models instead.
On the GPU side, we wouldn’t expect a ton of changes unless Microsoft waits a little longer. We might see Nvidia mobile GPUs announced at some point next year, but it might be too early for Microsoft to adopt them if the Surface Laptop Studio 2 launches in the spring. It seems more likely Microsoft may stick with a GeForce RTX 30 series GPU. However, if we end up waiting a little longer for the next model, it could have a newer graphics card. It would also be nice to see Microsoft use a slightly more powerful tier of GPU, moving to a GeForce RTX 3060 or its successor if there is one.
As for the rest of the specs, a creator laptop could benefit from increasing the maximum RAM to 64GB, but 32GB still makes some sense, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see that stay the same. Otherwise, 2TB of storage also seems solid for a refresh.
What do we want to see in a Surface Laptop Studio 2?
Of course, outside of what we can expect, there are things we’d simply like to see in a future version. The current Surface Laptop Studio is great, but there are a couple of ways we’d like to see Microsoft improve it even further.
A more flexible design
The Surface Laptop Studio’s form factor takes clear inspiration from the Acer ConceptD 7 Ezel, allowing you to pull the display towards you or fold it over the keyboard base for drawing. However, that’s all the Surface Laptop Studio does. Acer’s laptop is designed to allow you to have the display in many different positions more easily. You can make it so that the display “floats” above the keyboard, for example, or spin it completely backward if you want to show something off across a table.
The Surface Laptop Studio design locks you into three different positions, and while you can move it freely, it doesn’t really hold any other position very well. One could argue that’s an intentional part of Microsoft’s design, but it could definitely change in the future. When the first Surface RT and Surface Pro iterations were released, the kickstand only supported a few positions, but it eventually became a free-moving kickstand. We’d like to see something similar with the Surface Laptop Studio.
A refined design
The Surface Laptop Studio is cleverly designed to house the Surface Slim Pen 2 underneath the keyboard base. To accommodate it, Microsoft designed the laptop to have this cutout all around the base, which can look a bit odd. The Surface Slim Pen can only be stored in one position alongside this cutout, so the rest of it is only there for aesthetic consistency, but it would probably be better without it.
The cutout should be designed to fit the Surface Slim Pen more snuggly. And while we’re at it, the pen should probably be included with such an expensive laptop. That way, the pen garage isn’t empty out of the box, and it helps the design feel more balanced.
More ports
Seeing Microsoft adopt Thunderbolt for the first time with the Surface Laptop Studio was huge news, and Microsoft seems committed to keeping it around with the recent Surface launches. But as capable as these ports are, it’s a shame to see this powerful laptop including almost nothing else besides Thunderbolt. A more traditional display output like HDMI would be great to see, as would USB Type-A and an SD card reader. Surface devices typically haven’t had a ton of ports, but if Apple can learn its lesson for the 2021 MacBook Pro, we hope Microsoft can do the same for a Surface Laptop Studio 2.
What will be the price of the Surface Laptop Studio 2?
While it’s definitely early to guess the exact pricing for a device that’s still a way out, there’s something we do know. Microsoft hasn’t typically raised (or lowered) the base price of its devices by a whole lot each generation. There have been fluctuations, but usually, the big changes only happen when there are big changes to the specs, and we don’t really know if that will happen with this upcoming generation.
As such, it’s fair to expect that the base price of a Surface Laptop Studio 2 stays around $1,599 when it does launch. Of course, it could increase, especially with the rising costs of production over the past couple of years. Hopefully, though, that won’t be a very big increase.
For now, that’s all we know about a potential Surface Laptop Studio 2, and frankly, it’s not a lot. We haven’t heard any rumors or whispers about the device, so all we can do is speculate based on the natural progress of technology and the failings of the current model. We’ll update this article if any new information pops up about the Surface Laptop Studio 2, so be sure to check back later. If you’re interested in other form factors, check out the best Surface PCs you can buy today. Microsoft makes some great devices for different use cases.
