Microsoft makes Surface Pro price cut permanent, introduces refurbished Surface RTs for $199
If you’re in the market for a tablet and have no qualms with Microsoft’s offerings, you’re in your best position yet. Microsoft is issuing a one-two punch with their Surface lineup today, giving would be customers some absolutely incredible savings.
First thing’s first, we reported earlier this summer that Microsoft was temporarily dropping the price of their Surface Pro tablet, which runs the full-fledged Windows 8 on an Intel Core i5 processor, by $100 to $799. While the deal was originally meant to expire on August 29th (that’s yesterday, for those of you who have lost track of these long summer days as I have), Microsoft is now officially confirming that the price cut will remain a permanent addition to the Surface Pro lineup. This new price goes into effect today in all countries that the Surface Pro is sold.
If you’re in the market for an even better deal and don’t mind settling with Windows RT, you might want to act quick on this next deal. eBay store “manufacturer_certified”, which has been known to have direct connections with OEMs and manufacturers in the past, have just introduced refurbished 32GB Surface RT tablets with Microsoft’s touch keyboard cover for only $199 – an insane $400 off Microsoft’s originally asking price when the Surface RT was originally announced last year. These units have been refurbished and certified by Microsoft themselves, meaning you’ll be getting the same quality and warranty available to anyone who purchases a new Surface RT straight from Microsoft. I’m willing to bet that this deal won’t last long, so if you’re at all interested in such an incredible deal you’d best act quickly.
It’s worth noting that Microsoft is expected to be unveiling their next generation Surface lineup of tablets before the end of the year, likely bringing significant internal changes to both the Surface Pro and the Surface RT lineup. The Surface Pro is expected to benefit from a performance and battery boost brought along by the new Intel Haswell architecture, while the Surface RT is expected to be upgraded to the radically improved Tegra 4 ARM platform by NVIDIA. Still, this current generation of Surface devices should be supported long into the future as Microsoft has confirmed that both models will be getting a free upgrade to Microsoft’s next major version of Windows, Windows 8.1, when it’s released on October 18th.