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 got a chance to get a good look at both Surface Laptop Ultra and Surface RTX Spark Dev Box At the Microsoft Build conference this week, and although they all have the same device inside, they are using Nvidia’s RTX Spark in different ways.

The Surface Laptop Ultra looks and feels like a 16-inch MacBook Pro. There are no adjustable hinges, removable screens, or any other smarts – this is a clamshell laptop built with performance. Microsoft has chosen a 15-inch mini LED panel, which works up to 2,000 nits of HDR brightness. I saw the HDR output in a dark room, and I can confirm that it is a very bright display. In fact, it’s the brightest display Microsoft has ever put on a Surface device.

The trackpad on the Surface Laptop Ultra is not only larger than the standard Surface trackpads, it also has new support for haptics in Windows 11. This adds a hidden haptic feature when you hover around the close button in Windows, or alignment symbols when you try to drag, zoom, or rotate objects. It’s the type of haptics that really changes the way a device feels, and you’ll see it in various places in Windows 11 when you drag controls and interact with UI elements. I’m sure other laptop manufacturers will start shipping haptics support, too.

When I first picked up the Surface Laptop Ultra, I was also surprised by its weight. It feels heavy compared to the 15-inch Surface Laptop 7, but there’s obviously been a trade-off in weight in favor of performance and battery life. “When we went through the process of what we wanted to do, performance, performance, battery life, battery life, battery life, display, display, display, we made sure we nailed those things,” said Andrew Hill, vice president of Surface products, in an interview with Seaside. “If something needs to be done, so be it, but let’s make sure we’re building a foundation that people care about.”

I saw the Surface Laptop Ultra put through a variety of tests, including one demo where it ran a standard AI version that was eating up 128GB of shared memory, all the while. Indiana Jones and the Great Circle it was a joke.

I also felt the warmth of the Surface Laptop Ultra, which has a hot spot above the keyboard. It felt warm to touch the area above the keyboard and the area below the back of the device, but not hot enough to feel uncomfortable on the feet. Microsoft is also using two fans to cool the device, and I can’t hear it even when it’s fully loaded.

Inside the Surface Laptop Ultra, Microsoft has also made it easy to change parts. It’s truly a work of art inside, with familiar components all neatly arranged in a black grid. Microsoft focused on the refurbishing of its Surface Laptop 7, improving iFixit’s repairability from 0/10 in 2017 to 8/10 in 2024. I’m curious to see where iFixit puts the Surface Laptop Ultra later this year.

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

I asked Hill about the mysterious USB-C port and he smiled and said that Microsoft will have more to share about the Surface Laptop Ultra later this year. This laptop is missing Microsoft’s Surface Connect charging port, so I wonder if the company has developed a USB-C version.

It’s also worth noting that Microsoft isn’t really talking about the Copilot Plus PC that it’s doing with the Surface Laptop Ultra. Although it’s still relevant for all of the Copilot Plus PC features, Microsoft didn’t mention the brand in its blog, and all of the initial marketing surrounding the device was aimed at professionals, designers, and developers.

Phiri tells me that Microsoft isn’t abandoning the Copilot Plus PC version, even if it’s heavily discounted for the Surface device. Instead, it’s focused on developers and manufacturers who would buy a laptop like this, especially for a local AI computer where you won’t have to pay an AI cloud provider for tokens. “What you have here is a way that you can do a lot of work locally on what you have, and if you want it to rip, cool, you’re not on the meter,” Hill says. “There are a lot of jobs that run better in the cloud, but you can do a lot more work here.”

I also got a chance to preview the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box. It is aimed at developers who want a powerful small PC for their desk and the ability to run AI tasks locally with 128GB of integrated memory. Microsoft has created a Dev Box with 3D printed aluminum, and it has 1,000 air vents in the chassis to represent its 1,000 teraflops of compute performance.

The air vents remind me of the Xbox Series X, and the entire Dev Box looks like a standard version of a Microsoft console. On the back are two USB-C ports, USB-A, HDMI, Ethernet, and a headphone jack. Internally it will run the same chip as the Surface Laptop Ultra, but Microsoft tells me there are a few differences that it hasn’t fully disclosed.

One of the biggest differences is that it has a 100-watt thermal envelope, compared to 80 watts on the Surface Laptop Ultra. This means that Dev Box will be able to handle many tasks, especially anything that takes advantage of Nvidia’s Tensor cores. This may be AI-heavy, but Tensor cores are also used to power Nvidia’s DLSS technology, so games on the Dev Box may be slightly better than the Surface Laptop Ultra.

The biggest question with all these devices is the prices. RAMageddon has already driven the prices of the new Intel-powered Surface devices up, and I suspect that these new RTX Spark devices will be at the very end of the price range for PCs. We will get it this year.

Photography by Tom Warren/The Verge