Microsoft shrinks its Surface Laptop down to 13 inches, priced at $899

Microsoft is announcing a slightly smaller version of its popular Surface Laptop today. The $899 Surface Laptop 13-inch is Arm-powered like the larger Surface Laptop 7, and shares a similar design with some changes to the specifications and ports. I got to spend some time with the new Surface Laptop 13-inch model at Microsoft’s headquarters last month, and while there aren’t any huge changes here, the smaller form factor is a lot more tempting than the 13.8- or 15-inch Surface Laptop models.

The Surface Laptop 13-inch will ship with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Plus 8-core processor, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. This chip is Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon X series variant that’s designed to push down the prices of laptops, and it includes eight cores instead of the 10 usually found on the X Plus. That should result in around 16 hours of battery life during active web usage. There will also be a model with 512GB of storage that’s priced at $999.

The most obvious difference with this smaller Surface Laptop is the 13-inch display. Microsoft currently uses a 13.8-inch display in the larger Surface Laptop 7, with a higher resolution of 2304 x 1536 (201 ppi), but the Surface Laptop 13-inch model will use a 13-inch panel with a resolution of 1920 x 1280 (178 ppi). This smaller panel also only runs at 60Hz, instead of the 120Hz found on the Surface Laptop 7. There’s also no HDR support on the Surface Laptop 13-inch.

I briefly tried out the display and it didn’t look noticeably worse than the larger models, but if you’re used to the smoothness that the 120Hz panel provides then the drop to 60Hz will certainly be noticeable.

Much like the new Surface Pro 12-inch, Microsoft has also removed the Surface Connect charging port from this device. There are now two USB-C 3.2 ports for charging, data transfer, or DisplayPort 1.4a support, as well as a single USB-A 3.1 port and a headphone jack.

Disappointingly, Microsoft has also ditched Windows Hello facial recognition support on this smaller Surface Laptop, so you’ll have to use a fingerprint reader that’s positioned on the power button if you want to log into this laptop without a password or PIN code. Microsoft has kept Windows Hello facial recognition on its smaller Surface Pro 12-inch model though, and there’s still a 1080p front-facing camera on the Surface Laptop 13-inch.

Another disappointing aspect is that the Surface Laptop 13-inch is still not fan-less. Microsoft made the switch to a fan-less design on the new Surface Pro 12-inch, but it’s keeping a fan inside the smaller Laptop variant to help keep it running cool. This should mean that the Surface Laptop 13-inch will throttle less than the Surface Pro 12-inch, but we’ll have to test that during reviews.

The Surface Laptop 13-inch qualifies as a Copilot Plus PC with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Plus chip inside, so you get access to the new Recall feature as well as AI-powered Windows search, Click to Do, and a number of other Windows AI features inside Paint, Photos, and other apps.

You can preorder the new Surface Laptop 13-inch today at Microsoft’s own store or at Best Buy, with pricing starting at $899. Microsoft is shipping the new Surface Laptop and a smaller 12-inch Surface Pro on May 20th to consumers, and businesses will be able to purchase these devices on July 22nd.