Neo & Duo pricing

I have a year to put together a cast-iron arguement as to why my Surface Pro 4 needs to be replaced with Neo and my One-Plus must immeditaly and without hesitattion make way for the Duo.

It’s not going to be an easy sell.

The wife took one look at my excitement at yesterday’s surface news and immediately fired several warning shots about the potential cost of replacing perfectly good devices with shiny new, duel screened tech that I probably don’t need in my life, but absolutely want.

As someone who doesn’t follow tech, and couldn’t care less about the inner workings of Microsoft, she asked the obvious: “Well, how much are they?”

Great questtion. I dunno. Nobody does.

I appreciate we have a full year to play guessing games about price and availablility, but what’s your best estimate on how much these devices will cost?

Conversation 9 comments

  • Orin

    03 October, 2019 - 7:31 am

    <p>Considering these devices are using two separate screens and not a foldable screen, I don't see these devices reaching the cost of devices such as the Galaxy Fold. The Surface Pro and Surface Laptop are both priced VERY competitively for what they deliver, so this gives reason to believe the Neo and Duo will also be priced well. My guess is that the Duo will come under $1,000. I have no guess about the Neo, though.</p>

    • William Clark

      03 October, 2019 - 10:26 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#475128">In reply to Orin:</a></em></blockquote><p>I would hardly call Surface pricing "very" competitive. The current Pro 7 w/Core i5, 8G and 256G SSD is $1200 plus another $150 for the keyboard. There are plenty of laptops with those specs that are 20-40% cheaper. They are fine machines and work well but really no better than other laptops from Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc. </p>

  • kevin_costa

    03 October, 2019 - 7:50 am

    <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I suppose the Duo will cost around $1000-1500 and Neo will cost maybe close to $2000.</span></p><p><br></p><p>It is probably advised to not buy a 1st gen device of any kind, it will be expensive and unreliable. I don't have a Surface device (MS doesn't sell it in my country), but the Pro 4 still is a perfectly good machine today. Even the previous Pros (1 to 3) are still really good, hardware wise, nowadays. The only reason you should swap your Pro 4 for another Surface, in my opinion, is if it has the cursed skylake unreliability, even after all the firmware and drivers updates.</p>

  • minke

    03 October, 2019 - 9:01 am

    <p>The true cost will be a lot more if there is no quality camera, forcing you to also carry a phone or standalone camera. Not sure who will truly want one of these, beyond the gadget junkies. Let's say you're the on-the-go businessperson. You will still need the decent-sized laptop with a reasonable keyboard to get real work done, and you will probably want the iPhone for iMessages and the camera. And, if you're already hooked on iPhones, are you really going to want to use Android apps on your almost-a-phone-almost-a-tablet? In other words, this becomes just another device to juggle, with a third operating system possibly. The enterprise folks I see are all happily in Apple's ecosystem using an iPhone and an Apple laptop, and maybe carrying an iPad for downtime. Some do prefer a Windows laptop but they still use an iPhone and iPad. It will be very hard to lure them away from Apple for mobile.</p>

    • vernonlvincent

      Premium Member
      03 October, 2019 - 10:05 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#475158">In reply to Minke:</a></em></blockquote><p>The devices shown were just demo/proof-of-concept builds and not final. There wasn't any camera or fingerprint sensor (that I could see). Those are functions that have been perfected and not really dependent on dual-screen functionality (except for how these are placed in the hardware). I also didn't see a slot for a SIM card/MicroSD card – which doesn't worry me at this stage.</p><p><br></p><p>[<strong>EDIT</strong>: Okay – I was looking at Duo photos on the Verge and did find a front-facing camera, but not a rear one.]</p><p><br></p><p>I think we'll see more of this at IFA 2020 and Microsoft's spring event, where the decisions will be a little more finalized. You can bet they'll be seeding the dev community with these things so apps can be built that take advantage of the unique functionality.</p>

  • vernonlvincent

    Premium Member
    03 October, 2019 - 10:01 am

    <p>Keep in mind these things are a year out. On the Vergecast, Nilay Patel interviewed Panos and, while price wasn't discussed, he did say Niley would be surprised at the price (I took this to mean Duo/Neo would cost noticeably less than expected). </p><p><br></p><p>So – for the Duo, I'm looking at the $750 to $1000 price point, which for dual-screen devices would be decent. </p>

  • Tony Barrett

    03 October, 2019 - 10:35 am

    <p>Unless MS can show some amazing apps that truly make dual screen devices a compulsory purchase, they'll be nothing but gimmicks. I can just see it will be like having a dual monitor PC – being able to run two apps side-by-side, or stretch across two screens (with an ugly gap in between). MS seem to think two screens stuck together is unique and a selling point, but these aren't true foldable devices – sort of a half way house. Your wife needs to give you a reality check – MS will make them desirable for sure, but would these devices actually change anything? Probably not.</p>

    • Thom77

      03 October, 2019 - 4:02 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#475248">In reply to ghostrider:</a></em></blockquote><p>The mental gymnastics a lot of people here are performing to rationalize this devices existence is making Apple apologists look like independent thinkers. </p>

  • jules_wombat

    03 October, 2019 - 1:36 pm

    <p>Well obviously a divorce would solve this dilemma.</p>

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