Almost exactly a year after hosting its big Surface event, where the company unveiled the Surface Duo, Surface Pro 7, and Surface Laptop 3, Microsoft today announced a couple of new products for its Surface lineup. One of the most noteworthy products announced today is the new Surface Laptop Go — the company's most affordable laptop so far. Powered by Intel's 10th generation Core i5 processor, the Surface Laptop Go is expected to take the thin-and-light notebook market by storm, especially due to its affordable price tag.

The Microsoft Surface Laptop Go features a clean, minimal design akin to other notebooks in Microsoft's Surface lineup. And despite its affordable price tag, it offers a sleek and durable metal finish that gives it a premium feel. The laptop packs in a 12.4-inch PixelSense touchscreen with narrow bezels, an aspect ratio of 3:2, and a resolution of 1536 x 1024 pixels.

It features a full-size keyboard that offers 1.3mm of key travel for a comfortable typing experience, along with a large precision trackpad right underneath.

Much like other products in the Surface Laptop lineup, the Surface Laptop Go also comes with a fingerprint scanner built into the power button for Windows Hello biometric authentication. The fingerprint scanner will also support one-touch sign-in for other Microsoft services like OneDrive Personal Vault. Sadly though, the base model doesn't include the fingerprint power button.

Microsoft Surface Laptop Go

On the inside, the Surface Laptop Go packs in Intel's 10th-generation Core i5 1035G1 processor, up to 16GB of RAM (16GB limited to commercial SKUs), and up to 256GB of storage. While the base variant of the Surface Laptop Go only includes 4GB of RAM and 64GB of eMMC storage, Microsoft claims that all configurations of the laptop will feel snappy and fast. The laptop is rated for up to 13 hours of battery life on a single charge with fast charging support to help users quickly top up the battery to 80% in just one hour. However, the company hasn't shared the exact capacity of the battery included in the laptop yet.

In terms of I/O, the Microsoft Surface Laptop Go offers a USB Type-A port, a USB Type-C port, a 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo jack, and the Surface connector for charging. Other features include a 720p webcam, Studio Mics, Omnisonic speakers with Dolby Audio tuning, Wi-Fi 6, and Bluetooth 5.0. The laptop will be available in three color variants — Ice Blue, Sandstone, and Platinum.

Surface Laptop Go Pricing & Availability

The Surface Laptop Go starts at just $549 for the base 4GB/64GB variant. Microsoft is yet to reveal pricing information for other SKUs in the lineup. We'll update this post with more information on pricing and specifications as soon as it's released. The Surface Laptop Go will be available for pre-order on the Microsoft Store in the US today and it's expected to reach other retail outlets by October 13th.