Historically, Microsoft"s line of Surface Books has had an entry point of $1,499. Today though, the company released a new variant of its Surface Book 2 that costs $1,199, lowering the barrier of entry. The new model includes a Core i5 processor, 8GB RAM, and 128GB SSD, making the only change from the previous entry-level model that it has half of the onboard storage.
It"s worth noting, however, that the Core i5 that Microsoft uses in the Book 2 is from Intel"s seventh-generation "Kaby Lake" lineup, while the Core i7 is eighth-generation "Kaby Lake R". This means that the former is dual-core and the latter is quad-core. The i7 models also come with a dedicated Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 GPU, and while those models start at $1,999, there"s a significant performance increase.
This is all referring to the 13.5-inch Surface Book 2, as the 15-inch model isn"t even offered with an i5, and that starts at $2,499 and comes with a GTX 1060 GPU.
The news comes alongside Microsoft also releasing a flavor of the Surface Laptop with a Core m3 processor. That lowers the barrier of entry for the Laptop from $999 to $799, although it also comes with a significant performance hit.
If you want to check out the Surface Book 2, you can find it on the Microsoft Store here.