If you’ve been waiting for Intel’s Lunar Lake to hit Surface devices, the good news is Microsoft has finally released the Surface Pro 11 and Laptop 7 that come with Lunar Lake chips. The bad news is these chips are only available on the “for Business” editions and the starting price is $500 more than the Snapdragon chip variants. What exactly do you get for the extra money, and is it worth paying more? Let’s find out!
Surface Pro 11
First up is the Surface Pro 11. Now there have been frequent heavy discounts for Snapdragon X computers, so keep that in mind and don’t pay full price for one.
The Snapdragon X Plus Surface Pro 11 with LCD display, 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage normally retails for $1000, with storage upgrades costing $200 per tier and 5G costing $300 extra.
Stepping up to the higher processor and display costs $500 more. For that money, you get:
- The Snapdragon X Elite chip with 12 cores
- OLED display
- 512 GB of storage instead of 256
- And the ability to upgrade RAM to 32GB or even 64GB for $400 extra per upgrade
Since the storage upgrade is normally $200, that means the cost of the chip plus OLED screen is actually $300.
The Business edition of the Snapdragon X Surface Pro 11 costs an extra $100. For that money, you get:
- An easier to service device with instructions
- Windows 11 Pro instead of Windows 11 Home
Basically things that business customers may care more about.
The Lunar Lake Surface Pro 11 retails for $1499 for the same 16/256 configuration. Since $100 of that is the “for Business” cost, that means the extra $400 gets you:
- The Intel Core Ultra 5 236V processor
- An Anti-reflective display coating
- which seems to lower the contrast ratio on the LCD model from 1200:1 down to 1100:1
- An NFC sensor that enables authentication
- The 2 USB4 ports are now Thunderbolt 4 as well and support DisplayPort 2.1 instead of just 1.4a
- Fast charging support has decreased from 65W to 60W for some reason
- and the weight is .05 lbs or 23 grams lighter
Clearly most of the cost here is in the Lunar Lake chip.
Stepping up to higher tier Core Ultra 7 266V processor and OLED display costs $300, which is actually the same as the chip and display upgrade for the Snapdragon version. This time, you aren’t forced to get 512GB of storage with the OLED model.
There’s no 5G SIM card option for the lunar lake variants, but storage and memory upgrades are both more flexible and actually cheaper if you decide to either upgrade just the storage or the memory by a single tier. It costs just $100 to go from 256GB to 512GB of storage IF you keep the memory at 16GB. Similarly, upgrading to 1TB costs the same $200 extra. Similarly, if you keep storage at 256GB, you can upgrade to 32GB of memory for only $300 more compared to $400 with the Snapdragon model. If you decide to upgrade both memory and storage, however, the cost to upgrade is once again $200 more for storage and $400 more for memory. That means the pricing sweet spot is actually the 16/512 or 32/256 configurations.
Do note that there’s no longer an option to go up to 64GB of memory like with the Snapdragon machine.
So this means that the cost premium for the Lunar Lake chip in the Surface Pro 11 is either $400 more after factoring in the “for business” premium, or $300 more if you get the 16/512 or 32/256 configurations. However, be aware that 32/256 is actually not a possible configuration for the Snapdragon chip.
Now whether this is a good value or not is something we’ll talk about after we take a look at the Surface Laptop.
Surface Laptop 7
The non-business Surface Laptop 7 also starts at $1000 for the 13.8 inch Snapdragon X Plus chip with 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage. Upgrade prices are the same as the Surface Pro at $200 per tier of storage and $400 per tier of memory.
The step-up version of the Laptop 7 goes for $400 more, and gets you:
- The Snapdragon X Elite processor
- And 512GB of storage
There’s no OLED screen here like the Surface Pro, and $200 per storage upgrade means you pay $200 for the X Elite chip upgrade.
