Surface Pro 5 Confirmed In Microsoft Leak, But Is This Picture Just A Surface Pro 4?

Surface Pro 5 rumors have been almost nonexistent, but this apparent leak from a Microsoft employee may be the first concrete details we have. A picture from Microsoft’s France division may even show off the device, but it looks a lot like a Surface Pro 4.

The leak controversy began with a quick analysis of the LinkedIn page for company product designer Toby Finch. While the details in question have since been removed, a screencap from Twitter’s @h0x0d recaps the findings. Amongst his duties, Finch allegedly noted that he “focused on creating new speech models with interdisciplinary design approach for devices of the future...including Surface Pro 5 [and] Xbox.”

While the screencap and the posted details could easily be a hoax, they seem genuine enough to us. The evidence could possibly be faked, but the profile itself looks very real, with dozens of glowing recommendations and hundreds of connections from around the industry. Finch doesn’t seem like the type of person that would post inaccurate details on his résumé.

If true, this would at least confirm that a device called the Surface Pro 5 is in development at Microsoft. This isn’t necessarily a surprise, but it might be something folks want to know considering that tablet wasn’t refreshed at any point last year.

Moving on to the picture, here’s where things start to get a little dicey. Still currently viewable from a French Microsoft page, we see an image with the header “win10-feature-surface-pro-5-z.” At first glance, this seems like an obvious call to the Surface Pro 5, but the device on display looks a lot like a revised official product image of a Surface Pro 4. Aside from the changed position of the Surface Pen and a slight angle adjustment, this is almost the exact same Surface Pro 4 graphic employed by many online storefronts.

From that, we can gather that either the Surface Pro 5 looks identical to its predecessor, or this is some kind of misunderstanding. On one hand, uniform device design helps make past accessories universally compatible. On the other, there are lots of potential reasons to explain the image title. Maybe it’s a typo, or maybe this is the fifth image in a larger gallery. The fact that it’s still easily viewable several hours after this story broke also implies that it can’t be too damaging.

So, we have one probably false leak and another with a decent credibility. We’ve suggested an approximate June release date for the Surface Pro 5. Might we be right? Tell us in the comments section!