He also clarified in the interview that Microsoft plans on keeping the Surface Pro 4 as a competitive product for five years. But this doesn’t mean a new Surface Pro device isn’t in the making. When asked about a fifth-gen Surface Pro, the Microsoft executive said that when it was “meaningful and the change is right, we’ll put it on market.” Commenting on what he means by meaningful change, he said that for Microsoft change isn’t only about processing power. According to him, the company is focusing on other important aspects such as improving the battery life of the Surface Pro 4 or dropping its weight. Finally, Panay elaborated further on the term meaningful change, promising similar meaningful impact “when Pro 5 or Pro Next hits the market”. As a result, we can only assume that Microsoft doesn’t plan on releasing the Surface Pro 5 before 2022 unless it decides that it should move on from the Surface Pro 4.
Surface Pro 5: What we know so far
Despite the fact that Panay brushes off rumors about Microsoft releasing the Surface Pro 5 in the near future, we already had some indications about the device. For example, Toby Fitch – a product designer for Microsoft – listed the Surface Pro 5 as one of the products he is working on, on his LinkedIn profile. In spite of some rumors that wanted the highly-anticipated hybrid device featuring an AMD chipset, Paul Thurrott said back in April that according to his sources the Surface Pro 5 will feature an Intel Kaby Lake processor. For a detailed analysis of the Surface Pro 5 rumors, check here.
