Lighter laptops with weightier AI: Microsoft Surface Laptop 13” and Surface Pro 12”

The latest laptops to come out of Microsoft’s hardware division double down on the company’s full-on AI adoption policy. As the creators of the Copilot+ PC standard – meant to signify the presence of dedicated AI-devoted silicon – Microsoft has to ensure that it fields machines that dominate the competition.

With the new Surface Laptop 13” and Surface Pro 12” the company has delivered, promising Copilot fans more features, tighter integration and speedier execution. For the rest of us, these are still superior pieces of hardware, even if you don’t need to ring all the bells and blow the whistles offered up by AI.

First up, the 13” Surface Laptop. On board is a Snapdragon X Plus processor, plus a GPU and NPU (Neural Processing Unit, for handling the AI calculations), as well as a minimum of 16GB memory. Despite a power hike, the newest Surface Laptop can apparently deliver up to 23 hours of usage, just about enough to cover off those awkward business trips when you forget your charger. Actually, scratch that – because the Laptop conveniently uses universal USB-C charging.

Microsoft is following a similar path to Apple in its quest to reach carbon neutrality by 2030, only with slightly less fanfare - possibly indicating it’s lagging behind. Even so, the Surface Laptop can claim to have 100% recycled rare earth materials in its magnets and cobalt in its battery cell. There are no equivalent figures for the anodized aluminium case, although it comes in a tasteful trio of shades, Platinum, Ocean and Violet.

Also debuting here is the Surface Pro 12”, the ‘super tablet’ that combines a touch screen device with pen computing and a folding kickstand and detachable keyboard. For the new Surface Pro, the latter has been ‘reimagined’ and now has a customisable trackpad and backlit keys. It also works with the Surface Slim Pen. Tech specs are similar to the Laptop, only with a higher resolution screen and about 70% of the battery life (it’s also much lighter).

Microsoft is also threatening to increase the AI content of Windows 11, with a new raft of ‘Copilot+ PC experiences’ rolling out to early adopter Windows Insiders this month. This includes using an AI-powered agent to handle issues like frequently changed settings, meaning you can use your voice to ask for help via Ask Copilot. Other capabilities, all driven by the NPU, include updates to the onboard photo editing software to enable retouching and relighting of 2D scenes.

Finally, one area where AI is proving genuinely useful is accessibility, with newly sophisticated ways of accessing text to speech and audio description and summaries of pictures and documents.

Microsoft Surface Pro 12” and Surface Laptop 13”, more information at Microsoft.com