It is no secret that Microsoft is planning to release a Surface Pro 8. An engineering sample landed on eBay earlier this month, after which the buyer confirmed that the device had a Core i7-1165G7 processor and an identical decision to the Surface Pro 7. However, there has been no sighting of a successor to the Surface Laptop 3, until now.
The first sighting of the Surface Laptop 4 does not confirm many details about the device, but it does offer a few tidbits. According to a listing by the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards (KATS), Microsoft has assigned the model number 1950 to the Surface Laptop 4, which is currently not listed in the company’s System SKU reference document. The Surface Laptop 4 also looks like its predecessor, although we can only currently go off one picture.
Similarly, KATS has published one picture of the Surface Pro 8. The agency has also confirmed that the Surface Pro 8 has the model number 1960, with an LTE version assigned the model number 1961. Both machines are expected to launch with Tiger Lake-U series processors, but Windows Central claims that there will be AMD configurations for the Surface Laptop 4. It is unclear what APUs Microsoft has chosen for the Surface Laptop 4 though, but we would expect them to be based on AMD’s new Renoir architecture.
However, the website adds that Microsoft plans to release the pair in January 2021, rather than before the end of the year. Apparently, ‘this launch will be a quiet one’, so we may be greeted by a press release sometime in two months time. Ultimately, Microsoft’s hardware refreshes this year have been bland, to say the least. Only the Surface Go 2 has received a design refresh, while the Surface Book 3 remains unchanged from its predecessor.