Microsoft Surface chief Panos Panay unveils the new Surface Laptop. (Screenshot Via Webcast)

Microsoft showed off its newest Surface device, the Surface Laptop at Tuesday’s education-oriented event in New York City.

Images of the laptop leaked last night, but there was no shortage of excitement about the new $999 device, both from Surface chief Panos Panay and the crowd in attendance. Today’s students, Panay said, can run circles around him and his contemporaries and they don’t want to wait for technology to catch up.

Like Microsoft’s new education-oriented Windows 10 S system, speed and design are a focus. Panay compared the laptop to Apple’s MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. He said the Surface Laptop is thinner than any MacPook Pro or Air, and it has better battery life, more than 14 hours per charge. Panay also said the new laptop is faster than competing MacBooks.

“This is the laptop that starts to reset the category; this is the most balanced laptop you will find,” Panay said.

Here is the slick Microsoft video package for the Surface Laptop:

And some other important specs: The laptop boasts a 13.5-inch display, and weighs less than 3 pounds. It is less than 14.5 millimeters thick and houses the seventh generation Intel Core processor. The laptop comes in four colors — platinum, burgundy, cobalt blue and graphite gold — with Acantara material around the keyboard.

In demonstrating the new laptop, Panay showed how it integrates the Surface Dial, which was introduced last year with the Surface Studio, and other Surface accessories.

The new laptop is available for pre-order, and it will be released June 15.

Closing out the event, the ever-passionate Panay extolled the importance of the educational nature of Tuesday’s event, and how it fit into Microsoft’s mission as a whole.

“At Microsoft, we have a mission, and it is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more,” Panay said. “It is a mission that is a motivation for every single product we make from Surface to Windows to Office to mixed reality to OneNote to Minecraft to Teams to every other detail you saw today. It’s about those details that these passionate product makers bring to you to allow you to put your passion where you want to push it. “It’s about creating products to empower the students of today to create the world of tomorrow.”

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