Could Microsoft’s next Surface Book be coming in black?

Is Microsoft preparing to launch a new black model of its Surface Book hybrid featuring Intel’s latest CPUs? A teaser video from Intel appears to show such a device, and that’s set the internet abuzz with speculation – although the truth of this is certainly questionable, and we’ve been down this road before (this exact avenue, in fact – more on that later).

This all stems from a launch video (spotted by MS Power User) for Intel’s freshly revealed 8th-generation processors, and the black laptop shown in the video certainly seems to be a Surface Book, with its distinctive hinge and even the detach key (for separating the tablet and keyboard sections).

The clip states that the new Core processors are ‘designed for what’s coming next’, so could that be a reference to an incoming Microsoft hybrid refresh?

Folks have certainly been waiting for something new to happen with the Surface Book for some time now, so it’s tempting to leap on this as a potential early glimpse of a fresh black-colored spin on the device using Intel’s new Kaby Lake Refresh chips.

Reality check

But reality has to come knocking at the door in fairly swift fashion here. It would seem pretty odd for the first look at a new Surface Book to come from a source other than Microsoft.

It seems more likely that this is a bit of promo work from Intel mocking up a current Surface Book in black. After all, as one commenter noted, the device appears to have the exact same keyboard layout as seen in the current Surface Book (although you could argue that maybe Microsoft isn’t changing that layout in any potential refresh).

Still, there’s certainly nothing wrong with keeping our fingers crossed that we will see a new model of Microsoft’s expensive hybrid later this year. We certainly know that the Surface Pro is getting an LTE spin in October.

As we mentioned at the start of this story, this isn’t the first time a black version of Microsoft’s convertible has been rumored – indeed, what was seemingly an image of a black Surface Book 2 popped up almost a year ago to the day, and that fact tempers our enthusiasm for getting caught up in the current round of speculation.

Via: The Verge