Microsoft has launched the Surface Laptop Ultra, a 15-inch flagship built around Nvidia’s new RTX Spark chip. The machine was unveiled at a Windows and Surface event in San Francisco on October 7, it is available to pre-order now, and Microsoft says it will start shipping on October 16. It is the most expensive Surface laptop in years, and it is clearly aimed at people who want to run large AI models on the laptop itself rather than in the cloud.
What is inside
The Surface Laptop Ultra uses the Nvidia RTX Spark N1X platform. In its top laptop form, the chip combines a 20-core Nvidia Grace processor with a Blackwell graphics processor that has 6,144 cores, and both share up to 128GB of LPDDR5X unified memory. Nvidia lists a configurable power range of 45 to 80 watts for the two variants. The shared memory pool is the key detail for AI work: a large model can sit in memory without being split between separate processor and graphics memory.
The cheaper configuration uses an 18-core version of the chip. Microsoft says the laptop has 2.5 times the thermal capacity of its existing Surface notebooks and can keep more than 99 percent of its performance when running on battery. Those are the company’s own claims, and independent testing will show how they hold up.
Display and design
The screen is a 15-inch PixelSense Ultra Mini-LED panel in a 3:2 shape, with a 120Hz refresh rate, full DCI-P3 color coverage and a peak HDR brightness of up to 2,000 nits. It is a touchscreen, but the spec sheet says it does not support pen input. Microsoft also added a magnetic USB-C charging connection called Magnetic Connect, which gives a MagSafe-style snap while keeping standard USB-C functions. Microsoft has not published battery life figures.
Prices and configurations
The starting price is $2,599.99, which gets you 24GB of memory, 512GB of storage and the 18-core chip. The most powerful version, with the 20-core chip, 128GB of memory and 1TB of storage, costs $5,899.99. Retailers list in-between options, such as a 48GB model for $3,999 at Best Buy. RTX Spark is sold in memory sizes of 24, 32, 48, 64 and 128GB.
Microsoft is not alone. Pre-orders for RTX Spark laptops are also open from Asus, Lenovo, HP and Dell, and they ship on the same date. Microsoft also opened pre-orders for the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, a compact developer system with 128GB of unified memory and up to one petaflop of AI compute, priced at $5,999.
The local AI pitch
The event was as much about software as hardware. Microsoft showed Windows ML, a platform for running AI models across processors, graphics chips and neural units, and said support for llama.cpp is coming. Nvidia said a new Nemotron model will arrive on October 15, and the two companies showed DeepSeek V5 Flash running locally with around 60GB of memory. Copilot can now use local models alongside cloud ones, and Windows Search is being redesigned so it can perform actions, such as turning on dark mode or Bluetooth, directly from the search box. That search update is rolling out to Windows Insiders first.
Microsoft also made Microsoft Execution Containers generally available on Windows 11. The feature lets administrators and developers define which files and networks an AI agent can reach, with the rules enforced while the agent runs. Meta’s personal agent is coming to Windows as a native app that uses it.
What to watch
Several questions remain. Independent reviews have not yet measured battery life, noise or sustained performance, and the price puts the laptop in a premium category where buyers will compare it with high-end MacBooks and gaming laptops. Windows on this kind of chip also depends on app support, and Microsoft’s earlier AI PC push was held back by delays to its flagship features.
What this means
For most people this is a laptop to read about rather than buy. For developers and creators who want to run large models locally, it is the first mainstream Windows laptop built around that idea, and the competition from other makers shipping the same chip should make the next few months interesting.
