Surface Laptop Ultra vs. MacBook Pro 16: Nvidia's Arm chip runs Windows for 7.5 hours of real use, not the 13 hours 25 minutes in the benchmark

Chart first, because that is what people came for.

	Surface Laptop Ultra	MacBook Pro 16 (M5 Pro)	Dell XPS 16	ASUS ProArt P16
Starting price	$2,599.99 (Microsoft)	not on Apple’s specs page	n/a	n/a
CPU cores	up to 20 (Microsoft)	18 (Apple)	n/a	n/a
Max memory	128 GB (Microsoft)	64 GB (Apple)	n/a	n/a
Max storage	2 TB (Microsoft)	4 TB (Apple)	n/a	n/a
Weight	under 4.5 lb (Microsoft); 4.4 lb (Engadget)	4.7 lb (Apple)	3.65 lb (Engadget)	n/a
Maker battery claim	15 h video, 12 h web (Microsoft)	24 h video, 17 h web (Apple)	n/a	n/a
PCMark 10 battery (Engadget)	13 h 25 min	n/a	about 90 min shorter than the Surface	about 2.5 h shorter than the Surface
Cinebench 2024 multi-core (Engadget)	1,553	2,188	n/a	n/a
Runs Windows and Linux	yes	no, macOS	yes	yes

Microsoft put a Surface Laptop Ultra around an Nvidia chip, and the interesting number is the gap between two battery tests. Engadget’s Devindra Hardawar ran PCMark 10 and got 13 hours 25 minutes, about 2.5 hours longer than the ASUS ProArt P16 and 90 minutes longer than the Dell XPS 16. Then he used it: video calls, writing and browsing, which came to about 7.5 hours.

That is roughly 44 percent less than the benchmark. Microsoft’s own product page claims “up to” 15 hours of local video and up to 12 hours of active web browsing under its test conditions. Even the more modest of those two promises lands well above what a reviewer got from an ordinary day. (Spark, meet fizzle.)

The chip is the story. RTX Spark is an Arm system-on-a-chip with up to 20 CPU cores, up to 6,144 GPU cores and up to 128 GB of unified memory, according to Engadget. The base configuration has 18 CPU cores and 5,120 GPU cores. Microsoft’s page lists 24 GB as the starting memory and says the processor has “up to 20” cores; the 6,144-core GPU appears there only in a footnote about preproduction test units.

Price is where the vendor language stops being cute. The laptop starts at $2,599.99 on Microsoft’s page. Engadget’s review unit, with 32 GB of memory, 1 TB of storage and the full chip, cost $3,700. The 64 GB model is $4,300, and the 128 GB model is $5,900, which gets you the arm and a leg. (Arm, specifically.)

Against Apple, the numbers are blunt. Apple’s spec page lists the 16-inch M5 Pro MacBook Pro with an 18-core CPU, up to 64 GB of memory and 4.7 pounds, and its own claim of up to 24 hours of video. Cinebench 2024 multi-core gave the Surface 1,553 and an M5 Pro MacBook Pro 2,188. Single-core was 120 against 192 for the M5 Pro and 210 for the 14-inch M6 MacBook Pro. Engadget’s closing line is that “it still lags behind Apple’s hardware when it comes to raw performance.” The review lists “Apple’s M5 Pro is far faster” as a con.

So why buy it? Hardawar’s answer is that it runs Windows and Linux, and Apple’s hardware requires macOS. His verdict opens with “It’s a beautiful flagship device for NVIDIA’s RTX Spark,” and he calls it a solid choice for diehard Windows users who want a premium laptop. The review gave it 8.9 out of 10.

There is a catch with Arm Windows, and the review states it: emulating x86-64 software has improved a lot, but niche apps and third-party drivers can still misbehave. Anything with a kernel driver, such as a VPN client, an old printer or a hardware dongle, deserves a test before you commit.

The gaming number is the fun one. Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p, maxed settings and path tracing ran at 87 fps with 4x frame generation and 117 fps with 6x, with some graphical glitches at 6x. Nobody buys a MacBook for path tracing in that game.

A graphics company with 6,144 GPU cores on a Windows laptop gives Arm a gaming pitch it didn’t have, and spec sheets will keep quoting the best-case battery number. Whether other reviewers land near 7.5 hours is the figure still unmeasured.

Two terabytes, on an Ultra.