Credit: Microsoft

Microsoft has gone all-in on Arm-based Qualcomm Snapdragon X-series chips for its Surface PCs, including the less-expensive-but-more-compromised 13-inch Surface Laptop and 12-inch Surface Pro from this spring. But the company still hasn't quite given up on businesses and individuals who still want or require a traditional Intel or AMD-based x86 PC.

The latest addition to the lineup is the "Surface Laptop 5G," an updated version of the Intel-based 13.8-inch Surface Laptop with built-in 5G cellular connectivity. The system looks largely identical to the non-5G version, but Microsoft says it has been redesigned internally with "a dynamic antenna system" and "a custom multi-layered laminate," which improve signal strength.

The Surface Laptop 5G uses the same Core Ultra Series 2 chips (codenamed Lunar Lake) as the PCs Microsoft released in January. These chips include respectable Intel Arc integrated GPUs, as well as neural processing units (NPUs) fast enough to qualify for Windows 11's extra Copilot+ PC features.

Like the Surface Laptop 5G, those models are aimed primarily at businesses running software that requires a traditional x86 PC—many x86 apps work just fine under Prism, Windows 11's x86-to-Arm app translation layer, but device drivers and custom apps may still have compatibility issues that make Arm PCs impossible to use.

Regular people can buy these Intel-based Surfaces, but their starting prices are several hundred dollars higher than similarly specced Snapdragon Surface PCs. Microsoft didn't announce pricing for the Surface Laptop 5G, but the 5G-less version of the laptop starts at a whopping $1,499, which gets you a Core Ultra 5 chip, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. That's $400 more than the Snapdragon version of the same laptop, which also includes a 512GB SSD. Expect the 5G version to add at least a couple of hundred dollars to the cost.

Microsoft has pulled back on some of its Surface hardware efforts since the departure of Panos Panay in 2023, discontinuing the Surface Studio laptop and desktop and focusing mostly on the Surface Pro tablet and the Surface Laptop series.

The Surface Laptop 5G begins shipping on August 26. Microsoft is also making the 13-inch Surface Laptop and 12-inch Surface Pro tablet available to its business customers starting today.