Microsoft experiments with Intel’s Lunar Lake chips with its next Surface Laptop

Microsoft is all over the place with its chip assignments for its flagship Surface hardware with Qualcomm highlighted in the latest Surface lineup, and now a possible pivot back to Intel for its next Surface Laptop.

While the Wintel duopoly continues unabated in Microsoft’s For Business Surface devices, the company did make a big deal of its partnership with Qualcomm and its new X Elite chip and brought into question how symbiotic its relationship with Intel would be going forward.

A new leak from Reddit user u/Akaza_Durian in the r/Surface subreddit details an undisclosed Surface Laptop powered by Intel’s upcoming Core Ultra 7 268v chip. The Surface Laptop in question was found on a Chinese-based website called Goofish despite a disclaimer stating that the device won’t be officially on sale until sometime next year.

Update: The listing has been deleted but a similar listing is posted with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage configuration

For the price of 19000 CNY or $2,600 USD, one lucky owner can snag a 32GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD configuration that will differ only in internal specs as sources familiar with the production of the next laptop confirm a relatively unchanged industrial design. With a relatively major overhaul of the Surface Laptop design happening this year, it’s unlikely Microsoft feels motivated in changing things from a milling and manufacturing perspective.

With a Surface Laptop powered by Intel’s latest Lunar Lake chip owners get a baseline level of AI support with SoCs hosting 40 TOPS within Intel’s Boost NPU architecture. Another advantage of a Lunar Lake Surface Laptop 7 is the additional battery gains that customers will gain thanks to Intel’s more efficient chip architecture for this latest gen chip as well as avoiding the app compatibility valley that still exist to a certain degree with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips.

The folks over at Windows Central managed to confirm with their sources that, while the listing’s validity may be in question, Microsoft is indeed testing Surface devices with Intel’s Lunar chips internally.

The Goofish listing may be dubious, but it seems in line with Microsoft’s Surface release cycle that it will spit out an Intel powered Surface Pro and Laptop next year at some point. The question this Surface Laptop prototype raises, is whether or not Microsoft leads with Lunar Lake and its support for that coveted battery life extension while also powering all those nifty Copilot + PC features that were fist exclusive to Qualcomm and its Snapdragon powered PCs because of – something, something, TOPS.

For perspective, Microsoft experimented with Qualcomm back in 2017 with a co-developed Snapdragon chip in the Surface Pro X that was ultimately and underpowered and performative mess of a release for the tablet PC at the time. Back in 2017 Microsoft was also playing footsies with AMD as it also offered Ryzen powered variants of its Pro and Laptop devices alongside its more trusted Intel deliveries as well.

Microsoft would eventually shuffle the use of AMD powered Surface devices out of its lineup and seemingly scrap its co-developed Qualcomm endeavor in favor of a straight Wintel lineup for customers.

However, with Qualcomm working on a follow up to the relatively successful X Elite chip, Intel’s new Lunar Lake chips matching the efficiency of ARM based competitors and AMD delivering a performative experience with its Ryzen 9000 series, the Surface lineup may be back to its old days of offering customers greater customization options.

If Microsoft can easily pivot back to Intel or AMD with all of the gains it touted with Qualcomm and avoid having to answer for missing apps, translation layers and app developer support, does the company’s public display of affection (PDA) moment with Snapdragon become short-lived once again?