Microsoft Surface power covers available for pre-order today for $199.99, will ship March 19
Microsoft Surface Power Covers get a mid-March ship date — Summary: Microsoft will begin shipping its battery-life-extending Power Covers for its Surface devices starting March 19 for $199.99.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Power Cover has been a promise for six months: Microsoft showed the battery-equipped keyboard alongside the Surface 2 lineup at its September 2013 Power Cover unveiling, then opened pre-orders for the Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 later that month without a ship date for the accessory. Naming March 19 closes that gap and turns the announcement into shippable product.
The pickup is unusually broad for an accessory — eight outlets including Engadget, PC World and Digital Trends ran the same story on the day — which says more about how closely the Surface line is being watched than about the product itself. At $199.99, the cover is priced like a standalone peripheral attached to a device that already carries a premium.
First-order effects
- Owners of the Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 can buy extra runtime without replacing the tablet — the first time Microsoft has sold battery life as a detachable add-on rather than building it into the chassis.
- Microsoft starts converting Power Cover announcements into accessory revenue on March 19, adding a high-margin SKU to a hardware line where every attach-rate point matters.
Second-order effects
- At $199.99, the cover approaches the price of budget tablets outright, pressuring Microsoft to defend why extended battery belongs in the keyboard rather than the base unit.
- Third-party accessory makers selling Surface-compatible keyboards now compete against a first-party option that bundles a battery, squeezing them on both price and function.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, detachable-PC makers will treat the accessory layer as the place where battery and input innovation happens between chassis redesigns, making the ecosystem — not just the tablet — the product customers actually buy into.
The trend: Tablet-laptop hybrids are closing their battery-life gap with traditional laptops through paid peripheral add-ons rather than device redesigns.