Microsoft's new flagship arrives

The Surface Laptop Ultra is Microsoft's most powerful laptop yet, debuting the Nvidia RTX Spark N1X superchip. It aims to handle on-device AI, gaming, content creation and nearly anything else.

A different approach from Studio

Unlike the 2021 Surface Laptop Studio, which was a laptop-tablet hybrid, the Ultra is a straightforward clamshell laptop designed for people who need extra performance for gaming, content creation or AI workflows.

Slim but substantial

At four point four pounds, the Surface Laptop Ultra is lighter than the sixteen-inch MacBook Pro but slightly thicker.It appears thinner than it actually is thanks to inventive side vents that are hard to photograph.

Design details impress

The keyboard is fantastic and the extra-large touchpad has haptic feedback. Rounded screen corners give a modern look, though some apps don't account for them well and nearly cut off elements of the Title Bar.

Audio stands out

Four speakers hidden under the underside vents sound fabulous, loud, rich and full with a hint of bass. The audio quality is perhaps only second to the sixteen-inch MacBook Pro and fifteen-inch MacBook Air.

Ports and connectivity

The laptop includes HDMI, USB-A, a headphone jack, an SD card slot and three USB four Type-C ports.

Magnetic USB-C is clever

Microsoft engineered the USB-C port to be magnetic, a neat bit of innovation. Only the USB-C port on the right side has this magnetic feature, but all USB-C ports deliver power.

Display aspect ratio advantage

The three to two aspect ratio display provides more vertical space, handy for documents, spreadsheets and websites.

Brightest screen ever made

With one thousand three hundred forty-four dimming zones, the display is the brightest laptop screen ever made.

Screen reflectivity is a problem

The screen is highly reflective, noticeably more so than a MacBook. Even with brightness fully maxed, the reviewer found themselves staring at their reflection when viewing websites with dark backgrounds.

Nvidia N1X chip explained

The Nvidia N1X is a first-of-its-kind chip in Windows laptops. It comes in two configurations: an eighteen-core system with five thousand one hundred twenty GPU cores and a twenty-core system with six thousand one hundred…

Gaming performance is mixed

The N1X is capped at eighty watts, limiting in-game frame rates. The Surface Laptop Ultra delivers up to twenty percent faster frame rates in games like Cyberpunk two thousand seventy-seven than the M five Max…

Popular games missing at launch

A list of high-profile multiplayer games aren't compatible yet due to anti-cheat systems, including PUBG, Valorant and League of Legends. Nvidia says support is coming.

AI is where it shines

The Surface Laptop Ultra is around twenty-five percent faster than the Dell XPS fourteen at generating text in lighter AI models. But running larger models locally is very slow without more raw GPU compute.

CPU is the weak point

The N1X is twenty to twenty-four percent slower in CPU benchmarks in both single-core and multi-core performance tests. Switching to Performance Mode makes a twenty percent increase in single-core performance.

Price matches MacBook Pro

For two thousand nine hundred ninety-nine dollars, you get twenty-four GB of RAM and a terabyte of storage.

Battery life is the problem

The Surface Laptop Ultra lasted only twelve hours in a local video playback test.The MacBook Pro offers a full nine or ten more hours of battery life, a major disadvantage for the Surface Laptop Ultra.

Best non-MacBook option now

If you want to dabble in gaming, content creation and AI workflows, the Surface Laptop Ultra is probably the best laptop you can buy that isn't a MacBook Pro.

“if you want to dabble in gaming, content creation, and AI workflows, it's probably the best laptop you can buy that isn't a MacBook Pro.”