Microsoft has just unveiled the most powerful laptop in its Surface range, and it's set to take on Apple's popular MacBook Pro for demanding work applications. If you're in the market for a higher-end machine, there's a couple of things in this premium option worth learning about – including a brand new processor that no other laptop on the market has yet.
The Surface Laptop Ultra runs on an RTX Spark N1X chip, which is basically all-in-one silicon from Nvidia that combines the company's Blackwell graphics architecture (seen in the current-gen 50-series GPUs), up to 20 cores for the Arm-based CPU, and up to 128GB of unified memory.
Microsoft says that'll sort you out when running AI models locally, working on 3D modeling and video editing projects, and gaming too.
One thing to note about this PC is that it's running on an Arm-based processor, which some apps don't directly support. You can still run pretty much any Windows software on it using the Prism emulation layer, but they may not perform as well as on Intel and AMD's x86-64 chips.
You'll also find a bright and color-accurate 15-inch touchscreen, loads of ports, a magnetic USB-C port for the power adapter, and 2.5 times the thermal capacity of the lower-end Surface Laptop (the amount of heat its cooling can remove) – all in a chassis less than 18 mm thick, with 15 hours of video playback time from the battery.
The Ultra starts at US$2,599.99, and be configured with more cores and memory. Microsoft says this will square up formidably against a 14-inch MacBook Pro, which comes in a powerful configuration with an M5 Pro chip (18-core CPU, 20-core GPU), 24GB RAM, and 1TB storage for $2,499. The Ultra said to beat it hollow on benchmarks for AI tasks, including image and video generation.
That said, Apple already has a loyal audience for its MacOS-based performance laptops, and is way better at marketing and distributing MacBook Pros than Microsoft. The latter likely won't move a lot of Ultras, but it is trying to fire a warning shot across Apple's bow to signal that it's serious about enabling high-end performance for AI apps and services on Windows machines.
I'm more interested in what Microsoft's doing to make the Ultra easier to live with over years. The laptop's components aren't glued into place, so it'll be easier to take the whole thing apart, and carry out repairs. The company says it'll publish maintenance guides and make replacement parts available to help with that, and you can also upgrade its storage to 2TB down the line.
If this sounds familiar, it might be because we've previously covered hardware brand Framework, which designs its laptops for repairability from the ground up. Microsoft's effort doesn't come close – the Ultra doesn't support plug-and-play modules to add ports and card readers, and allow for upgrades using a single tool that comes in the box) – but it's a step in the right direction. I sure would like to see more brands follow suit with future models.
We'll have to wait just a wee bit to see if the Ultra has what it takes to outshine the beloved MacBook Pro in real-world testing. It's up for pre-order now, and deliveries begin shipping October 16. Find the Surface Laptop Ultra on Microsoft's site.
