It looks like Microsoft's popular Surface Go and less popular Surface Laptop Go are on the chopping block. According to my sources that are familiar with Microsoft's hardware roadmap, these devices are no longer being manufactured, and no successors are currently planned
Just like the Surface Studio, Surface Laptop Studio, Surface Duo, Surface Hub, Surface Book, Surface Headphones, and Surface Earbuds before them, the Surface Go and Surface Laptop Go are the latest Surface PCs to reach the Microsoft graveyard, and completes the Surface portfolio culling that began in 2023.
Now, the Surface portfolio consists exclusively of Surface Pro and Surface Laptop, with varying screen sizes and power capabilities spread between them. Surface Pro features a 12-inch and 13-inch model, and the Surface Laptop features 13-inch, 13.8-inch, and 15-inch models with a special Ultra model coming this fall.
Sources say that Surface Go and Surface Laptop Go stock may still exist at certain retailers and in certain regions, but once that stock has depleted, it won't be replaced. When asked for comment, a Microsoft representative pointed me to the new Surface website, which notably doesn't include Surface Go or Laptop Go anymore.
Surface Go is a particularly surprising device to be killed off, as I understood that it was very popular with enterprise customers.
In fact, it was so popular with enterprises that Surface Go became a device exclusively for commercial customers with its final generation. Surface Go 1-3 were available for both consumers and commercial customers, but Surface Go 4 only ever saw a release for commercial customers.
Fascinatingly, I'm told Microsoft had planned to ship a Surface Go 5 at some point in the last couple of years, and it was going to be powered by a low-end Snapdragon chip. Unfortunately, when the company asked its enterprise customers for feedback, it found that most of them weren't interested in an Arm version of the device, and so that plan was scrapped.
Surface Laptop Go was pretty much replaced with the 13-inch Surface Laptop, which addressed the Laptop Go's biggest flaws such as the lack of a backlit keyboard and low-resolution display. Surface Go on the other hand hasn't really seen a replacement, as the 12-inch Surface Pro is significantly more expensive (and much larger) than the Surface Go 4 was at $579.
Of course, Surface Go originally launched at an astonishingly affordable $399 in 2018, albeit with very low-end specs that made the device hard to recommend. The Surface Go 3 and Surface Go 4 were the first versions with enough power to handle daily tasks without any noticeable performance loss, but their prices were much higher as a result.
I'm told that the decision to kill off these devices wasn't influenced by the ongoing RAMpocalypse, as the decision was made many months before memory prices became a problem for the company.
Now, the Surface portfolio is left with just two devices, Surface Pro and Surface Laptop. Many would argue these devices are no longer interesting or innovative from a form factor perspective, serving only to compete with whatever Apple is doing on their side of the fence. With Surface Laptop Ultra coming in the fall as a clear MacBook Pro competitor, this has never been more true.
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