By Christine Persaud
Microsoft introduced a slew of new products, including two new Surface products, the Surface Go 2 and Surface Book 3, a pair of headphones, the Surface Headphones 2, and the Surface earbuds.
Surface Go 2 comes housed in a light, portable design, while Surface Book 3 is the company’s most powerful laptop ever. Designed for professionals who need desktop-level performance from anywhere, it is considered to be a powerhouse workstation.
Surface Go 2 has a 10.5-inch PixelSense display, improved battery life, and up to 64% faster performance than the original with 8th Generation Intel Core M options. It comes equipped with Studio Mics, Microsoft’s dual microphone solution, to increase voice clarity and reduce background noise for Teams meetings or video chats, and a 5MP front-facing camera that delivers sharp video, even in low light. There’s also the new Camera app for the rear-facing camera to make it easy to scan documents and whiteboards.
Surface Go 2 starts at $529 and will be available starting May 12.
On the other end of the spectrum is Surface Book 3 (starts at $2,149, available starting May 21), which provides up to 50% more performance than Surface Book 2 and up to 17.5 hours of battery life. Available in 13-inch and 15-inch options, it has a high-DPI PixelSense Display, smooth, precise trackpad, comfortable keyboard and the performance of 10th Generation Intel Core processors and choice of discrete NVIDIA GeForce GTX or Quadro RTX GPUs.
It comes with up to 32GB of RAM and the fastest SSD Microsoft has ever shipped. The 15-inch mode has an NVDIA GeForce GTX GPU with enough power to play the top Xbox Game Pass for PC titles at 1080p in a smooth 60 frames per second. The NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000 option better meets the needs of commercial customers and higher education institutions.
The Surface Headphones 2 ($350, May 12) are designed to slip comfortably over your ears and they offer 13 levels of ambient noise control. You get up to 20 hours of battery life. Active noise cancellation is adjustable through intuitive on-ear dials and specifically tuned to either block out or amplify human voices. The ear cup has been designed to rotate 180 degrees for greater comfort when wearing around your neck. They come in black or classic platinum finish.
For those who prefer earbuds, the Surface Earbuds ($260, May 12) have intuitive touch controls so you can start a phone call or change the song without taking out your phone. They offer immersive Omnisonic sound and allow you to instantly play Spotify from your Android phone with a triple tap on either earbud. Screen-free integration with Microsoft 365 lets you catch up on e-mails with Play My Emails in the Outlook Mobile App for iOS or allow you to dictate in Word, Outlook, or PowerPoint. Enjoy all-day battery life with the included wireless charging case.
Additionally, Microsoft is offering the new Surface Dock 2 ($360), which helps you expand your workspace with a simple magnetic click and delivers faster charging, higher data transfer rates and the enterprise management tools people have been asking for. Also new is a multi-port Microsoft USB-C Travel Hub ($120) to give you more ways to connect to networks, displays and USB-C accessories when you’re on the go. Both will start shipping to customers later this month in select markets.