Surface Laptop 6: Everything we expect from Microsoft's premium laptop

Microsoft’s Surface Laptop may be home to some great laptops, but things have become a bit boring. The laptops all have the same general design and nothing major has changed aside from the Surface Laptop 5 adding Thunderbolt 4 support. But over a year and a half since that release, the Surface Laptop 6 is closer than ever.

In fact, we already have the Surface Laptop 6 for Business, but this time around, the consumer version is going to be radically different in multiple ways. It’s set to be an incredibly exciting laptop for Microsoft, so let’s break down what we know so far.

Surface Laptop 6 for Business

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Release date and availability

The Surface Laptop 6 is set to be announced on May 20 at a special event focused on Arm devices. The Surface Pro 10 will also be announced there, as will multiple other laptops from different brands.

All these laptops are expected to launch starting in June, though more concrete details will likely be revealed at the event.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon X series

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At the heart of the Surface Laptop 6 is arguably the biggest change to the lineup yet. Until now, every Surface laptop has been powered by Intel processors, with some models also offerting AMD variants. This time, the Surface Laptop 6 is making the transition to Arm, and there won’t even be an Intel version, according to what we’ve heard. It’s all Arm, and that’s thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon X series.

This series includes the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus (though we’re also expecting a standard Snapdragon X at some point), and it’s going to change everything for Arm PCs. These new processors use brand-new, fully custom Oryon cores that Qualcomm designed from the ground up, similar to how Apple designed Apple Silicon. You can expect performance on par or ahead of what Intel and AMD are offering in the same class, all while being far more efficient, meaning you get much better battery life.

The Snapdragon X Elite badge on the palmrest of a laptop.

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Arm processors like the Snapdragon X series also offer excellent standby battery life, which is why they’re used in smartphones. When your computer goes to sleep, it can still stay connected to the internet without using a ton of battery or getting hot. It’s a big deal, and we’ve seen how beneficial it can be with Apple’s recent MacBooks. In fact, this is pretty much a response to those MacBooks, and it’s huge news for Windows and Surface fans.

A new design

The Surface Laptop series gets a new design for the first time

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Another big change we’re expecting with the Surface Laptop 6 is that it will finally change the design of the laptop in a more significant way. One of the big changes expected is that it will feature thinner bezels around the display, a very welcome change considering the existing models were starting to feel a bit old. It’s been rumored that the smaller bezels will make for a larger screen on the 13-inch model, while the 15-inch version will be smaller overall, keeping the same screen size.

The display will also have rounded corners, akin to the Surface Laptop Studio series and some other premium modern laptops, and it should inherit the anti-reflective coating we saw in the business model. Reports also indicate we’ll get a haptic trackpad (also borrowed from the Surface Laptop Studio series), plus an extra USB-C port. The Surface laptopp 6 for Business already has an extra USB-C port on the 15-inch model, though, so it’s unclear if this will just be the same, or if both models will laptop the extra port in the consumer version.

Also, unlike the business models, the Surface laptop 6 for consumers should have more color options available, just as we’ve seen in the past.

Finally, a decent webcam

1080p was long overdue

Even with the shift that happened during the pandemic in 2020, Microsoft refused to upgrade the webcam on the Surface Laptop series, which is still a 720p sensor on the Surface Laptop 5. That’s woefully inadequate for a premium laptop in 2024, and thankfully, Microsoft fixed that with the Surface Laptop 6 for Business. We’re expecting the same change for the consumer model, finally giving us a 1080p webcam.

Windows 11 version 24H2

Going all in on AI

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Hardware aside, the Surface Laptop 6 is also going to be among the debut hardware for Windows 11 version 24H2, also known as the 2024 Update. This is because this update includes important improvements for Windows on Arm devices, meaning performance should be much better overall.

There are plenty of changes in Windows 11 version 24H2, but the biggest one is actually still kind of a secret. Numerous reports have shone a light on something called AI Explorer, which is a feature that will create a timeline of everything you do on your computer and use AI to memorize it all based on the topic of what you’re doing. So, at any given time, you can ask Windows to “show me that thing about computers I opened last week”, and it will bring up all the instances of the word “computer” in documents and apps you had open.

Otherwise, there are some other improvements to Copilot with more contextual actions, changes to File Explorer including the ability to compress files in different formats, and even support for the sudo command in Windows Terminal, making it easier to elevate actions without opening a different window.

Text reading Windows 11 2024 Update over a blue background

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The Windows 11 2024 Update will bring a ton of changes to the operating system, including better support for Arm devices.

Some features may not be available right when the Surface Laptop 6 launches, though, because the update isn’t fully finalized yet. This release is focused on the Arm improvements so that these devices can be used to their full potential, but more features will be added around September, when Windows 11 version 24H2 becomes fully available to all compatible PCs.

A big shakeup for Surface

With all these changes in tow, the Surface Laptop 6 is going to be the most exciting Surface laptop yet, and one of the most exciting Surface devices in general. Arm processors are going to change our expectations for laptops, and having Surface be at the forefront of that change can onlytbe good news for Microsoft. Plus, all the other changes seem to make this a very compelling laptop based on what we know so far. May 20 can’t come soon enough.