According to the dark satanic rumour mill manufacturing wrapped up earlier this month, with the official "end of life" tag expected in a few weeks. Resellers confirmed the axe has fallen, though Vole declined to comment.

The hybrid machine, which bent itself into an easel and was the only Surface laptop to include a discrete GPU, now joins the Surface Studio and Microsoft’s audio kit in the graveyard of weird but interesting ideas.

This thinning out of the Surface line follows the 2023 defection of Surface godfather Panos Panay to Amazon. He was replaced by Pavan Davuluri, and the new regime appears more interested in pruning than pushing boundaries.

Today’s Surface offering is stripped back to just three machines: the Surface Laptop, the Surface Pro and the business-only Surface Go 4. All sans discrete GPUs, meaning Microsoft is walking away from power-user territory altogether.

That’s a shift that could alienate creatives and gamers, two groups who leaned on Redmond’s more ambitious hardware like the Surface Book. That system, another casualty of this rethink, let users yank the screen off and enjoy tablet-gaming-on-the-go with a dedicated GPU tucked into the keyboard.

As for the Laptop Studio 2, Tom’s Hardware praised its quiet fans and bright display, but griped about its capped 80W GPU and high price. Still, it was at least trying something different.

Now, with Surface settling into safe, clamshell shapes and familiar tablet designs, it looks like Vole has chosen predictable over pioneering. Instead of making standout hardware, it’s laying off 6,000 workers, flogging Xbox games to PlayStation, and pumping out AI gimmicks..