With multiple models at Best Buy currently available across different price points before Black Friday, we've picked some standout LG Gram laptops that offer a balance of value, features, and performance.

• Shop lightweight LG Gram laptops

For example, the travel-friendly LG gram Max 17-inch touchscreen with an Intel Core Ultra 7 355 (Panther Lake) CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD is currently discounted from $1,749.99 to $1,199.99 at Best Buy.

It features exceptional processing power for tackling heavy workloads, a 2.5K display that renders images with sharp details and vibrant colors, a large battery life of over 26 hours, and a thin 0.6-inch profile with a durable magnesium alloy chassis.

Alternative lightweight picks

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As it turns out, the company has already been quietly shipping performance improvements in the latest Windows 11 updates, focusing on making systems with 8GB of RAM feel a lot more responsive.

The result? Microsoft says Windows 11 is now about 20% more responsive on 8GB PCs compared to before this work started. The work also applies to systems with 4GB, 16GB, and beyond, with specific tuning for each amount.

This couldn't come at a better time. RAM and storage shortages (explained below) are driving up the cost of all PCs, and models with 8GB of RAM are being revived to lessen the burden on consumers.

Our favorite 8GB Windows laptops in November 2026

Companies like Dell, Acer, and HP have all recently launched 8GB laptops that cost somewhere around $699, with student and regular discounts frequently dropping those numbers lower.

If you were hesitant to shop for an 8GB laptop before, the recent Windows 11 updates should have you reconsidering, especially when prices are this reasonable. Here are my three favorite 8GB laptops right now.

Dell's new XPS 13 for 2026 wowed both Zac Bowden and me at Computex earlier this year, and it's been available to buy since June.

It's a laptop with many premium features despite its price, including a higher-res 2560x1600 (QHD+) display with a 120Hz refresh rate, an IR camera for Windows Hello facial recognition, capable speakers, and a comfortable keyboard/touchpad combo.

👉 Does Acer's Swift Air 14 beat Dell's awesome XPS 13?

It does not, however, offer USB-A or 3.5mm audio ports. Its display does not use an OLED panel; it uses IPS instead. And the $599 price is only available for students.

Still, $699 for everyone else is not bad at all in this economy, and most users should have no issues with the XPS 13.

HP's OmniBook 5 14 comes with the same Intel Core 5 320 CPU as the other laptops in this roundup, so don't expect any major performance changes.

The OmniBook 5 includes an OLED panel for deeper contrast and more vivid color than IPS. The tradeoff is a lower 1920x1200 resolution and lower 60Hz refresh rate compared to the XPS 13.

HP's laptop also includes HDMI and 3.5mm audio ports alongside dual USB-C at 10Gbps. It's nice to have native video, but the lack of Thunderbolt is a letdown.

This laptop is currently on sale for $599.99 for everyone, making it (temporarily) the best deal of the bunch.

Acer's Swift Air 14 immediately makes an argument for itself with twice as much storage (512GB) as the Dell and HP laptops. For those who prefer to store locally, this could be the deciding factor. However, it does drop down to PCIe 3.0 speeds.

Performance is largely the same thanks to it having the Intel Core 5 320 chip inside, with 8GB of LPDDR5x RAM.

The display hits a 1920x1200 resolution; it doesn't have touch, but it does hit a smoother 120Hz refresh rate. You're definitely giving up some screen quality to land that extra storage.

While the keyboard is great, the touchpad leaves something to be desired. Your experience may vary.

Why is Microsoft concerned with reducing Windows 11 RAM usage?

Sure, Windows 11 could always be more streamlined, but this big push for more RAM efficiency is also a result of the ongoing memory and storage crisis.

See, AI data centers are eating up many of the foundational components of PCs, making the consumer side far more expensive.

RAM in particular has exploded in price; the same 32GB kit of DDR5 I bought for my gaming PC a few years ago, for example, is roughly 600% more expensive today. Storage isn't much better.

This is forcing PC makers to reevaluate their product lineups, as many consumers can no longer afford PCs with 16GB or more of RAM.

Cutting RAM in half is a huge cost saver and won't likely stop anytime soon (the RAM crisis could last for years to come), so it's great to see Microsoft taking user complaints about Windows 11's responsiveness (or lack thereof) seriously.

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One of these lucky devices is the Microsoft Surface Laptop 8, which is currently on sale for $1,249.99 at Amazon (was $1,699.99).

This beauty is Microsoft's latest flagship laptop, equipped with a state-of-the-art Snapdragon X2 Elite CPU for improved performance, all-day battery life, and an exclusive new advanced haptics feature to give you improved feedback, just to name a few features.

Why buy this laptop?

The Microsoft Surface Laptop 8 is a highly dependable, fast, and durable laptop for IT users and students. This is because it comes equipped with a Snapdragon X2 Elite CPU paired with a turbocharged NPU with 80 TOPS, boosting the laptop's performance significantly when tackling mountains of productivity workloads while multitasking.

