Microsoft finally put a price on its most ambitious laptop in years. The Surface Laptop Ultra starts at $2,599, preorders are open now, and it ships October 16. Unveiled at Microsoft’s Windows and Surface event in San Francisco, it is built around Nvidia’s new RTX Spark chip, and Microsoft is pitching it straight at the MacBook Pro.
What You Get for $2,599
The base model has a 15-inch mini-LED touchscreen, 24GB of unified memory, and 512GB of storage. The 120Hz display is rated for up to 2,000 nits of peak HDR brightness and 100% DCI-P3 color coverage. Inside is Nvidia’s RTX Spark N1X, an Arm-based chip that pairs a CPU with a Blackwell RTX GPU and lets both draw from one shared pool of memory, much like Apple’s M-series laptops. The entry configuration uses an 18-core CPU and a 5,120-core GPU. Microsoft also gave the laptop MagSafe-style magnetic charging.
Every Configuration and Price
| Configuration | Chip | Memory | Starting price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Base | 18-core CPU, 5,120-core GPU | 24GB | $2,599 |
| Step up | 20-core CPU, 6,144-core GPU | 32GB | $3,699 |
| Top | 20-core CPU, 6,144-core GPU | 128GB | $5,899 |
Storage runs from 512GB up to 2TB, and the only 2TB option is a 64GB model at $4,699. Machines with 24GB of memory ship with Windows 11 Home, while 32GB and above get Windows 11 Pro. Microsoft also announced a Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, a compact desktop with the same chip for local AI work, at $5,999.
What Microsoft Claims, and What Is Unproven
Microsoft says the Ultra has 2.5 times the thermal capacity of its existing Surface laptops and keeps more than 99% of its performance when running on battery. Executives also told the San Francisco audience it answers local AI prompts twice as fast as a comparable MacBook Pro with an M5 chip and generates video six times faster, according to Bloomberg.
Treat those numbers as marketing for now. Notebookcheck notes the figures come from Nvidia and Microsoft rather than independent testing, and TechPowerUp advises waiting for reviews of retail hardware before preordering.
The Price Question
Bloomberg reports the Ultra costs about $400 less than an entry-level 16-inch MacBook Pro. It also landed below at least one early guess: a tester who spent a month with a prototype had predicted $2,799 for the 24GB model. Even so, this is not a mainstream laptop. Windows Central’s reporting describes it as aimed at AI developers and professional creatives who want to run large models locally. Dell and HP have also built Windows devices on the same chip, so more RTX Spark options are on the way.
Bottom Line
The Surface Laptop Ultra is Microsoft’s clearest attempt in years to build a Windows laptop that takes on the MacBook Pro on its own terms, and the $2,599 starting price is lower than many expected. But the headline speed claims are company figures, the chip is brand new, and software compatibility on an Arm-based Windows laptop will matter as much as any benchmark. It also fits a wider push toward running AI on the device itself, the same shift behind Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chips. If you need serious local AI horsepower in a laptop, put it on your shortlist and wait for independent reviews before the October 16 ship date. If you mostly browse, write, and stream, this one is not built for you.
FAQ
When can I buy the Surface Laptop Ultra?
Preorders are open now on Microsoft’s website, and shipments begin October 16. Pricing starts at $2,599 in the US.
Is the Surface Laptop Ultra faster than a MacBook Pro?
Microsoft claims twice the local AI speed and six times the video generation speed of a comparable M5 MacBook Pro, but those are company figures. Independent benchmarks of retail units are not available yet.
Does the RTX Spark chip use Arm?
Yes. Reporting describes RTX Spark as combining an Arm-based CPU with Blackwell RTX graphics and a shared pool of unified memory.
Featured image: Photo by Kari Shea on Unsplash.
