Microsoft might finally have a MacBook Pro-beater on its hands – Surface Laptop Ultra could provide that extra Spark
This changes everything, quite literally
Quick Summary
Microsoft has announced its first laptop using the new Nvidia RTX Spark chip, resulting in the most powerful Surface Laptop ever.
The new Surface is designed for creative power, with strong AI credentials with up to 128GB unified memory. The Surface Laptop Ultra will be available later in 2026.
Microsoft has announced its most powerful Surface Laptop ever – the Surface Laptop Ultra. This isn't just a powerful laptop, it's Microsoft's debut for Nvidia's new SoC – the RTX Spark – that's going to usher in a new era of notebooks.
There's a seismic shift happening in PCs that started with Qualcomm's drive to make Windows on ARM work and provide an alternative to the Intel hardware that's dominated Windows PCs for the last decade.
The Surface Laptop Ultra becomes the new hero device for Windows on ARM, while giving Nvidia exactly the partner it needs to really put some impetus into this side of the market. It also increases the competition with Apple's MacBook range.
New RTX Spark devices aren't going to be available until the "fall", which explains why Microsoft's announcement reads more like a love song to the new hardware, pitched as a laptop "for world makers".
My first thought was that it was designed for the political classes, but the emphasis here is on creators. Microsoft says it's "made for the kind of work that does not fit in a standard laptop".
While there's no end to the broad horizons hyperbole, the point Microsoft is making is that this is new, powerful and deliberately optimised – mechanically, electrically, thermally, acoustically – so that power isn't compromised.
It will come in two colours, Platinum and Nightfall, with a 15-inch PixelSense Ultra touchscreen sporting a 3:2 aspect and boasting 2000 nits peak brightness (comfortably brighter than the MacBook Pro). It'll also feature a pixel density of 262ppi.
We're told that it's less than 18mm thick and weighs under 2kg, again, MacBook Pro territory, while it also features a 30% larger trackpad than previous Surface laptops.
Finally, it's well equipped with connections, including USB-A, USB-C, HDMI, SD card and a 3.5mm headphone socket.
But the star of the show – and the bit that's also an unknown right now – is the Nvidia RTX Spark that sits at its core. This is a new super SoC that's designed to handle local AI, integrating a powerful GPU, while offering up to 128GB unified memory.
Effectively, it's pitched for the evolution of Windows computing that supports much greater AI workflows on the device without offloading compute into the cloud, while also offering the sort of power that will probably draw gaming to Windows on ARM too.
Perhaps the icing on the cake, is that a footnote on the Surface Laptop Ultra page outlines that the SSD will be user replaceable too.
Early benchmarks suggest that the Nvidia RTX Spark offers 54% more power than the Apple M5, but is bettered by the M5 Pro. This is just the start of the RTX Spark journey, though, so I'm sure we'll hear a lot more about the performance in coming months.
