Surface Laptop Ultra Preorders: Everything Announced at Microsoft's Windows and Surface Event

Faith Chihil/Jeffrey Hazelwood/CNET Microsoft just wrapped up its first laptop-centered event in more than two years, giving us the final pieces of the puzzle on its new 15-inch, premium Surface Laptop Ultra. Like all the news Microsoft and its partner Nvidia dropped on Wednesday, it has everything to do with artificial intelligence. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella kicked off this morning’s keynote address. Windows chief Pavan Davuluri gave an overview of all the new AI features coming to Windows, particularly local AI, which Microsoft has said will “shape the next chapter of the PC.” That’s certainly on brand for a tech giant that’s spent the past few years integrating its Copilot AI throughout its entire ecosystem. We got a look at the Surface Laptop Ultra , powered by Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip, when it debuted at Computex early this year. The event also featured a fireside chat with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. CNET is on the ground in San Francisco to bring you all the latest news, so check back here often. How to watch Microsoft’s Windows and Surface event You watch the whole event again on YouTube. Check back for more updates throughout today’s event. Sriram Krishnan, Jensen Huang and Satya Nadella chatted about the changes they’ve seen in computing in the past 35 years or so. Faith Chihil/CNET While the Surface Laptop Ultra certainly took center stage at today’s event, it wasn’t the only new thing announced. You can keep scrolling for all the details, but here’s a quick recap. Surface Laptop Ultra: Preorders are live now, shipping Friday, Oct. 16. New local AI models, including DeepSeek V4 flash, Microsoft’s MAI Code 1.1 flash and Nvidia’s Nemotron, are coming to Windows. A new, dedicated Meta Muse app for Windows is also in the works. There was a lot of talk about how to keep AI agents safely contained, but not a ton of solid answers. Microsoft’s enterprise solution, Microsoft Execution Containers (MXC) is now generally available. But given the number of cybersecurity breaches this summer from other AI labs, this will be top of mind for Windows users going forward. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella waxed poetic about the good ole days. Remember Windows 95? View this post on Instagram The most powerful Surface ever comes with a powerful price tag. Faith Chihil/CNET If you’re ready to plunk down for Microsoft’s RTX Spark laptop, you can put your preorder in right now. (But first, you might want to peep your checking account to make sure you’ve got enough to cover the cost.) Preorders are open at Microsoft for the Surface Laptop Ultra . Pricing starts at $2,600 for the lower-end RTX Spark N1X processor (18-core CPU and 5,120-core GPU), 24GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. With 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD, the price jumps to $3,300. Choose the higher of the two CPUs offered, the N1X with a 20-core CPU and 6,144-core GPU, and pricing starts at $3,600 with 32GB of RAM before taking off. $4,000 with 48GB of RAM $4,300 with 64GB of RAM $5,900 with 128GB of RAM If you’re looking to go big with the RTX Spark, I’ve got bad news for you: The 128GB config is currently listed as out of stock. The other models available for preorder today will ship on Oct. 16. Faith Chihil/CNET We’ve got details on the Surface Laptop Ultra, Microsoft’s new 15-inch premium laptop with Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip. You can preorder it now, and it will begin shipping next Friday, Oct. 16. Pricing for the Ultra starts at $2,599, with up to 128 GB of unified memory. The Surface RTX Spark Dev Box — something fit for only the most hard-core developers or creators — starts at $5,999. View this post on Instagram We already know a lot about the Ultra’s insides, but some bonus news: It will come with a magnetic USB-C port, an announcement that got some of the loudest cheers from the audience so far. It’s the little things, sometimes! Nvidia’s Nemotron is one of the top open-weights model families. Faith Chihil/CNET Local AI is a big topic today. If you have enough firepower in your laptop, you don’t need to outsource your AI tasks to the cloud. You can keep your work more private, and it won’t require a monthly subscription to an AI company’s cloud service. Plus, Microsoft is adding more AI models for you to use with Windows. Microsoft’s own MAI Code 1.1 flash model will be made available locally. DeepSeek’s V4 flash and the next-generation version of Nvidia’s Nemotron (a local, open-weights model) are also coming soon. Meta’s Muse, its new AI agent, will be available as a Windows app. Coming to a TV near you? @cnetdotcom Microsoft describes the Surface Laptop Ultra as a high performance PC for those looking to use local and cloud AI more efficiently. #microsoft #rtxspark #microsoftsurface #allaccess #ai ♬ original sound – CNET A big part of the frontier ecosystem? Security. The biggest topic of the first 10 minutes? Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Windows chief Pavan Davuluri have focused almost entirely on AI safety, especially around agents. With Microsoft’s now generally available MXC (Microsoft Execution Containers), businesses and employees can use the platforms to keep their AI agents contained. That’s certainly top of mind for AI companies, particularly as OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta have all had their AI agents commit serious cybersecurity breaches this year. Security is always key for businesses when deciding whether to adopt a new software, and that’s where Microsoft tends to live. But if it wants companies to use its AI, these discussions around safety are a good place to start, even if it doesn’t come with an ironclad guarantee. Microsoft’s new powerful Surface laptops with Nvidia RTX Spark chips are very AI-capable. But who are they for? Faith Chihil/CNET A large chunk of Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra launch event has been about enterprise and developer-focused topics, driving home the message that these systems are targeting the same market as most AI-focused devices: developers. In addition to a relatively deep dive on the security API — everyone is very conscious about trust — and new GitHub features, Microsoft highlighted sparser data types, which allow for greater model compression. That’s code for models that can fit into less memory, something that is increasingly important given RAMageddon-driven memory costs and the high cumulative price of tokens, which drive cloud-based AI costs and has been part of the push for hybrid and local-only AI. And it’s also a way of saying that “you can do plenty with a 32GB RTX Spark system” because you likely can’t afford the higher-end configs. