While Microsoft holds a hardware event every October, the only real staple of that event is a new Surface Pro. Every other product is on a less-than-annual update cadence. So alongside the Surface Laptop 5 and Surface Studio 2 Plus, the company introduced the Surface Pro 9. It actually comes in two models, the Surface Pro 9 and the Surface Pro 9 with 5G, which are pretty different from each other.

The Surface Pro 9

The biggest change to the chassis is that the Surface Pro 9 comes in Sapphire and Forest colors now, making for a more colorful lineup. Those two colors join the more traditional Platinum and Graphite colorways.

For some historical background on the colors of Surfaces, the only ones that have come in different colors are those from the Surface Laptop lineups. The first two Surface Pro models came in black, and after Platinum debuted with the Surface Pro 3, that was the only color for three generations. The Surface Pro 6 brought back the black color, offering both, and with the Surface Pro 8, the change was made from using magnesium as the material to aluminum. When that happened, the colors were Platinum and Graphite.

Alongside the new color tablets are also new colors for the Surface Keyboard, which also come in Sapphire and Forest. Of course, the Surface Keyboard, previously known as the Type Cover (or Touch Keyboard if you want to go really far back), has always been the way to make your Surface Pro more colorful.

The other big change is that it has Intel's 12th-generation processors, which are 15W U-series chips. The new generation of CPUs has performance cores (P-cores) and efficiency cores (E-cores), using a hybrid architecture that's inspired by what we've seen in Arm SoCs. The whole thing should add up to both better performance and power management, but also, it means that there's a much higher core count and thread count.

The Surface Pro 9 comes with either a Core i5-1235U or a Core i7-1255U, which have a total of 10 cores (two P-cores and eight E-cores), and 12 threads. For comparison, the 11th-gen chips we've seen in the past had four cores and eight threads.

The rest of the product really hasn't changed. The screen is still 13 inches with a resolution of 2,880x1,920. It supports Dynamic Refresh Rate up to 120Hz, which wasn't supported on the Surface Pro 8 at launch but arrived later in a firmware update.

The tablet is 0.37 inches thin, weighing in at 1.94 pounds, but as mentioned above, the only change in the chassis is the color options. There are two Thunderbolt 4 ports, along with a Surface Connect port.

Interestingly, Microsoft removed the headphone jack with the Surface Pro 9, despite no other changes to the body.

It comes with up to 32GB LPDDR5 memory and up to a 1TB SSD, launching October 25 in select markets.

The barrier of entry for this year's Intel-powered model is lowered by $100, as the Surface Pro 8 started at $1,099.

The Surface Pro 9 with 5G

While the predecessor to the Surface Pro 9 is the Surface Pro 8, the predecessor to the Surface Pro 9 with 5G is the Surface Pro X. Yes, the rumors are true. Microsoft is merging its two Surface Pro brands, despite some notable disparities between the two products.

The Surface Pro 9 with 5G comes with the Microsoft SQ3 chipset, which is a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 under the hood. Unlike the SQ2 that we saw in the Surface Pro X, this will provide a significant gain in performance. And of course, it comes with a 5G modem.

This model doesn't have Thunderbolt 4 or even USB4, as the Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 only supports USB 3.2 Gen 2. Also, the 5G model only comes in Platinum, despite the fact that the Surface Pro X was the first product to sport the Graphite chassis that we know on the Surface Pro today.

There are some big improvements over the Surface Pro X though. The screen is now 120Hz with Dynamic Refresh Rate, and it also supports tactile feedback in the Surface Pen 2, which is made to make it feel like you're writing on a piece of paper.

To be clear, the Surface Pro 9 with 5G comes in the same chassis as the Surface Pro 9, coming in at 0.37 inches thick, so it's around a third thicker than the Surface Pro X was. Of course, the Surface Pro X was designed with an Arm processor in mind. Given how efficient the processor is, you can make thinner, fanless designs. The Surface Pro 9 with 5G is still fanless, but if both products have the same brand name, they have to fit the same peripherals, so they have to be designed with the least common denominator in mind, and that's Intel.

Like the Surface Pro 9, the Surface Pro 9 with 5G will also arrive on October 25, in the following SKUS.

Unfortunately, while the Intel-powered model starts at a lower price point, the Qualcomm one is actually much more expensive. It starts at $1,299.99, while the 4G LTE Surface Pro X started at $999 when it first launched.