Leaked

Recent specification leaks confirm pending launches for the long-awaited and eagerly anticipated Surface Book 3 and Surface Go 2.

The leaks come courtesy of Energy Star, a federal program that certifies devices for electronic efficiency. And if you were wondering whether the next generations of Microsoft’s highest-end and lowest-end PCs, respectively, would contain modern specifications, well, it’s a bit of a mixed bag.

Surface Book 3 will be made available in 13-inch (model 1899) and 15-inch (1900) variants, as was the case with Surface Book 2. (Well, sort of. Technically, the 13-inch version is 13.5 inches, and I suspect that’s true of Surface Book 3 as well. But the Energy Star data describes it as 13-inches.)

Tested configurations of Surface Book 3 in both 13-inch and 15-inch variants included a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor of unspecified vintage (presumably 10th-generation), with 32 GB of RAM.

As for Surface Go 2, we see an Intel m3-8100Y processor in model 1927, which is quite specific, and 8 GB of RAM. That is expected to be the highest-end version of this low-end device, and is what I’d call a barely acceptable minimum configuration for running Windows 10.

A separate Energy Star notes that the Surface Go 2 will be “available on market” on May 1, 2020, which obviously didn’t happen, and was certified two months ago, on March 9, 2020. It also says there were two other models tested, a Surface Go 2 1901 and a Surface Go 2 1926.

The big question now is whether Microsoft will launch other Surface hardware alongside Surface Book 3 and Surface Go 2. The firm announced Surface Buds in late 2019, but delayed their release until sometime this year, so that makes sense. And there are vaguer rumors about a new Surface Dock, which I’d say is overdue, with USB-C ports.

And while this isn’t necessarily the best time to launch expensive new premium devices, whatever Microsoft chooses to announce, together or separately, is obviously of interest. And these devices will almost certainly account, collectively, for all we’ll see from Surface in at least the first two-thirds of 2020.