Microsoft has officially unveiled the Surface Laptop Ultra, a new 15-inch flagship notebook powered by Nvidia’s RTX Spark platform. The machine is aimed squarely at creators, developers, and AI-heavy users who want workstation-class performance in a thin laptop — and it starts at $2,599. Pre-orders open today, with configurations reaching up to 128GB of unified memory and as much as one petaflop of FP4 AI performance.
At the center of the Surface Laptop Ultra is Nvidia’s RTX Spark N1X. The top-end laptop configuration pairs a 20-core Nvidia Grace CPU with a 6,144-core Blackwell RTX GPU and up to 128GB of LPDDR5X unified memory. A second N1X tier steps down to an 18-core CPU, a 5,120-core GPU, and a maximum of 64GB. Nvidia lists a configurable 45W to 80W TDP for both versions, giving Microsoft some room to tune performance and thermals.
Unified memory is the headline feature
The RTX Spark’s biggest selling point is its unified memory design. Much like Apple’s M-series approach, the CPU and GPU draw from the same physical memory pool. Microsoft showed this off through Windows Task Manager: on a 128GB machine, Windows reported around 110GB of GPU-addressable memory, made up of 79.9GB listed as dedicated GPU memory and another 30GB of shared memory. That does not mean the Surface Laptop Ultra has 80GB of discrete VRAM. An earlier report suggested Microsoft may let users dynamically allocate VRAM through a future update.
For full configuration details and availability, you can visit Microsoft’s official Surface Laptop Ultra page.
Nvidia takes aim at Apple
Nvidia used the launch to make some bold comparisons against Apple. Based on preliminary company testing, Windows systems powered by RTX Spark are said to deliver up to 2.1x faster time-to-first-token, 4.3x faster image generation, and 6.2x faster video generation than a MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro. Those are Nvidia-supplied platform figures, not independent Surface Laptop Ultra benchmarks, so they should be treated with healthy skepticism until third-party reviews arrive.
Microsoft is also making ambitious claims about unplugged performance. The company says the Surface Laptop Ultra can retain 99% of its performance while running on battery. Its redesigned cooling system is claimed to offer up to 2.5 times the thermal capacity of the 15-inch Surface Laptop 7th Edition.
Thin design, mini-LED display, and a magnetic USB-C twist
Despite the high-end hardware, Microsoft says the Surface Laptop Ultra remains relatively portable. It measures less than 18mm thick and weighs under 4.5 pounds, or roughly 2kg. The 15-inch PixelSense Ultra mini-LED touchscreen uses a 3:2 aspect ratio, offers 262 PPI pixel density, and can reach up to 2,000 nits of peak HDR brightness. It will be available in Platinum and Nightfall finishes.
Port selection includes USB-C, USB-A, HDMI, a headphone jack, and a full-size SD card reader. The precision haptic touchpad is more than 30% larger than the one on Microsoft’s previous Surface Laptop. Microsoft also introduced what it calls the world’s first built-in magnetic USB-C charging experience. Rather than reviving a proprietary connector, the company has added a magnetic breakaway mechanism to USB-C charging, allowing the connector to detach if the cable is pulled. Whether it can also transmit data remains unclear.
Gaming ambitions and pricing
And if anyone assumed RTX Spark was only for running language models, Microsoft ended with a surprise: Call of Duty is coming to RTX Spark in 2027. Nvidia already markets RTX Spark as a full gaming platform with DLSS, Reflex, and Game Ready driver support, so Microsoft clearly has ambitions beyond AI workstations — though it may not be the first choice for every gamer.
The Surface Laptop Ultra starts at $2,599, which gets you 512GB of storage, 24GB RAM, and the 18-core RTX Spark variant. For $5,899.99, you can get the full configuration with the 20-core RTX Spark, 128GB RAM, and 1TB storage. Pre-orders start now on Microsoft’s website.
