Surface Laptop Ultra review: Microsoft's most powerful laptop lags behind Apple

What Microsoft's new flagship offers

Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra is its most powerful Surface notebook yet, according to a review published by Engadget on 13 November 2026. The machine is one of the launch devices for NVIDIA's RTX Spark platform, an Arm-based chip that can be configured with up to 20 CPU cores and 6,144 GPU cores. Buyers can also equip it with up to 128GB of unified memory, which is useful for running large AI models locally.

The starting price is high, at $2,599, and climbing beyond the stock 24GB of RAM raises the cost quickly. Engadget notes that the full RTX Spark configuration, with 32GB of RAM, costs $3,700. The review concludes that the machine is aimed at demanding users, while most gamers and creators would be better served by a cheaper gaming laptop.

Design, screen and keyboard

The design is deliberately restrained. Engadget describes a sleek all-metal business laptop without the extra features of Microsoft's convertible models. The 15-inch screen uses a tall 3:2 aspect ratio, and the slightly segmented base creates room for cooling vents and downward-firing speakers.

Microsoft initially billed the display as the brightest on the market, with 2,000 nits of HDR brightness. Apple's new MacBook Pro reached the same figure and, as an OLED panel, offers deeper blacks and higher contrast. Even so, the reviewer found the mini-LED screen impressive for HDR films and games. The keyboard follows the familiar Surface design, with deep keys and firm feedback, and the large trackpad adds haptics, such as a small nudge when apps snap to the edge of the screen.

Gaming and software compatibility

NVIDIA's GPU cores give the RTX Spark chip performance similar to an RTX 5070 laptop GPU, which makes it well suited to 1440p gaming. DLSS upscaling and frame generation can also help at 4K and other high resolutions. However, the review points out that the Surface starts well above most RTX 5070 gaming notebooks, so it is not a sensible choice purely for games.

Because the chip uses Arm rather than x86-64, older Windows software and drivers must be emulated, which can cause problems for niche applications. Engadget notes that Microsoft's emulation has improved greatly since early Windows on Arm devices, and that kernel-level anti-cheat issues on earlier Snapdragon X systems have been addressed. Fortnite now runs on Arm-based Windows machines.

A magnetic USB-C charger and useful ports

One standout feature is Microsoft's magnetic USB-C charging cable, which snaps into a standard USB-C port and detaches if someone trips over the cord. This replaces the old proprietary Surface connector while keeping a standard port that works with any USB-C charger. Microsoft says it may offer the design to partner laptops.

Port selection mostly matches the MacBook Pro: three USB-C ports, HDMI, an SD card slot and a headphone jack. Crucially, there is also a USB Type-A port for older accessories, which the review suggests many Windows creators will appreciate.

Where it falls short

The build quality earns praise. The aluminium case feels solid and resists fingerprints, which the reviewer notes the ASUS ProArt P16 did not manage. The main design complaint is weight: at 4.4 pounds, the Surface Laptop Ultra feels heavy for a premium notebook, compared with Dell's XPS 16 at 3.65 pounds and Apple's 16-inch MacBook Pro at 4 pounds.

The overall verdict is that this is a beautiful, capable flagship for RTX Spark, and likely a draw for Windows users waiting for strong local AI hardware. Yet the review finds that it still lags behind Apple's competing laptops on value and, on screen quality, against the new MacBook Pro's OLED display. The benchmark portion of the analysis was cut off in the available material, so the full performance picture is unconfirmed here.