Microsoft's Surface Pro 7 Plus Arrives With User-Replaceable SSD, Bigger Battery, And LTE
For starters, Microsoft has performed a CPU upgrade across the board, adopting 11th generation Intel Tiger Lake processors. Base systems get the Core i3-1115G4, mid-range systems feature the Core i5-1135G7, and top-spec systems receive the Core i7-1165G7. The shift to Tiger Lake is partially responsible for boosting runtimes on the Surface Pro 7 Plus, which have been extended to 15 hours instead of 10.5 hours.
The other contributing factor to the increase in runtimes comes from a larger battery, which now has a capacity of 50.4WHr instead of a 46.5WHr. Another internal change comes with the standard SSD. Like the Surface Laptop 3 and Surface Pro X before it, the Surface Pro 7 Plus features a user-replaceable SSD. So that means if the standard 128GB SSD turns out to be too small for you down the road, you can upgrade to a larger SSD (up to 1TB) later down the road.
Most of the other specs should be very familiar to you, including the 12.3-inch PixelSense display along with USB-A and USB-C connectivity. There's also the requisite Surface Connect port for charging and connecting to a dock. Microsoft is even giving customers the option of selecting 4G LTE connectivity, but interestingly, it is only available on the mid-range Core i5 models. It's also quite odd that Microsoft is relying on the older Qualcomm Snapdragon X20 LTE modem instead of opting for the 5G-capable Snapdragon X55, but we digress...
The base system with a Core i3-1115G4, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD starts at $899, and priced start climbing rapidly from there. At this time, Microsoft is only making the Surface Pro 7 Plus available to corporate and education customers, although we're hoping that it extends that gratitude to regular consumer as well given the sweet upgrades.
