Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra is now reviewed — and priced from $2,599 to $5,899 in the US. No Indian pricing has been announced. The top-tier model packs Nvidia’s new Arm-based RTX Spark chip: a 20-core CPU co-designed by Nvidia and MediaTek, a 6,144-CUDA-core GPU (roughly on par with a mobile RTX 5060), 128GB of unified memory, and a 1TB Gen 5 SSD.
The base model starts at $2,599 with an 18-core CPU, 5,120 CUDA cores, and 24GB of unified memory. Both run Windows on Arm, a deliberate pivot toward local AI workloads, not just emulation or compatibility fixes. But as The Verge’s review makes clear, that future isn’t fully baked yet. You’re prompted to pick an AI agent at first boot.
Hermes, OpenClaw, or Perplexity, but early users report setup hiccups: OpenClaw failed initially due to a gateway issue, requiring a reinstall. Getting models to run reliably demands coding experience or patience, not point-and-click polish. This isn’t a MacBook Pro replacement for most professionals. It’s hardware built for a specific, still-emerging use case: running large language models, vision agents, or multimodal tools natively.
Without cloud round-trips. And it’s priced like it knows that. The $5,899 configuration is less ‘laptop’ and more ‘AI workstation you can carry’. The design leans hard into Apple comparisons: all-aluminum chassis, ‘nightfall’ finish matching Apple’s space black, a large haptic trackpad, and a 15-inch MicroLED display at 3270 × 2180 resolution, 2,000 nits peak HDR brightness, beating the MacBook Pro’s 1,600 nits.
It’s also a 3:2 touchscreen, better for vertical workflows than Apple’s 16:10. Ports include three USB-C, one USB-A, HDMI 2.1b, SD card reader, and headphone jack. Plus Microsoft’s new Magnetic Connect, which snaps a USB-C charger into place magnetically on the right-side port. When not charging, that port functions normally.
Battery reporting behaves unusually: unplug at ‘100%’, and it drops instantly to ~97%. Microsoft confirms this is intentional, the system pauses charging above 95% to reduce wear. Reboot times are slow. Speakers emit loud pops.
Firecracker-level bursts, fixed only by rebooting. Display ghosting and lag appear in default power mode. Switching to ‘best performance’ helps. The 1080p front camera supports Windows Hello and Studio Effects, but video call quality is described as merely ‘fine’.
The Verge’s verdict is blunt: ‘a beautiful laptop built for an AI future that hasn’t quite arrived.’ If you need local AI inference today. And have the budget, the tolerance for rough edges, and the technical fluency to wrangle it, the Surface Laptop Ultra delivers. Everyone else gets a stunning, expensive, half-baked preview.
Pre-orders are live. Shipments begin October 23.
RRFiled by The Reviews Roundup Desk
What the reviews are saying: verdicts on new devices from the outlets that tested them, summarised and credited to each. This desk does not test products itself.
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