It also comes with a 13.8-inch LCD touchscreen display with 600 nits of brightness to fend off annoying daylight glare, Wi-Fi 7 compatibility for strong and stable wireless internet connections, and a massive battery life of 20 hours on a single charge.

On top of that, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 8 features an advanced haptic feedback system, which sends subtle vibrations when using its keyboard, stylus pen, or mouse when performing specific tasks like dragging files in File Explorer or rearranging app windows.

It's a small but enjoyable addition that makes this laptop more polished and responsive to use. Even our Editor-in-Chief Daniel Rubino praised this feature during his Surface Laptop 8 (Business Model) review when he said, "The new advanced haptic touchpad is a joy to use. It provides subtle tactile cues that confirm your actions."

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One thing the Steam Deck definitely does better, though, is the user experience. Jez Corden recently spoke about how the Xbox Ally and Ally X were in his re-review, and pointed out how Windows 11 still needed work for handhelds.

I personally opt for other launchers over the Xbox App, like Winhanced, but what I have always truly wanted was the Xbox Series dashboard, or heck, even the old Metro dashboard, just on a handheld. Well, we got one of those things on the Steam Deck thanks to an all-new plugin by kromossomom.

The plugin, which can be found on GitHub, turns your Steam Deck into a complete Xbox Series-style dashboard, and it is really impressive and pretty feature-rich. Quick disclaimer, though: Claude AI was used to help with development, but pretty much everything is now, so let’s move on to the features.

The Xbox Series dashboard looks right at home on Steam Deck

Decky Xbox Dashboard replaces Steam’s Home interface with the Xbox Series dashboard. You can use LB/RB to move between tabs, which include My games & apps, Store, Community, and System. You can also visit a game’s page when hovering over it and pressing Y to view the game’s compatibility, achievements, and more.

To install Decky Xbox Dashboard, you can follow these steps:

1. Follow our guide on getting Decky Loader installed on your Steam Deck.
2. Once installed, download the zip file from the Decky Xbox Dashboard GitHub repository.
3. On your Steam Deck, open Quick Access -> go to Decky -> then go to Settings and select General. Make sure Developer Mode is turned on.
4. Within Developer settings, select Install plugin from ZIP, and pick your downloaded Decky Xbox Dashboard ZIP file.

I wish I could just install this on my Xbox Ally X. As much as I like Winhanced, which I currently use, I want the simplicity of a console in the palm of my hands. That is something the Xbox App and third-party launchers have never truly offered in my experience.

Let me know your thoughts. Is this cool? Would you install it? Do you wish it was available on a Windows handheld, or is it more of a novelty?

Make sure to leave a comment down below, and be sure to take part in our poll too!

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I’ve been using touchscreen Windows laptops for well over a decade. Microsoft made touch central to Windows with Windows 8 in 2012, and PC makers have spent the years since experimenting with convertibles, detachable keyboards, pens, dual-screen PCs, foldable displays, and nearly every combination of those ideas imaginable.

Now Apple has decided touch belongs on a Mac, too.

There’s an obvious temptation here to point and laugh, particularly given how long Apple spent telling everyone that touchscreen laptops were a bad idea. But I don’t think Apple adopting touch in 2026 is really the problem. Technology improves. Consumer behavior changes. Companies reconsider old assumptions. Ideas that didn't make sense 15 years ago can make considerably more sense today.

Companies should be allowed to change their minds. In fact, I wish more of them would.

What bothers me is the corporate absolutism that so often comes before the reversal, and how readily consumers absorb those talking points and repeat them as though they were established technological truths.

Your favorite company is not your friend

Steve Jobs didn't merely say that Apple wasn't interested in making a touchscreen Mac. In 2010, he argued that vertical touch surfaces were “ergonomically terrible” and that after using one for an extended period, “your arm wants to fall off.”

Apple continued defending that philosophy long after Jobs. Craig Federighi argued that reaching up to touch a screen was fatiguing, while John Ternus explained Apple's position in 2021 by saying the iPad was optimized for touch and the Mac for indirect input.

And now we have a touchscreen MacBook Pro.

Apparently, our arms have recovered.

But there was never anything inherently ridiculous about occasionally touching your laptop screen! You don't use a touchscreen PC by spending eight hours with your arm suspended in front of you like you're directing traffic. You type. You use the touchpad. You use a mouse. And sometimes a button is sitting right there on the screen, so you reach up and tap it.

That's it. Nobody needed a grand philosophical argument for why that was useful.

Microsoft certainly got plenty wrong with Windows 8, especially its attempt to aggressively redesign a desktop operating system around touch. But the underlying idea that a computer could accommodate a keyboard, mouse, pen and your fingers was perfectly reasonable. Windows laptop makers proved that years ago.

Yet because Apple didn't want to make that computer, the company's decision somehow became evidence among some of its most devoted followers that these computers shouldn't exist at all.

That's the part I think is worth remembering.

