Microsoft just announced a brand-new laptop with heaps more power at the same $999 price (MSFT, AAPL)

• Microsoft announced the Surface Laptop 2 on Tuesday.
• It sports almost twice the power as last year's Surface Laptop, but comes at the same $1,000 price tag.
• A sleek new matte black color option is also available for the Surface Laptop 2. 
• The Surface Laptop 2 will be available to pre-order starting Tuesday October 2, and will be available to buy on October 16. 

Microsoft announced its brand-new Surface Laptop 2 during its event in New York City on Tuesday with almost twice the power as last year's model — for the same starting price of $1,000. 

The latest iteration of Microsoft's very own line of laptops looks nearly identical to the original Surface Laptop, save for a sleek new matte black color option that will be offered alongside the existing blue, burgundy, and silver options. The gold option from the original Surface Laptop hasn't made the jump to its successor. 

The Surface Laptop 2 with a Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 126GB of storage will start at $1,000 with pre-orders starting on Tuesday October 2. It'll be available to buy on October 16.

The real changes are mostly under the hood. Microsoft is making the the Surface Laptop 2 significantly more powerful — up to 85% more so, the company says — than the original Surface Laptop.

That performance boost comes from Intel's 8th-generation Core i5 and Core i7 chips, sporting four cores — newer and faster compared to last year's 7th-generation Intel chips that had only two cores. It essentially means that the Surface Laptop 2 can run more apps at a faster speed than last year's model. 

It also means that Microsoft finally caught the Surface Laptop up to many of its closest competitors, including the Apple MacBook Pro, which have been running Intel's latest 8th generation of quad-core chips for months.

Otherwise, the Surface Laptop 2 keeps the majority of the features from the original Surface Laptop, including a sharp 13.5-inch touchscreen display, a lightweight design, a 14.5-hour video playback battery life, and a felt-leather-like Alcantara fabric on the palm rests.

SEE ALSO: Apple's big bet on the future of USB is increasingly looking like a rare misfire

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Contributer : Tech Insider https://ift.tt/2QrWkWw

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