Microsoft Surface PCs Are Getting Big Price Hikes, and the Cheaper Models Are Going Away
Microsoft is significantly increasing the prices of its Surface lineup, with entry-level models under $1,000 being discontinued due to rising component costs. This move makes Surface devices considerably more expensive than competing Apple Silicon Macs.
If you’ve been waiting for Microsoft to update its Surface PC lineup—perhaps with Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon X2 Elite processors—I’ve got bad news for you.
Microsoft is shaking up its PC lineup, but it’s doing so by instituting big price hikes. This means you’ll be paying at least $1,500 for Surface devices that launched at $1,000 just two years ago and that Microsoft no longer offers new Surface devices under $1,000 at all.
The 12-inch Surface Pro tablet that originally started at $799 and the 13-inch Surface Laptop that launched at $899 now cost $1,049 and $1,149, respectively, a $250 price increase. The higher-end Surface Laptop and 13-inch Surface Pro from 2024 both started at $999 but increased to $1,199 in 2025 when their entry-level versions with 256 GB of storage were discontinued; both now start at $1,499, a $300 increase.
As originally reported by Windows Central, Microsoft is blaming “recent increases in memory and component costs” for the price hikes. Supply shortages for RAM and storage chips in particular have been wreaking havoc with consumer tech all year, delaying some launches, depleting the stock of existing products, and raising prices for small and large companies alike.
The 2024 Surface updates were a major change for Microsoft’s first-party PCs. They were the first flagship Surface models to switch from Intel and AMD chips to Arm-based processors, where Arm chips had previously been stuck in side projects like the Surface Pro X. And they showcased years of work Microsoft had done on Windows’ x86-to-Arm code translation layer (now called Prism) and on getting third-party developers to build Arm-native versions of their Windows apps.
Arm-based PCs still seem to be doing fine, based on the sheer number of retail listings, but these price increases make any other comparisons between Microsoft’s lineup and Apple Silicon Macs particularly unflattering. An equivalent M5 MacBook Air now costs $400 less than a similarly specced Surface Laptop, and nothing in Microsoft’s lineup comes close to the MacBook Neo’s value for the money. If we do see a Snapdragon X2-based update for these Surface devices sometime soon, hopefully Microsoft doesn’t introduce yet another price increase to go with the upgrade.
This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
Source: Wired Robotics
