Microsoft wants $2,599 for its most ambitious mobile computer to date. At an event in San Francisco on Wednesday, the company detailed the full hardware profile of the Surface Laptop Ultra, anchoring the device to an 18-core Arm processor built by Nvidia alongside Blackwell graphics.
Pre-orders are open now in the US, with shipments scheduled to start on October 16.
The standout physical trick on the chassis is a magnetic breakaway USB-C connector. Where Apple has long relied on proprietary MagSafe connectors to keep snagged cables from dragging machines off tables, Microsoft adapted the breakaway mechanism to a standard USB-C port. The laptop houses three USB-C ports in total, with one built around the magnetic release system, allowing standard peripherals to plug in normally while protecting against sudden cable trips.
Under the hood, Microsoft put Nvidia's RTX Spark platform at the center of the hardware. The base $2,599 tier packs 24GB of RAM, an 18-core Arm central processor, and a Blackwell graphics chip carrying 5,120 CUDA cores. Display duties fall to a 15-inch mini-LED panel paired with a wide haptic trackpad. Microsoft says the machine holds onto 99% of its total computing power when unplugged from the wall, sidestepping the steep battery throttling typical of bulky x86 gaming notebooks.
Top-spec variants target local artificial intelligence work, designed to run 120-billion-parameter models directly on device. Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft's executive vice president of Windows and Devices, stated during the presentation that the company built the machine around the Nvidia platform so developers "can run models on this laptop that simply don't fit on a traditional machine."
Gaming support on the Arm foundation will serve as an immediate test for the platform. Microsoft demonstrated several native titles running on the hardware, including Cyberpunk, Gears of War: E-Day, Arc Raiders, and World of Warcraft: Forever. The company also announced that the Call of Duty franchise will land on RTX Spark hardware in 2027, confirming that Activision will adapt its kernel-level Ricochet anti-cheat system for 64-bit Arm architecture.
For enterprise developers wanting desktop-bound silicon rather than a clamshell, Microsoft also introduced the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, which starts at $6,000.
Customer shipments for the laptop kick off in the US next week.
CDFiled by The Computing Desk
Laptops, desktops, processors, graphics cards and the operating systems that run on them.
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