Have your eye on the new Surface Studio 2, but don’t have $3,500 (or more) to burn? Microsoft’s new Surface All Access program might be able to help.
Starting October 16th, the company will give you the option of paying for Surface hardware in 24 monthly installments.
Prices start at $25 per month for a bundle that includes a Surface Go tablet, a Type Cover, and an Office 365 subscription. That comes to $600 over the course of 2 years, which isn’t a bad deal when you consider that you’d pay at least $608 if you tried to buy those three things outright today.
On the other hand, there’s no option to just pay for a Surface device in monthly installments without also paying for an Office subscription. In fact, the fine print says the “2-year Office 365 subscription is non-cancellable and non-refundable.”
So if you don’t plan to use Office and you can afford to pay full price for a Surface device, it may just be cheaper to pay a lump sum.
According to the Surface All Access website, here are the prices for bundles that will be available at launch:
- Surface Go + Type Cover + Office 365 for $24.99/month and up
- Surface Laptop + Office 365 for $46.63/month and up
- Surface Pro + Type Cover + Office 365 for $47.87/month and up
- Surface Book 2 + Office 365 for $54.96/month and up
- Surface Studio + Office 365 for $150.79/month and up
The Surface Studio bundle won’t be available until November 16th, which s the day after the Surface Studio 2 is expected to be available.
So, what about those of us that are already Office 365 subscribers? Can I use this offer with my current 365 subscription so I can keep my email address, etc? If yes, I may leap on this.
Maybe I’m sleepy but does this sentence make sense??
“On the other hand, it doesn’t seem like Office 365 is included in every All Access bundle — there’s no option to just pay for a Surface device in monthly installments without also paying for an Office subscription.”
Not just you. I’ve deleted a few words from that sentence. Thanks for pointing out the unintentional word salad.
This will be popular with many self employed people/home businesses… Myself included. All of a sudden, both software _and_ hardware just become a monthly out of pocket expense with a biennial hardware refresh. Happy days.