Early reviews of Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra, powered by Nvidia’s RTX Spark platform, praise its local AI performance but describe weaker results in gaming and some CPU workloads. The laptop starts at $2,599.99.
Reviewers found it faster than Apple’s M5 Max and AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395 in the local AI tests they ran. Its 6,144-core Blackwell GPU can draw on up to 96GB of memory, and 35B-parameter models reportedly run at up to 89 tokens per second. Models up to 120B parameters can fit entirely on the GPU.
The 20-core N1X processor combines 10 performance cores with 10 efficiency cores. In one reported multi-threaded test, the laptop compiled LLVM in 206 seconds, compared with 327 seconds for the next-fastest system. But reviews also noted weaker single-core performance and said it trailed Apple’s M4 Max and M3 Ultra in some comparisons.
Gaming results were mixed. Cyberpunk 2077 ran at 60fps at 1440p with frame generation, while video rendering lagged behind even the RTX 5060. The entry configuration has 24GB of memory and 512GB of storage; a 20-core version with 128GB of memory and 1TB of storage costs $5,899.99. The top configuration is also reported to have delivery lead times stretching to late December.
The reviews suggest the price is easiest to justify for people who specifically need powerful local AI workloads.
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