Deal alert: The original top-end Surface Laptop is a bit of a bargain right now

The Microsoft Surface Laptop is a wonderful machine. I’m using the entry-level second-generation model myself right now. But it's never come cheap, especially if you want to up those basic specs to something meatier. Indeed, the original Surface Laptop topped out at £2,079 if you wanted everything, which put it well beyond most people’s laptop budgets. But now the Surface Laptop 2 has been out for some time, retailers are clearly aiming to get shot of the first-generation stock, and that means bargains. This one caught our eye: AO is flogging the most expensive Surface Laptop configuration for £1,199 instead of the usual £2,079 . But it gets better: halfway down the page, you’ll spot that the site is also giving £150 cashback for purchases of the laptop. So buy it today for £1,199, fill in some paperwork and the eventual price will come down to £1,049. The fully-loaded Surface Laptop comes in cobalt blue or a rather suave burgundy shade and is equipped with a seventh-generation dual-core 2.5GHz Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD drive. That last point is important, given Surface Laptops don’t support microSD cards. Okay, the newer Surface Laptop 2 has the eighth generation of Intel processors running the show, which obviously offer a performance boost, but otherwise the specifications and design are remarkably similar – right down to the resolution and quality of the 13.5in touchscreen. And, in our tests, the original laptop had far more stamina in the battery department, too. It’s not a deal for everyone – it’s still a lot for any laptop, especially one that’s well over a year old – but if you want a great looking Ultrabook that’ll turn heads, as well as chew through tasks, you might want to get on top of this deal right away. But now from AO.com