Microsoft Reveals Surface Pro Pricing, Battery Life

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Today has been a big day for the Surface Pro, as Microsoft has revealed both its price point and the amount of battery life the launch model will have.

Panos Panay, General Manager of Microsoft Surface, announced the official price points for the upcoming tablet earlier this morning. They are very similar to what we expected, and are comparable to that of a higher end third-party laptop.

- 64GB standalone version at $899
- 128GB standalone version at $999

[quote_box author="" profession=""]Both versions will both include a Surface pen with Palm Block technology and include the ability to use a Touch Cover or Type Cover (sold separately).[/quote_box]

 

It’s interesting to note that the Surface Pro will not be coming with a Touch Cover nor a Type Cover, and that they will only be sold separately. Since this version of the Surface intends to be more of a full-PC experience, it’s surprising that Microsoft expects you to purchase a $120-130 accessory just to have a tactile (or in the Touch Cover’s case, not so much) keyboard.

Also announced today on the official Surface Twitter account was new details regarding the Pro’s battery life:

The beefed up hardware will apparently drain the new tablet’s battery about twice as fast as the Surface RT. Whether this is due to a lower-capacity battery or if the new hardware will simply be using more juice (or a combination of both) is unknown.

The Surface Pro models are slightly heavier, they feature 4GB of RAM, and the display is of higher resolution as well. The screen has a resolution of 1920×1080 and a 10-point multi-touch-capable sensor, mostly to make for a better viewing and stylus-using experience.In comparison, the Surface RT has a 1366×768 screen with 5-point multi-touch.

Hit the break for the full Surface RT vs. Pro specification comparison chart.

[The Official Microsoft Blog]