A first look at Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra and Surface Dev Box

Microsoft has two new Surface devices arriving later this year, both powered by Nvidia’s RTX Spark chips. I had the opportunity to take a closer look at each Surface Laptop Ultra and Surface RTX Spark Dev At the Microsoft Build conference this week, while they both have the same chip inside, they use Nvidia’s RTX Spark in different ways.

The Surface Laptop Ultra looks like a 16-inch MacBook Pro. There are no converting hinges, detachable screens, or other gimmicks — this is a clamshell laptop designed with performance in mind. Microsoft has opted for a small 15-inch LED panel, which operates at up to 2,000 nits of HDR brightness. I’ve seen the peak HDR level in a dark room, and I can confirm that it’s a very bright display. In fact, it’s the brightest display Microsoft has ever put on a Surface.

The trackpad on the Surface Laptop Ultra is not only larger than regular Surface trackpads, it also has new touch support in Windows 11. This adds precise haptic patterns when you hover near the Windows close button, or alignment cues when you try to drag, resize, or rotate objects. It’s the type of touch that really changes the feel of a device, and you’ll notice it in different parts of Windows 11 as you drag sliders and interact with UI elements. I hope other laptop manufacturers start shipping this improved touch support as well.

When I first picked up the Surface Laptop Ultra, I was also surprised by the weight. It feels bulky compared to the 15-inch Surface Laptop 7, but there’s clearly a trade-off in weight in favor of performance and battery life. “When we went through the prioritization of what we were going to design for, performance, performance, performance, battery life, battery life, battery life, display, display, display, and making sure we nailed those things,” says Andrew Hill, the company’s vice president of product for Surface, in an interview with Edge. “If other trade-offs have to be made, so be it, but let’s make sure we nail the fundamentals that are actually what people care about.”

I saw the Surface Laptop Ultra put through its paces in a variety of tasks, including a demo where it was running a local AI model that was hogging a lot of its 128GB of unified memory, all while Indiana Jones and the Grand Circle It was playable.

I also felt the heat dissipation of the Surface Laptop Ultra, which has a hotspot directly above the keyboard. The section above the keyboard and below that area on the back of the device felt warm to the touch, but not hot enough to be uncomfortable during a lap. Microsoft also uses two fans to cool the device, and I can barely hear them even when almost fully loaded.

Inside the Surface Laptop Ultra, Microsoft has also made it easy to replace parts. It’s honestly like a work of art indoors, with clearly defined components all neatly arranged in a black grid. Microsoft has really focused on the repairability of the Surface Laptop 7, improving its iFixit repairability score from 0/10 in 2017 to 10/8 in 2024. I’m very curious to see where iFixit ranks the Surface Laptop Ultra later this year.

The Surface Laptop Ultra also has a surprising number of ports. On the left side, there are two USB-C ports and an HDMI port, and on the right side, there is one USB-C, a USB-A port, and a full-size SD card reader. There’s also something interesting about the single USB-C port on the right side: it’s a little wider than the two ports on the left.

I asked Hill about the mysterious USB-C port and he smiled, laughed, and said Microsoft would have more to share about the Surface Laptop Ultra later this year. This laptop lacks Microsoft’s traditional Surface Connect magnetic charging port, so I wonder if the company has created some form of USB-C replacement.

It’s also worth noting that Microsoft isn’t really talking about its Copilot Plus PC initiative with the Surface Laptop Ultra. Although it still qualifies for all the features of the Copilot Plus PC, Microsoft doesn’t mention this branding in its blog, and all the initial marketing around this device is aimed at professionals, creatives, and developers.

Hill told me that Microsoft won’t abandon the Copilot Plus PC brand, even if that Surface device is downplayed. Instead, it’s focused on creators and developers who might buy a laptop like this, especially for native AI computing where you won’t have to pay the AI ​​cloud provider for tokens. “What you have here is an option where you can do a lot of the work locally on something you own, and if you want to let it simmer and cool, you’re not on a scale,” Hill says. “There are bunches of workloads that run better in the cloud, but you’ll be able to do a lot more work here.”

I also had a chance to see the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box briefly. It’s largely aimed at developers who want a powerful mini PC on their desks and the ability to run AI workloads locally using 128GB of unified memory. Microsoft built the Dev Box with a 3D-printed aluminum chassis, which has 1,000 vents in the chassis to represent 1,000 teraflops of computational performance.

Those air vents really remind me of the Xbox Series On the back there are USB-C, USB-A, HDMI, Ethernet, and a headphone jack. Inside it will be running the same chip as the Surface Laptop Ultra, but Microsoft told me there are some minor differences that it hasn’t fully revealed yet.

One major difference is that it has a 100W heatsink, compared to up to 80W on the Surface Laptop Ultra. This means that the Dev Box will be more able to handle sustained workloads, and in particular anything that takes advantage of Nvidia’s Tensor cores. This will largely be AI workloads, but the Tensor cores are also used for upscaling with Nvidia’s DLSS technology, so gaming on the Dev Box might be a little better than on the Surface Laptop Ultra.

The big question hanging over both devices is pricing. RAMageddon has already bumped up the prices of Microsoft’s new Intel-powered Surface devices, and I suspect these new RTX Spark devices will be at the top end of premium PC prices. We’ll find out later this year.

Photography by Tom Warren/The Verge