Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra Adds Magnetic USB-C Charging

Microsoft has added magnetic USB-C charging to its Surface Laptop Ultra. The cable attaches magnetically to the laptop’s right-side USB-C port.

At Microsoft’s Windows event on Wednesday, Windows and Surface chief Pavan Davuluri said users can bring the connector close to the port and it will snap into place. Microsoft calls the feature Magnetic Connect. The charging solution is proprietary, but the port remains available for video, data and other USB-C connections.

Microsoft had scrapped its proprietary Surface Connect magnetic charging from smaller Surface devices last year. The Surface Laptop Ultra was first announced earlier this year and is equipped with Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip, which the source says can handle gaming, creative workloads and on-device AI models.

The laptop is available for preorder and starts shipping on October 16. It starts at $2,599 with an 18-core CPU, 24GB of RAM and 512GB of storage.