The RAM crisis has struck again, hitting at the very heart of the Windows 11 ecosystem. Microsoft silently hiked the cost of practically all its flagship Surface PCs between $100 and $500. The cost of memory may be ending any hope of seeing a high-quality Microsoft-made PC match Apple’s affordable MacBook Neo.
On Monday, Windows Central was first to notice price hikes across Microsoft’s entire Surface lineup. That includes Microsoft’s Surface Pro 12-inch launched in 2025 for $800 (without the keyboard attachment to turn it into a usable PC), which now costs $1,050. The Surface Pro 13-inch from 2024, a 2-in-1 hybrid tablet/laptop that comes with a previous-gen Snapdragon X Plus chip, now starts at $1,500. It originally launched for $1,000, again without the additional $280 keyboard attachment with Slim Pen.
Microsoft told Windows Central the price hikes were “due to recent increases in memory and component costs.” Inevitably, it will lead to fewer hardware sales at a precarious time for Microsoft’s hardware business. The tech monolith’s Xbox gaming brand had already been doing poorly after price hikes. Microsoft’s January earnings report showed Xbox was one of the main reasons its personal computing business, which includes Xbox, Surface, and Windows software, tanked 3% year over year. It may get even worse now that all Surface PCs are increasingly unaffordable.
You can find all these price hikes in the Microsoft Store. The entry-level Surface Laptop 13-inch will cost $1,200 with the Snapdragon X Plus chip, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD. That’s up $300 from a year ago. The Surface Laptop 13.8-inch (Snapdragon X Plus chip, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB SSD) and Surface Laptop 15-inch (Snapdragon X Elite chip, 16GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD) also saw hikes up to $1,500 and $1,600, respectively.
What about next-gen Surface PCs?
The specs on these machines are already outmoded by the latest Intel Panther Lake and Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 platforms. The Surface Laptop 15-inch with Snapdragon X Elite, 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage will cost you $1,750, currently on sale. You can find a Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme-based Asus Zenbook A16 with far better performance, 48GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage for $1,700. As of Tuesday, April 14, it seems Microsoft has quit supplying options for more than 16GB of RAM.
We’ve seen rumors from the likes of Windows Central’s Zac Bowden suggesting Microsoft may be gearing up to launch new Surface PCs sometime this spring season. The new pricing scheme may set expectations for all new Intel- and Qualcomm-based laptops and convertible tablet hybrids.
The memory shortage—created by ballooning demand for high-end RAM in AI datacenters—has led to price hikes across the laptop landscape and beyond. It has upset the nature of the PC/Mac dynamic; Microsoft is not able to sell any device that can compete with a MacBook Neo at the $600 price point. As much as we may dream Apple drags the industry to finally reconsider its approach to budget computing, the cost of memory is stomping on any such hopes.
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