Microsoft May Be Readying New Surface Laptop With Intel Lunar Lake Chips

Microsoft may be getting ready to ship a new version of its Surface Laptop with Intel’s Lunar Lake chips for AI laptops. A listing of a new Surface Laptop prototype with an Intel Core Ultra 7 268v processor was spotted earlier this week by a Reddit user on the site of Chinese website Goofish, but the listing has since been taken offline.

The now-deleted listing indicated that this Intel-based Surface Laptop had 32 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD, and it also mentioned that the device was coming in 2025. One of the images also showed a “Prototype – Not for sale” message at the bottom of the device.

Windows Central’s Zac Bowden confirmed that a new Intel-based Surface Laptop is actually coming, and this new model should use the same design as the Qualcomm-powered Surface Laptop 7 that launched in June. However, Bowden was unable to confirm if this new Intel-based Surface Laptop would be part of the Surface Laptop 7 family or be marketed as a new generation.

Earlier this year, Microsoft launched the Surface Laptop 6 for Business and Surface Laptop 7 for Business, but these two products shipped with Intel’s previous-gen “Meteor Lake” Core Ultra chips. While Microsoft described the two devices as its first AI PCs designed exclusively for business users, they don’t meet the minimum hardware requirements for the new Copilot+ features on Windows 11.

The Intel Core Ultra 7 268v processor in this new Surface Laptop, however, is part of Intel’s latest “Lunar Lake” generation of mobile CPUs. These chips come with a 4th gen neural processing unit (NPU) delivering up to 48 TOPS of AI performance, and they’re designed for a new generation of Copilot+ PCs with x64 chips. AMD also announced Copilot+ PC capable chips for laptops and desktop PCs earlier in June.

While the first Copilot+ PCs that shipped in June were all powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips, Intel said at IFA last month that more than 80 new devices using its new Core Ultra 200V chips will be available later this fall. It will be interesting to see if a new Intel-powered Surface Laptop will be a part of this wave, but as this Chinese store listing recently suggested, this new model could well be waiting until next year.