Microsoft has opened pre-orders for its 15-inch Surface Laptop Ultra, a Windows on Arm flagship with Nvidia graphics, up to 128GB of unified memory and a starting price of $2,599.99.
Microsoft has set a launch date and starting price for the Surface Laptop Ultra, a flagship 15-inch machine built to challenge Apple’s high-end MacBook Pro line. Pre-orders are now open in the United States, with general availability due on 16 October and pricing starting at $2,599.99. The device was first shown at Microsoft’s October 7 event in San Francisco, and the company is aiming it squarely at creators, developers and AI specialists who need more than a conventional ultraportable can provide.
At the centre of the new model is Nvidia’s RTX Spark platform, an Arm-based system-on-chip that pairs Blackwell graphics with a Grace CPU. Microsoft says the top configuration reaches a 20-core CPU and up to 6,144 GPU cores, with as much as 128GB of unified memory. Notebookcheck reported that a second, lower-tier version uses an 18-core CPU, a 5,120-core GPU and up to 64GB of memory. The machine also runs Windows on Arm, with x86 applications handled through Microsoft’s Prism emulation layer, which should broaden software compatibility but may still affect some workloads.
The Surface Laptop Ultra uses a 15-inch mini-LED touchscreen and a large haptic trackpad, while Microsoft has also added a magnetic USB-C charging connection that it says combines the ease of a breakaway power connector with USB-C flexibility. According to Microsoft’s product page, the laptop ships in Platinum and Nightfall finishes and includes a range of ports. Windows Central reported that the design is aimed at professional use rather than gaming, although Microsoft has shown the system handling demanding graphics demos and ray tracing. The company says the display can deliver higher peak HDR brightness than Apple’s latest MacBook Pro, a claim that will matter most to buyers comparing creative hardware side by side.
Microsoft is also using the launch to push deeper into local AI computing. Sources familiar with the device’s positioning say the highest-end configurations are intended for heavy workloads such as large model inference, agentic AI tasks and other development work that would usually demand a desktop-class system. The company has gone further by pairing the laptop with a trade-in offer of up to $1,000 for certain MacBook Pro models, a clear attempt to entice users already invested in Apple’s ecosystem. Alongside the laptop, Microsoft has confirmed the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box, a compact workstation priced at $5,999 and due to start shipping in November. That system uses the same RTX Spark platform, carries 128GB of unified memory and is pitched as a desktop alternative for AI development and workstation-style tasks.
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