The Surface Laptop Studio was one of the best laptops we reviewed back in 2022 (so good that I use one for work when I’m out of the house), so naturally, I’m extremely excited to hear that Microsoft (the owners of the ‘Surface’ name and Windows) may be working on a follow-up device – creatively named the Surface Laptop Studio 2.
The Surface Laptop Studio 2 is likely to be the most powerful laptop it has ever made.
As reported by Windows Central, the device is currently codenamed ‘Ersa’ over at Microsoft HQ. It’s expected that it will ship with ‘the most RAM ever seen on a Surface device’, along with Intel’s new gen 13 CPUs, and Nvidia’s 4000 series GPUs.
Earlier this year, also as spotted by Windows Central, results for what is expected to be the Surface Laptop Studio 2 leaked on Geekbench, an online benchmarking website for computers and laptops. A 13th-gen Intel CPU and a 4000 series Nvidia GPU were listed among the specs, and it appeared that several models were tested with different part configurations.
With that CPU and GPU combo, the Surface Laptop Studio 2 will be the most powerful machine the company has ever released – it’ll even run laps around the desktop version of the Studio.
Keeping in mind though that the original Surface Laptop Studio had a few spec options to choose from, and if the Geekbench leaks are to be believed, it’s unlikely that the Laptop Studio 2 will break from this approach. We loved the original Surface Studio in our review, especially for its chassis design and its gaming performance, although be aware that it gets loud and hot when under the pump.
A brighter screen is also expected for the device, along with the same ports and dimensions as the current device.
When you go to order the current Laptop Studio, you can choose between the RTX 3050 or RTX 3060 GPUs, or, if graphics processing isn’t a big deal to you, you can just go with the Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics instead (this is perfectly fine for casual use, but lacking if you want high-spec gaming).
Additionally, the current Laptop Studio includes both Intel i5 and i7 configurations. Microsoft is reportedly planning to leave out the i5 model, so it might be i7 all the way going forward.
Storage configurations between 256GB and 2TB are also available, with RAM options between 16GB and 32GB. The beast of Redmond is reportedly planning to also cram in a 64GB RAM model, if you want overkill to really mean overkill.
The Surface Laptop Studio was never cheap, though. The lowest spec model started at $2,399, and went up to $4,649 if you wanted all the best parts.
It’s expected that the Surface Laptop Studio 2 will be revealed October/November, alongside Windows 11 version 23H2.