Report: Microsoft launching Surface Laptop 6 and Pro 10 with Snapdragon X Elite in June

Ben Schoon | Mar 5 2024 - 8:15 am PT

Qualcomm last year announced its Apple M-series competitor, the Snapdragon X Elite, and now it seems we finally know when a laptop is actually coming as a new report pinpoints a launch date for the Microsoft Surface Laptop 6.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite is an ARM-based laptop chipset that’s aiming to offer Windows laptops a chipset competitive with Apple’s M-series chips in MacBooks. With an ARM base, the chip is expected to offer much better battery life, and Qualcomm has made some big claims about performance.

But, since its announcement last October, it’s been pretty silent in terms of actually getting machines with the chip.

According to a new report from Windows Central, though, that’s soon to change. Apparently, Microsoft is gearing up for a Surface launch event on March 21 which would see the debut of Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6. The former would get an OLED display, ultrawide camera, NFC reader, and an anti-reflective display coating too. The Verge claims the OLED Surface Pro 10 won’t debut at the March 21 event, though.

Meanwhile, the Surface Laptop 6 would see changes including thinner display bezels, a haptic trackpad, additional USB ports, and a dedicated key for Copilot which Microsoft first started rolling out earlier this year.

For both machines, though, there would be two variants. One released later this month with Intel Core Ultra processors, with another release in June with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite. While there’s still plenty of time for other manufacturers to debut machines using the chip, this might be the first Snapdragon X Elite laptop announcement and release.

Continuing its AI focus, Microsoft may also announce “AI Explorer” on these machines that can let you search anything you’ve done on your computer from any app. It sounds wild, but it apparently won’t launch until the Windows 11 24H2 update later in the Fall.