Surface Laptop Ultra Price and Release Date: $2,599, Ships October 16

The Surface Laptop Ultra price is now official. Microsoft’s first laptop built on NVIDIA’s RTX Spark platform starts at $2,599, with pre-orders open now and shipping set for October 16. A desktop companion for developers, the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, will cost $5,999.

The pricing answers the biggest open question from Microsoft’s Windows and Surface event on October 7 in San Francisco, where CEO Satya Nadella appeared on stage alongside NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. The hardware itself was first shown back in May, but Microsoft held back the price and release date for more than four months.

Surface Laptop Ultra Price: What $2,599 Gets You

The entry-level model is not the headline configuration. According to Microsoft, the $2,599 Surface Laptop Ultra pairs an 18-core RTX Spark CPU with a 5,120-core Blackwell GPU and 24GB of unified memory.

The top configuration steps up to a 20-core Grace CPU and a 6,144-core Blackwell GPU with up to 128GB of unified memory. Microsoft rates the platform at up to 1 petaflop of FP4 AI compute, a theoretical figure measured with sparsity, and says it can run AI models with more than 120 billion parameters entirely on device, with no cloud required.

For the Surface Laptop Ultra price, the 24GB base configuration is clearly aimed at getting buyers in the door, with the real AI workstation specs reserved for the higher tiers.

The rest of the spec sheet: a 15-inch mini-LED PixelSense Ultra touchscreen with up to 2,000 nits of peak HDR brightness (touch only, no pen support), a large haptic trackpad, three USB-C ports plus USB-A, HDMI, an SD card reader and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The chassis measures under 18mm thick, weighs under 4.5 pounds, and the storage drive is user-replaceable. Microsoft also introduced Magnetic Connect, which it describes as the first built-in magnetic USB-C charging on a laptop.

Microsoft is positioning the machine directly against Apple’s MacBook Pro. The company claims its RTX Spark systems deliver 2.1 times faster time to first token, 4.3 times faster AI image generation and 6.2 times faster AI video generation than a MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro chip. Those are Microsoft’s own measurements, so treat them as marketing until independent reviews land. The Surface Laptop Ultra price also undercuts Apple’s $2,999 16-inch MacBook Pro, putting pressure on Apple’s creator-laptop pricing.

Gaming got a mention too. Microsoft said Gears of War: E-Day runs at 60fps on the device, and that Call of Duty is coming to RTX Spark in 2027.

$5,999 RTX Spark Dev Box

Alongside the laptop, Microsoft announced the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box at $5,999. It is aimed at developers who want to run large open-weight AI models locally, offering up to 1 petaflop of AI performance with support for models up to 120 billion parameters. That puts it up against machines like Apple’s Mac Studio and Mac mini.

More RTX Spark Laptops on the Way

Microsoft is not the only company shipping RTX Spark hardware. Six partner laptops were shown at the event: the ASUS ProArt P14 and P16, Dell XPS 16, HP OmniBook Ultra 16, Lenovo Yoga Pro 9n and MSI Prestige N16 Flip AI+. ASUS already has Canadian pricing out, with the ProArt P14 starting at C$3,499 and the P16 at C$4,999, both shipping October 16.

What Else Microsoft Announced

The event was about more than hardware. Microsoft announced general availability of Microsoft Execution Containers, OS-level infrastructure for running AI agents safely in the background on Windows. The company also said its MAI Code 1.1 Flash coding model can run directly on RTX Spark devices, and that Meta’s Muse AI agent is coming to Windows as a native app. And for anyone wondering: no Windows 12. Microsoft kept the focus on AI features for Windows 11.

Pre-orders for the Surface Laptop Ultra are live now, with the first units reaching buyers on October 16.

Sources: MacRumors