UPDATE: Official price and models have been revealed!
UPDATE 2: Lazada has revealed more details for the Surface Laptop pre-order!
After a 2-in-1 tablet, a 2-in-1 convertible, and an all-in-one desktop, Microsoft finally stepped into the realm of bog-standard laptops with the aptly named Surface Laptop. It is a curious device with beautiful but frustrating design choices that was ultimately rather well received.
The most frustrating for us Malaysians though, was the fact that you couldn’t buy one even if you wanted to. Well, that looks like it’s about to change really soon.
Today, in a Lazada newsletter I received, the e-commerce marketplace revealed that they will begin accepting pre-orders for the Surface Laptop starting the 10th of January 2018, which is next Wednesday! Beyond that, they didn’t reveal much else about the price or the variants up for grabs. We’re not 100% sure that it’s an official Malaysia set, but it sure looks like that’s the case. Head here to learn more.
It is a fairly capable laptop that you can configure to feature either an Intel Core i5-7200U or Intel Core i7-7660U processor with up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of internal storage. Being a conventional laptop, it doesn’t open flat, stopping at an angle that’s slightly more than 90 degrees.
Since it is a Surface device though, the Surface Laptop sports a 3:2 aspect ratio 13.5″ Full HD Pixel Sense touch-capable display that pushes a total of 3.4 million pixels. It’ll also support Surface accessories like the Surface Pen and Surface Dial.
One of its strengths are the battery life, with Microsoft claiming that it’ll last 14.5 hours on a single charge thanks to the power efficient Kaby Lake processors.
There are also a number of interesting new features that debuted with the Surface Laptop including a built-in alcantara fully-backlit keyboard, vapour chambers to assist with cooling and a speaker system that is integrated beneath the keyboard.
However, the biggest elephant in the room is the operating system: Microsoft’s Surface Laptop debuts with Windows 10 S, a lighter version of Windows 10 with apps that you have to install through the Windows Store instead. Microsoft claims that this version of Windows is both safer and faster (being as fast on day 1 as it is on day 1,000) than the full Windows 10, but I’m not so convinced about developer and app support yet.
Microsoft’s laptop also has an appalling set of I/O ports where you get one Surface connector, one USB Type-A port and a mini DisplayPort.
In the States, the Surface Laptop has retail prices starting from USD999 (around RM4,020) for the Core i5 variant while the Core i7 variant starts from USD1,599 (around RM6,432). If we compare it with the USD999 variant of the Surface Pro tablet, then the base model Surface Laptop could retail for RM4,499 too.
UPDATE:
Here are the models and their corresponding prices:
Intel Core i5 / 4GB RAM / 128GB storage — RM4,499
Intel Core i5 / 8GB RAM / 256GB storage — RM5,849
Intel Core i7 / 8GB RAM / 256GB storage — RM7,199
Intel Core i7 / 16GB RAM / 512GB storage — RM10,029
UPDATE 2:
It will be available in one colour (Platinum) for the Malaysian market four colours — blue, burgundy, gold and grey — and is set to arrive by the 15th of February 2018.
The product will also be sold exclusively on the Lazada website and those who are interested can register their interest so that they know exactly when the laptop will be officially available.
Would you buy a Surface Laptop for 2018? Let me know in the comments below.
Thanks Eugene for the price tip!