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella outlines the future of Windows. Screenshot by CNET The wait is over, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is describing his vision for the “frontier ecosystem” of the future. The key: AI agents. We are getting close to the 10 a.m. PT start time for the event, and CNET and friends are ready. CNET’s Katelyn Chedraoui and PCMag’s Brian Westover are in the room for Microsoft’s Windows and Surface event in San Francisco. Faith Chihil/CNET We expect things to kick off soon. You can watch the live stream here . You can see the rectangular 3D-printed RTX Spark Dev Box underneath the monitor, behind the keyboard. It’s flanked by two Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra devices. Corinne Reichert/CNET Are they really rumors if Microsoft has already debuted the Surface Laptop Ultra? Alas, we’re going to recap everything we know — and don’t know — about the company’s upcoming AI workhorse of a computer. At Computex this spring, Microsoft first introduced us to the Surface Laptop Ultra, touting its Nvidia RTX Spark chip and new system-on-a-chip designed for Windows. What does all that mean? As CNET’s laptop expert Lori Grunin put it , the hardware should “light a fire for Windows on Arm.” This is not your everyday work laptop. It’s likely to be a high-end, premium offering meant for the devoted developer, engineer or creator who needs a machine with the necessary firepower for their complex or compute-intensive tasks. In other words, it’s going to be great for running AI. This could be Microsoft’s competitor to Apple’s MacBook Pro line. Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip and platform are poised to give the Surface Laptop Ultra the boost it needs to compete in this premium market. The biggest unknowns right now are the price and release date, which we’re hoping to learn today. And even more hopefully, it won’t cost an extraordinary chunk of change. But for a premium laptop, in this era of price hikes and RAMaggedon, it’s anyone’s guess. Katie Collins/CNET If you’re excited about a potential new laptop from Microsoft, I have good news for you — the company already released two new generations of its Surface laptops this fall. View this post on Instagram The 12-inch Surface Pro (2nd Edition) and 13-inch Surface Laptop (2nd Edition) both debuted at Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii last month. Fittingly, both devices are powered by Snapdragon X2 series processors. A new Surface mouse rounded out the new devices, too. The laptops are now available for preorder, and CNET’s Matt Elliot has the full breakdown of the specs. In September, CNET’s David Lumb spoke to Brett Ostrum , Microsoft’s corporate VP of Surface devices, about the laptops’ generation-over-generation improvements, likely due to switching to a chip that inherited its design architecture from mobile silicon. Compared to previous Surface laptops running on Intel chips, the gains in battery life and camera improvements are two of the biggest signs of changes under the hood. The 13-inch Surface Laptop and 12-inch Surface Pro received Snapdragon X2 upgrades, and the new Surface Mouse has haptics to buzz and pulse your palm. Katie Collins/CNET Microsoft first introduced the Surface Laptop Ultra earlier this year at Computex, detailing that the new laptop would run on Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip. In the age of AI, that chip matters more than ever. If you want to run your AI programs on your device, not in the cloud, your phone or laptop needs all the firepower it can get. Agentic tasks, like manning AI bots, require even more compute. The AI boom has led to a surge in demand for high-quality chips — to power all those new, controversial data centers — and has led pretty much all device manufacturers, including Apple and Samsung, to raise their prices. So one of today’s biggest questions is: Just how expensive might the Surface Laptop Ultra be? A new laptop is always a financial investment, but there’s a chance sticker shock could turn Surface fans away from the new 15-inch premium device and toward a more affordable option. Katelyn Chedraoui Reporter 2 Katelyn is a reporter with CNET covering artificial intelligence, including chatbots, image and video generators. Her work explores how new AI technology is infiltrating our lives, shaping the content we consume on social media and affecting the people behind the screens. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in media and journalism. You can reach her at kchedraoui@cnet.com. See full bio The Latest from Katelyn The Surface Laptop Ultra Is Here: Microsoft and Nvidia Built a Premium Computer for the AI Age GPT-6 for All: Your ChatGPT Answers Are Getting a Very Visual Makeover Surface Laptop Ultra Preorders: Everything Announced at Microsoft’s Windows and Surface Event Lori Grunin Senior Editor / Computers and Gaming Hardware I've been reviewing hardware and software, devising testing methodology and handing out buying advice for more than 25 years. See full bio The Latest from Lori CNET Lab Exclusive: Beyond More Cores, Higher Scores in the MacBook Pro Surface Laptop Ultra Preorders: Everything Announced at Microsoft’s Windows and Surface Event Hollywood’s Newest Media Colossus: Paramount and Warner Bros. Merge Under Skydance Matt Elliott Senior Editor Matt Elliott is a senior editor at CNET with a focus on laptops and streaming services. Matt has more than 20 years of experience testing and reviewing laptops. He has worked for CNET in New York and San Francisco and now lives in New Hampshire. When he's not writing about laptops, Matt likes to play and watch sports. He loves to play tennis and hates the number of streaming services he has to subscribe to in order to watch the various sports he wants to watch. 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