Alternatively, you can pay $300 more for the larger 15-inch model, which gets you:
- A larger 15-inch display
- A mandatory upgrade to the Snapdragon X Elite processor
Since the X Elite upgrade costs $200, that means the 15-inch size upgrade only costs $100, which turns out to the similar to the OLED display upgrade cost in the Surface Pro.
Once again, the “for business” version of the Surface Laptop 7 with Snapdragon chip costs $100 extra for the same business-oriented benefits as before, but an extra bonus is that the USB4 ports in the business version support DisplayPort 2.1 instead of just 1.4a in the consumer version. Oddly enough, DisplayPort 2.1 isn’t supported by the Snapdragon Surface Pro 11 for Business.
With the Lunar Lake variant, the starting price is once again $1500 for the 13.8-inch Lunar Lake model with 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage. This time, the extra $400 gets you:
- The Intel Core Ultra 5 236V processor
- An Anti-reflective display coating
- that lowers the contrast ratio on the 13.8-inch LCD model from 1400:1 down to 1300:1, but doesn’t seem to affect the 15-inch model’s contrast which remains unchanged at 1300:1
- The USB4 ports are now marked as Thunderbolt 4, and have DisplayPort 2.1 like the Snapdragon business version that was only marked as USB4, compared to the consumer Laptop with only DisplayPort 1.4a
- An extra 0.01 lbs for the 13.8-inch size or and reduction of .01 or .03 lbs for the 15-inch size
- And an integrated smart card reader on the 15-inch size, but only in the Black color and a select number of configurations in certain markets
Unless you get and have a use for the smart card reader, not to be confused with SD card reader, this $400 upgrade for the Lunar Lake Surface Laptop is worse value than the $400 upgrade for the Lunar Lake Surface Pro. After all, that one also included the Thunderbolt 4 and DisplayPort 2.1 upgrade, which of course is also supported in the Laptop, but DP 2.1 was also found in the Snapdragon business version too.
Upgrades are again more flexible in the business versions, but pricing is all over the place. Upgrading to the 15-inch model this time doesn’t require you to get the processor upgrade, but now it costs $200 just for the size upgrade instead of $100. The processor upgrade is still $200, which means getting both is now $100 more expensive than before.
Similar to the Lunar Lake Surface Pro, there’s a pricing sweet spot for the 16/512 or 32/256 configurations, with the storage and memory upgrade costs being $100 and $300, respectively, which is $100 lower for each than for other configurations. That means once again, you are paying a $300-$400 premium for the Lunar Lake version compared to Snapdragon.
Is Lunar Lake Worth $300-$400 More?
So should you pay the extra $300-$400 for Lunar Lake? To answer this, we’ll need to consider 2 things about these chips: performance, and compatibility.
Performance benchmarks between the Snapdragon X Elite and Core Ultra 7 258V chips shows that single core performance is about the same, but the X Elite leads in multi-core performance more than 30%. Lunar Lake does seem to performance better in AI benchmarks, however, some times significantly.
But that’s not the whole story; because the Snapdragon chips use the ARM architecture and Windows on ARM hadn’t previously reached critical mass, not all applications are built to support it or optimized for it. While x86 apps can still run using an emulation layer, this has a significant effect on performance, and some won’t run at all. This includes many games as well, so Lunar Lake is definitely the superior gaming chip. With the Snapdragon, people have had to make compatibility lists to track what does and doesn’t run, and find workarounds to get things to work.
If you get Lunar Lake, you don’t have to worry about all that, and that is the number 1 reason why you should consider choosing Lunar Lake over the Snapdragon chips.
So do you think Lunar Lake and the other upgrades is worth the $300 to $500 difference in price versus the Snapdragon Surface models?
Personally, I don’t think either is that good or a choice right now, especially since Lunar Lake is supposed to just be a stopgap chip that will be replaced by Panther Lake later this year.
However, by the time the Surface Laptop with 5G comes out later in 2025, if its still on Lunar Lake, that could be sign that Panther Lake Surface devices are still a long ways to go.
