What appears to be the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 has passed Bluetooth certification, suggesting that the next clamshell Surface device may arrive sooner rather than later.

However, there is an interesting snag in the details of the certification list. The product is named Surface Laptop 3, and it includes a link to the 2019 laptop page on the Microsoft site. This means that there could be a Surface Laptop 3+ instead of a Surface Laptop 4, similar to Microsoft's recent announcement of a Surface Pro 7+ instead of the rumored Surface Pro 8. And to be clear, all four Surface Laptop devices must be new, otherwise they would not be certified now, and the product numbers match those attributed to the Surface Laptop 4 in previous leaks. So this may be an attempt on Microsoft's part to obscure what was really certified by using the Surface Laptop 3 name and link as a placeholder.

And also, calling out the Surface Laptop 3 could indicate that the new laptop is an upgrade or refresh rather than an entirely new machine, in a similar vein to the Surface Pro 7+.

With the Plus model, Microsoft updated the Surface Pro 7 design with an 11th generation Intel Tiger Lake processor, one of the key upgrades that leaks have identified for the Surface Laptop 4. If the Surface Laptop 4 is in fact the Surface Laptop 3+, this would simply follow the template Microsoft is currently setting with the Surface Pro line.

At the very least, whatever this new Surface Laptop is, we know some confirmed specs: it uses the Bluetooth 5.1 standard and can connect over Wi-Fi 6. The listing description also lists the same 13.5-inch and 15-inch variants as the Surface Laptop 3.