As we look towards the rest of 2018 for Apple, Microsoft unveiled yesterday a handful of new Surface products, including the Surface Pro 6, Surface Laptop 2, Surface Headphones, and Surface Studio 2 at a media event in New York City.
The flagship product is the Surface Pro 6, which is Microsoft’s convertible laptop/tablet hybrid with a detachable keyboard. The device now comes in a slick new matte black finish and includes a more powerful Intel 8th generation processor.
Further, the Surface weighs in at 1.7 pounds and features up to 13.5 hours of battery life. Next, Microsoft unveiled the Surface Laptop 2, which is the company’s controversial laptop with a fabric keyboard design.
The new Surface Laptop 2 boasts 8GB of ram at its entry-level $999 price point – up from last year’s 4GB.
There’s also a 13.5-inch display with a 2256 x 1504 resolution, an entry-level 128GB SSD, and USB 3.0 and Mini DisplayPort.
Most surprisingly, Microsoft announced its new over-the-ear wireless headphones, the Surface Headphones.
These feature built-in Cortana support, as well as AirPods-like auto-play and pause that triggers when you take the headphones off or put them on. Surface Headphones will cost $349 and be available in the U.S. and U.K in time for the holidays.
Surface Headphones make it easy to block out the world to get more done with adjustable noise cancellation, so you can focus on your task or just relax with your favorite music.
With automatic pause and play, they will even pause the movie or video you are watching when you remove them from your ears. Cortana, a hands-free digital assistant, is built in to offer you proactive guidance, read you emails, or kick off your conference call.
Last but not least, Microsoft unveiled the Surface Studio 2 – its take on and competitor to the iMac.
It features the latest next-generation Pascal graphics from NVIDIA, as well as a 2TB SSD. Microsoft also touts that the display is 38 parent brighter this time around.
Microsoft’s announcements come ahead of everything Apple is expected to unveil through the rest of 2018. As we recapped yesterday, Apple has a pair of new iPad Pro models coming this year, which could adopt USB-C connectivity for the first time. Notably, Microsoft’s announcements all lack USB-C connectivity, except for the Studio 2.
Further, Apple is said to have a new lower-cost MacBook slated to launch this year, as well as updates to the iMac, Mac mini, and more. As for those Surface Headphones, reports have suggested that Apple has its own over-ear headphones coming in 2019./9 to 5 Mac
