Still, perhaps it was to smooth things over instead of delivering positive news. The tech internet recently buzzed with Microsoft’s head of Surface Panos Panay meeting with AMD CEO and president Lisa Su (opens in new tab). We’ll have to take a wait-and-see approach to what Microsoft does here. Or it could simply come down to testing, battery life, performance preferences, or chip availability and pricing with Intel meeting Microsoft’s needs. Granted, there is USB4 as an alternative, which offers similar performance. The potential dropping of AMD may have to do with the omission of Thunderbolt 4 from the Ryzen versions, which could cause some marketing confusion. While an option for AMD Ryzen processors has been a tradition for the last few years, even Windows Central Senior Report Zac Bowden has heard “AMD options might be skipped this fall” when asked about it for this article. However, it is probably too early to commit itself in this regard, so it is not certain whether Microsoft will actually do without AMD Ryzen chips in this model generation.”

“… there is so far no indication that the Redmonders want to offer the Surface Laptop 5 again with AMD chips.

WinFuture hedges a bit in its reporting (translated from German): Perhaps the most gloomy news is the AMD omission from Surface Laptop 5. Microsoft's Surfaced Laptop 4 in Matte Black with AMD (2021) (Image credit: Daniel Rubino)

New surface laptop 5