Microsoft held a press event today, announcing several updates to their ever-growing Surface lineup.

The most obvious change was adding a black color option to all their devices. But there are obviously many more updates presented, so lets dive into them!

Microsoft is focusing on five key pillars:

Surface devices Your phone and PC (using the devices you want with the phones you want) Focusing on the idea of time to manage your digital life Peace of mind, making sure users feel secure Focusing on interruptions to reduce the things that distract you.

NOTE: MORE DETAILS WILL BE ADDED TO THE POST AS THEY ARE RELEASED

Surface Pro 6

The first update coming to the Surface Pro is the 8th generation Intel CPU’s (codename Coffee Lake).

It will be available in 4 colors, Black, Red, Gray, Blue. The screen will come in at 12.3″, with a resolution of 2736 x 1824 (267 PPI).

The Surface Pro 6 will accommodate up to 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage ($2299 configuration). Microsoft claims it is 67% more powerful than the outgoing Surface Pro. They’ve redesigned the thermal cooling to allow for a quad-core Intel processor, which apparently is a first for a device this thin.

They claim a 13.5 hour battery life, with a weight of 1.7lbs. It doesn’t appear to have any USB-C slots, which is still a sore point for me personally.

It appears that you can only get the 1TB SSD option with the Platinum (silver) color option. WHY!? Why does Microsoft offer the beautiful matte black color but then not have all hardware configurations across both colors?

It will be available October 16th, with a starting price of $899 for the Core i5 configuration. You can pre-order yours on Microsoft’s site.

Side note: it’s interesting they named it the Surface Pro 6, since the previous model was just Surface Pro.

Surface Laptop 2

Also now available in matte black; it will have a quieter keyboard than before, to help keep your typing flow going.

Microsoft claims the new Surface Laptop 2 is 85% faster than the original Surface Laptop. This is quite impressive, seeing as the Surface Laptop was no slouch.

My primary critique when I reviewed the Surface Laptop was the lack of USB-C, and it appears to not have changed at all, which is disappointing. However they have updated the base spec to have 8GB of RAM, so at least they addressed the other primary critique of the original device.

The new laptop has a 1500:1 contrast ratio, which is best in class. The screen is a 13.5” display with 2256 x 1504 (201 PPI) resolution. Even with all that, they are claiming a 14.5 hour battery life. That’s a lot of battery life.

Just like the new Surface Pro 6, and similar to the original Surface Laptop, only the Platinum color option is available with the most powerful configuration, which is quite insane to me.

It will be available October 16th, with a starting price of $999, and is up for pre-order right now.

Surface Studio 2

A minor hardware update, just like the Laptop 2 and Pro 6. The screen has been updated to be 38% brighter (500nits brighter, which is visibly significant) and provide 22% better contrast. It has not been updated with a matte black color option.

The hardware has been updated to include the 8th gen Intel chips, as well as the next gen NVIDIA Pascal graphics. They’ve replaced the hybrid disk drive with a 2TB SSD drive, which should please everyone.

The Surface Studio starts at $3499, and is available for pre-order here. No date is shown at this time.

A bit of a strange name, admittedly. But these headphones will be wireless (Bluetooth) with active noise cancelling and integrated Cortana support.

The Surface Headphones have 4 beam forming microphones, and 4 active noise cancelling microphones. This allows for 13 levels of noise canceling. You can adjust this by rotating the side of the headphone, which happens to be a dial.

This is probably the most exciting part of the headphones. 90% of the time you want to be isolated from the world, but sometimes there are announcements (bus / train / airport) that you don’t want to miss. I wish other headphones like the Beats / Bose / Sony would implement something like this.

Powering the headphones are 40mm drivers. The headphones are also smart enough to include automatic Play/Pause; meaning it will detect when you take the headphones off and pause the music (similar to what AirPods do).

Microsoft entering the headphone space is a bit of a surprise, but if they want Cortana to be more widely used, then it makes sense; especially considering Apple and Google are both integrating their assistants directly into their headphones too.

Another great feature they is Swift Pairing with your Surface device, allowing you to easily connect and switch between connected devices.

Battery life comes in at 15 hours, which is only a little bit less than what Beats, Bose rate their similar headphones at (Sony’s WH-1000XM3 can last for 30 hours). Luckily the Surface Headphones have quick charging, providing you with 1 hour of music time in only 5 minutes of charging.

No official date or price yet, but Microsoft says they are coming soon.

Mobile App Integration

They’ve been working on furthering Microsoft apps and integration on phones and web applications. Tasks will now be integrated into your Inbox in Outlook on the web, which seems like something that should have been done ages ago. To-do lists are also now integrated into the Outlook calendar.

The Microsoft launcher for Android has been updated as well, providing instant access to your calendar events, to-do lists, and your timeline. There’s also WhatsApp integration now.

Your Phone App

This will be part of the Windows October update; one of the features is the ability to see your most recent photos and messages from your Android phone directly on your Windows 10 desktop. (Similar to how iMessages are accessible on both Mac and iPhone)

It appears that this whole app will also be able to mirror your phone screen onto your desktop, which is pretty neat. I suppose when you don’t have your own mobile OS (RIP Windows Phone), then this is the next best thing. And for what it’s worth, it appears pretty slick.

Software

Office now natively supports handwriting recognition and transcribing handwriting to text. This is a really cool feature, that I’m sure students and lecturers will appreciate.

The Surface products are still best in class with their pressure and tilt sensitivity, along with Ink latency.

It was quite a small event, but plenty of new updates to be excited about. What was your favorite thing announced today? Leave your answer in the comments below!