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The Surface Pro 7 Plus is here… but you probably won’t be able to buy one

Microsoft’s upgraded Surface Pro 7 is aimed at enterprise and education customers

It’s not like Microsoft to celebrate CES week with big announcements but the company has found the time to unveil a souped up version of its Surface Pro 7 convertible.

Alas, it looks like this improved model won’t be commercially available and is intended for enterprise business and education customers. That’s a shame, because it looks like the Surface Pro 7 Plus offers a decent amount of quality-of-life improvements over the original and, while the big addition – removable SSD storage – feels tailor-made for businesses with sensitive data, the other added perks seem like key selling points for everyone.

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For a start, business and education customers can configure a version with LTE via physical SIM or eSIM, although that seems to only be available with the fanless Core i5 version. Regardless, Microsoft says this connectivity should work in more than 180 countries, which is quite a selling point.

Then there’s the improvement to battery life. Microsoft says the Surface Pro 7 Plus will last for up to 15 hours, which is four and a half more than its estimates for the original. The company found room for the new 50.4Whr battery with a new thermal design alongside reducing the screen thickness via improvements that debuted on the Surface Pro X.

The Surface Pro 7 Plus is out in the US on January 15, with Europe to follow at a later date. Prices start at $900 (~£665) for a basic Core i3 model, with Core i5 LTE versions selling for $1,150 (~£849) or $1,650 (~£1,218) depending on how much RAM (8/16GB) or storage you opt for (128/256GB). A Core i7 version with 32GB RAM and a 1TB SSD is available for $2,800 (~£2,068), but is missing that LTE support.

Hopefully, Microsoft will eventually open up the Surface Pro 7 Plus to everyone, although it’s possible that this is a conscious move to make the Surface Go and Surface Pro X the consumer versions, leaving the Pro model as the go-to business solution. We’ll see later this year when Microsoft unveils the Surface Pro 8 – hopefully with these improvements included as standard.