Jensen Huang calls Microsoft's first Nvidia-powered Surface a four-year labor of love. Now it's on sale, here's what it costs and what reviewers found.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the chip inside Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra took four years and several thousand engineering years to build. It's Microsoft's first PC with an Nvidia chip: the RTX Spark platform, with an N1X processor and Blackwell graphics sharing up to 128GB of memory. Huang's pitch is a PC that runs AI agents locally, so you could text it a task and get the result back.
The laptop went on sale October 16, from $2,599.99 for 24GB of memory up to $5,899.99 for 128GB. Reviewers found it fast at local AI but called battery life and the mini-LED screen weak spots.
It's built for people running big AI models daily, not everyday users.
Four years, a brand-new chip and several thousand engineering years: that’s what Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says it took to build the processor inside Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra. Speaking at a developer event in London, Huang called the project a work of love and promised buyers would love the result.
Why should you care about a CEO gushing over a laptop? Because the Surface Laptop Ultra is the first Microsoft PC with an Nvidia chip at its heart, and it’s a test of a big idea: a Windows laptop that runs serious AI on the machine itself instead of in the cloud. It’s also expensive, and now that it’s on sale, there’s real-world evidence on whether it lives up to the pitch.
Huang’s story starts with AI agents, software that can go off and do tasks for you. Nvidia had been thinking about agents that could reach your files, reason about them and use tools, and Huang argues the most powerful tool of all is your own PC.
So the goal became a computer that runs an agent locally. Huang described being able to text your PC from somewhere else, ask it to render images or update a slide deck, and have it send the finished work back. In his telling, you could leave the laptop at your desk and still put it to work.
To get there, he says Nvidia called Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, then had to design a new chip and wait for its Blackwell graphics design to be ready. Because AI models keep getting bigger, Nvidia also changed how the graphics processor uses memory. Huang says this is the first Nvidia GPU with shared memory, delivering one petaflop of AI computing. He wanted it to run every AI framework and model, plus everything an ordinary PC does.
The Surface Laptop Ultra runs on Nvidia’s RTX Spark platform. That pairs an N1X processor, built on Arm designs rather than the x86 chips most Windows PCs use, with RTX Blackwell graphics.
The key feature is unified memory. Instead of separate memory for the main processor and the graphics chip, both share one pool. That matters for AI because large models need lots of memory in one place. Configurations go up to 128GB.
Other hardware details include a 15-inch mini-LED screen rated up to 2,000 nits of peak brightness and a built-in magnetic USB-C charging port. In testing, one reviewer ran a 70-billion-parameter AI model on it, the kind of model most laptops can’t hold, and also played big-budget games at settings they hadn’t expected from an Arm machine.
The Surface Laptop Ultra went on sale October 16, and it isn’t cheap. The base model costs $2,599.99 with an 18-core chip, 24GB of memory and 512GB of storage. The top build, with a 20-core chip, 128GB of memory and 1TB of storage, costs $5,899.99, and it was already showing lead times into late December.
The base model ships with Windows 11 Home, while higher configurations come with Windows 11 Pro. Reviewers questioned whether 24GB is enough, since Windows itself is memory-hungry and some of that shared pool goes to graphics.
Microsoft is chasing would-be MacBook Pro buyers. In the US and Canada, it’s offering up to $1,000 in extra cash back on a qualifying MacBook Pro trade-in for orders through November 23. Trade-ins are final, though the Surface itself can be returned until January 31, 2027. Microsoft also promises driver and firmware updates until October 16, 2032.
The early verdict is mixed but interesting. On local AI work, testers found it beat AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ and even Apple’s M5 Max. Gaming and single-threaded performance looked middling by comparison.
Battery life is the sore spot. Microsoft’s official rating is 15 hours of offline video. In a playback test by Linus Tech Tips, it lasted about nine hours in a video test, and only 53 minutes under a heavy graphics stress load. Another reviewer saw around 14 hours in a benchmark and closer to 10 in everyday use.
The mini-LED screen drew complaints too. Testers measured slow pixel response that causes visible ghosting, grayish blacks in dark scenes and weak local dimming. The laptop also ships in a power-saving mode that can cut performance by a quarter or even half until you switch presets. Copilot+ PC tools are also missing for now; Microsoft says they’re still a few months away on this platform.
Microsoft moved fast on software bugs. Six days after launch, it shipped a firmware update that fixes screen flicker, unexpected restarts and long reboot times. It rolls out gradually through Windows Update and can’t be reversed once installed. No patch can fix the panel’s response time or the chip’s efficiency, though.
One clear win: repairability. iFixit gave the Surface Laptop Ultra 8 out of 10, double the 4 out of 10 for the 14-inch M5 MacBook Pro. The battery is held with screws and the SSD comes out with a single screw. The memory, however, is soldered and can’t be upgraded.
For most people, no. If you write documents, browse and stream, a much cheaper laptop will do, with better battery life and fewer compatibility questions, since some apps and games still don’t run well on Arm-based Windows.
It makes more sense if you run large AI models locally every day, the kind that need more than 24GB of memory, or if you want one machine for both AI development and gaming. In that case, the 64GB model is the sweet spot one reviewer picked for cost and performance.
If you’re tempted, check Windows Update for the firmware patch as soon as it arrives, switch out of the power-saving mode when you need speed, and remember the return window runs until January 31, 2027.
Yes. It is Microsoft’s first PC built on Nvidia’s RTX Spark platform, with an N1X processor and RTX Blackwell graphics sharing one memory pool.
The cheapest model is $2,599.99 (24GB memory, 512GB SSD), while the most expensive is $5,899.99 with 128GB of memory and 1TB of storage.
Microsoft rates it at up to 15 hours of video, but independent tests ranged from about nine to 14 hours depending on the workload.
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