The first line of laptops powered by Nvidia’s new RTX Spark chip is designed to compete with high-end MacBook Pros – and it has premium prices to match.
Flagship Surface Laptop Ultra and RTX Spark laptops from Dell, Lenovo, MSI, HP and Asus start at just $2,599 for configurations with an 18-core processor, 24GB of unified memory and 512GB of storage. It’s priced close to that of a similarly specced 14-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Pro chip, although Apple includes 1TB of storage. But the prices of RTX Spark and Apple laptops are of course much higher.
Among the prices we’ve seen so far, an Asus ProArt P16 RTX Spark laptop equipped with a 20-core chip, 128GB of unified memory, and 2TB of storage costs up to $6,999.99. We don’t yet know the full extent of Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra configuration options, as the pre-order page only has an email signup box to get updates, but a 48GB model at Best Buy costs $3,999.99.
Extremely expensive laptops aren’t exactly new: You can configure a 16-inch MacBook Pro with M5 Max chip for almost $10,000 if you max out all the options. But the first flight of RTX Spark options is obviously aimed at the high-end side of local AI creators and users. And RAMageddon certainly doesn’t help make this any easier on people’s wallets.
Will they be worth it? We will know soon. The Surface Laptop Ultra and other RTX Spark laptops launch this month, starting October 16.
Gn tech
