The Microsoft Surface Pro has eluded UK shores for 3 months now, so it’s nice to finally get a release date for the United Kingdom. The date is May 23, 2013, and is just ahead of the release of Intel’s Haswell CPU chips.
You might be wondering why I would need to mention such a thing, and the answer is because the Surface Pro 2 is expected to come with the Haswell CPU, but that will not be until later this year, or early in 2014. The smart money would next February, as that will be a year since the current model was released.
The Microsoft Surface Pro UK release is significant because other European countries are certain to follow, which will then give us a clearer picture of just how successful Microsoft’s latest product is. There’s been a lot of concern as to why there has been a delay with the international release, and the simple answer is stock.
Microsoft had a hard time with supply and demand in the first few weeks of the Surface Pro’s release, and took a huge effort to try to catch back up. Thankfully, they did manage to keep on top of things, but it was clear the Surface Pro stock problems would have resurfaced if Microsoft would have released it internationally earlier than late May.
How much is it in the UK? The Surface Pro price for the UK is £719 for the 64GB version and £799 for the 128GB model, which is almost equivalent to US pricing. However, you have to remember that the Touch Cover will cost an extra £99 and the Type Cover is £110.
There’s no denying that this is a pretty decent first attempt by Microsoft, but there are many consumers waiting for the Surface Pro 2nd-gen, as this will be the version with all the issues ironed out, along with that Haswell chip as well.
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