Microsoft and Nvidia open preorders for the $2,599 Surface Laptop Ultra
Microsoft on Wednesday opened preorders for its most powerful Surface laptop yet, built around Nvidia's new RTX Spark chip, starting at $2,599 and shipping Oct. 16 as the companies pitch it for gaming, creative work and running AI on the device.
AI-assisted · US Brief desk · Sources listed below
What happened
Microsoft on Wednesday opened preorders for the Surface Laptop Ultra, its most powerful Surface laptop so far. It starts at $2,599 and ships Oct. 16. The laptop runs on Nvidia's new RTX Spark chip, which pairs an Nvidia graphics processor with an Arm-based processor in one package.
Why it matters
The laptop is aimed straight at Apple's MacBook Pro. Microsoft is offering up to $1,000 back to buyers who trade in an eligible MacBook Pro through Nov. 23. A desktop version, the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, costs $5,999 and ships in November.
What’s next
Watch for the first independent reviews and benchmarks before the Oct. 16 ship date.
More context
On stage: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Windows chief Pavan Davuluri took turns at the event in San Francisco, Tom's Hardware reported. "We've reinvented the personal computer completely," Huang said. RTX Spark laptops from Asus, Dell, Lenovo, HP and MSI also ship Oct. 16.
The specs: The base model has an 18-core processor, 24GB of memory and 512GB of storage. The top model, with a 20-core processor and 128GB of memory, costs $5,899.99, The Verge and Windows Central reported. It has a 15-inch touchscreen, a larger haptic trackpad, swappable storage and weighs under 4.5 pounds. A new magnetic USB-C charging cable snaps onto one of its ports.
For gamers: Davuluri showed the laptop running Gears of War: E-Day at 60 frames per second. He said hundreds of big-budget and indie games will work on day one, and that Call of Duty comes to RTX Spark in 2027. Microsoft says the chip supports ray tracing and Nvidia's DLSS in supported games.
The AI pitch: Microsoft says the laptop can run AI models with more than 120 billion parameters on the device itself. It claims up to 4.3 times faster image generation than Apple's M5 Pro MacBook Pro. Those are company numbers; independent reviews are not out yet. Microsoft also showed Copilot features that use local files and can take actions for users, coming over the next few months.
4 listed sources
- Microsoft Devices Blog (Brett Ostrum), Oct 7, 2026
- Tom's Hardware (Andrew E. Freedman), Oct 7, 2026
- The Verge (Tom Warren, Emma Roth), Oct 7, 2026
- Windows Central (Cale Hunt), Oct 7, 2026
References listed by US Brief; a source count is not a verification score.
Editorial sourcing notes
Prices, specs and ship dates come from Microsoft's announcement. Event details and stage quotes are from Tom's Hardware's report on the San Francisco event. Speed comparisons with Apple's MacBook Pro are Microsoft's own claims; independent reviews had not been published yet.
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