Microsoft's Surface Laptop 13-inch is a great, lightweight laptop that's perfect for back-to-school or portable productivity. Right now, it's at its best price ever.
The Surface Laptop 13-inch recently dropped to $680. That 24% discount results in the best price ever for the laptop.
The deal is so new that I believe it is still undetected by CamelCamelCamel. Also, clicking on a different color of the Surface Laptop 13-inch and then clicking back seems to make the $680 price disappear. If you want the Surface Laptop 13-inch at this price, I'd grab it before the deal goes away.
Surface Laptop 13-inch review highlights
The Surface Laptop 13-inch started shipping mid-way through 2025. The laptop earned high marks in our review for its design, build quality, and its excellent keyboard and trackpad. It did, however, receive criticism for its price. I’ll touch on that more below, but first let’s quickly run down what makes the Surface Laptop 13-inch a great PC.
The Surface Laptop 13-inch is a midrange laptop that borrows some premium design elements of Microsoft's more premium offerings. For example, its keyboard and trackpad feel much better than you'd expect from a device in this price range.
"Simply put, the keys are a pleasure to type on. The keys themselves are a little more rounded than they are on the Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Laptop Go 3, which gives them a more friendly appearance and provides a generally better feel under your fingertips." said our Senior Editor Zac Bowden in our Surface Laptop 13-inch review.
Microsoft made strategic cuts when designing the Surface Laptop 13-inch, such as using a 1080p LCD panel with a 60Hz refresh rate. But the laptop has more premium features such as an all-metal chassis.
Like many of Microsoft's newer Surface devices, the Surface Laptop 13-inch is rounder than its "ancestors." That makes the device feel better in the hand. Many also prefer the rounder look as opposed to the boxy design of older laptops.
The Surface Laptop 13-inch runs on an 8-core Snapdragon X Plus processor. That chip is great for everyday tasks and is quite efficient. If you need a laptop for Microsoft Office, emailing, web browsing, and viewing media, the Surface Laptop 13-inch will perform nicely.
Because of that chip and some other design choices by Microsoft, the Surface Laptop 13-inch has the highest battery life rating ever for a Surface device. While you will never hit the 23 hours discussed in Microsoft's marketing material, Bowden got 16 hours and 40 minutes in benchmark tests based on real-world usage.
It's not a gaming laptop or something to be used for heavier workloads, but it's not pretending to be one. This is a thin laptop that's now at a budget-friendly price. Anyone going back to school this year should take a long look at the Surface Laptop 13-inch.
Surface Laptop 13-inch peculiar pricing
The Surface Laptop 13-inch launched at a strange price. Starting at $899, the PC sat in the same range as the Surface Laptop 7, at least when the latter was discounted. In fact, Microsoft stopped selling the entry-level Surface Laptop 7 shortly after the Surface Laptop 13-inch came out.
Microsoft did not raise the price of the Surface Laptop 7 across the board. Instead, the company just removed the entry-level model from its store. Our Senior Editor Zac Bowden called it "a sneaky tactic to make the new smaller devices seem more reasonably priced."
For what it's worth, I agree with Bowden's characterization of the move and the fact that in his Surface Laptop 13-inch review, he called the PC "a great device, but only if it's on sale."
Well... the Surface Laptop 13-inch is on sale, meaning you can get the "great device" at a much more competitive price.
In his review, Bowden said:
"I think it's likely we'll see the Surface Laptop 13-inch on sale for as low as $699 in the coming months, as the Surface Laptop 7 was often discounted by $200, bringing it down to $799 at a lot of retailers. If you come across the Surface Laptop 13-inch for $699 or less, that's when this device starts to make sense."
At $680, the Surface Laptop 13-inch is below Bowden's recommend threshold and is an affordable PC for those going back to school or who need a portable machine for productivity.
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