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The Most Powerful Surface Yet, But It Still Lags Behind Apple
Engadget • • general
Key Points:
- Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra is a high-end notebook featuring NVIDIA's RTX Spark platform, offering up to 128GB of unified memory and a bright 15-inch mini-LED display, targeting demanding AI users and professionals.
- The laptop starts at $2,599, with top configurations reaching $5,900, making it one of the most expensive Windows laptops, but its premium build quality and features justify the price for AI enthusiasts.
- RTX Spark's Arm-based chip delivers strong multi-threaded and gaming performance comparable to an RTX 5070 GPU, but software emulation for x86-64 apps may cause compatibility issues despite improvements.
- The Surface Laptop Ultra excels in battery life (over 13 hours in benchmarks) and includes useful features like a magnetic USB-C charging cable and a variety of ports, including USB Type-A for legacy devices.
- While impressive, the Surface Laptop Ultra is outperformed in raw power and efficiency by Apple's MacBook Pros with M5 and M6 chips, which also offer lighter designs and higher RAM capacities, appealing to users prioritizing maximum performance.
