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Intel has a mysterious black Surface Book in its new processor video

Intel has a mysterious black Surface Book in its new processor video

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Intel unveiled its 8th generation Core processors earlier today, which will launch on laptops first. As part of the launch, Intel has produced a promotional video of what to expect from the next processors, which will bring quad-core chips more broadly to laptops. MSPoweruser has spotted that the video includes what appears to be a black Surface Book.

Microsoft currently manufactures a gray Surface Book, and the company hasn’t used black on its Surface line since the Surface Pro 2 nearly four years ago. The mysterious device in Intel’s video could be a marketing render, but it does include the exact same eject key found on the keyboard of the Surface Book and the unique fulcrum hinge that Microsoft uses on its laptop.

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Microsoft is planning to launch an LTE version of the Surface Pro in October, and it’s possible the company might also refresh its Surface Book at the same time. Microsoft was one of the first PC makers to opt for Intel’s Skylake processor for its original Surface Book, but the company struggled with the architecture and a new Connected Standby (Instant On) feature of Windows 10.

While Microsoft eventually updated Surface Book firmware to fix some early issues, Consumer Reports recently found reliability problems with previous Surface devices. If Microsoft is planning to refresh the Surface Book, it would be surprising to see the company once again take Intel’s latest processors right away after the previous problems. Intel’s video tagline is “designed for what’s coming next,” so it could just be hinting that the next Surface Book will use the new quad-core Kaby Lake refresh processors.