We've watched this happen before

And touch isn't an isolated example.

When Microsoft was trying to blur the line between tablets and PCs with Surface, Tim Cook famously compared converging products to combining a toaster and a refrigerator. Years later, Apple built the iPad Pro and paired it with increasingly sophisticated keyboard and trackpad accessories. The implementation is Apple's own, but the supposedly absurd idea of a tablet increasingly behaving like a laptop doesn't seem quite so absurd anymore.

I've seen the same attitude around foldables and devices like Surface Duo. Years ago, I found myself explaining to Apple fans, practically like children, why someone might find value in a large display that folds into something much smaller and more pocketable. The response inevitably centered on all the reasons folding phones were unnecessary, compromised, gimmicky, or "solving a problem that didn't exist" (the line always used by people with no imagination).

Now Apple is making foldable devices too.

And again, good. I want Apple to make these products. Competition drives improvement, and Apple entering a category can push everyone else forward. I recently discussed on Schwab Network (above) how strategically important the iPhone Duo is, and its growing pains—or whether it’s the perfect $2,000 phone—are less of a concern in the long term.

This isn't an admonishment of Apple for adopting ideas that competitors got to first. It's an admonishment of the corporate theater that often precedes those reversals, and especially of consumers who willingly participate in it.

Stop turning corporate PR into your personality

Every technology company does some version of this. Microsoft does it. Google does it. Samsung does it. Apple does it.

I've interviewed enough executives over the years to know the standard response when you ask why a product doesn't have some particular piece of technology. You usually get something along the lines of: We're watching the technology, we're talking to our customers, and when we think the experience is right, we'll consider it.

That's corporate PR, but it's also a perfectly respectable answer.

What companies shouldn't do, and what consumers absolutely shouldn't help them do, is transform today's product limitation into some grand design philosophy explaining why the missing technology is actually stupid.

(Anyone else remember Apple not making large iPhones because your thumb couldn't reach across the screen? yeaaahh...)

Companies have roadmaps. They have price targets, manufacturing constraints, engineering limitations, internal politics, and products they aren't ready to announce. Sometimes they haven't figured something out yet. Sometimes a competitor simply got there first.

And sometimes they're just wrong. Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, and Craig Federighi were wrong. And it wasn't the tech that changed; it was the opinion.

Consumers and the technology press shouldn't turn those temporary business realities into articles of faith.

Apple is particularly good at controlling the language around its products, which makes resisting this tendency even more important. When Apple doesn't offer something, there's often an impulse among its most ardent supporters to rationalize the omission and explain why nobody really needs it anyway.

Then Apple ships it, and suddenly it's useful.

That's why the lesson of the touchscreen MacBook Pro isn't that Apple lost, and Windows won. Frankly, that kind of platform-war thinking is just another version of the same problem.

The lesson is much simpler: stop putting corporations on pedestals.

You don't work for these companies. You don't owe them ideological consistency. Buy the products you like. Praise them when they're good. Criticize them when they're bad. And when an executive explains why a technology their competitors already offer is unnecessary, ridiculous, inelegant, or something customers don't want, maybe don't adopt that argument as part of your identity.

Because a few years from now, they may be standing onstage trying to sell it to you.

And when that happens, changing their mind is perfectly fine. Pretending they never told you otherwise is something else entirely.

But tell me, am I wrong or missing something? What do you think about Apple suddenly being interested in foldables and touchscreen laptops in 2026? Let me know in the comments.

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We have FSR 4.1 on the Xbox Ally X now, a big Xbox app revamp is around the corner, and I'm probably one of the few content creators who actually uses this device on an almost daily basis. So, I really want to answer that burning question for Xbox ecosystem users: is it actually still worth a thousand big ones, even now, one year later?

How has the battery life stacked up? Is Windows 11 actually functional for handheld PC gaming yet? Does FSR 4.1 make for a killer feature?

Let's discuss.

FSR 4.1 is, indeed, a killer feature for the Xbox Ally X

The Xbox Ally X launched around this time last year (depending on your market) in partnership between Microsoft and ASUS. I'll do a write-up and a video on its less powerful Xbox Ally Z2A cousin in the future too. But we're looking at the $1,000 Xbox Ally X today. It was the first device to sport the Z2 Extreme chipset from AMD, making it the most powerful handheld at the time. AMD's new FSR 4.1 tech has given it a further boost on top of that as well.

FSR 4.1 is a heavier upscaling model than FSR 3, but it's all about boosting image quality, giving you more flexibility over how you play. You can now run quality modes that would previously look too ugly and blurry to bear, and still maintain a good level of performance. This extends to very graphically intensive games like Control Resonant, Cyberpunk 2077, Gears of War: E-Day, and games like Warhammer 40K Darktide, which have lots of enemies on-screen at any one time. FSR 4.1 will be adopted natively by more games over time, potentially extending the lifespan of the device even further. AMD has a list of games that already support it over here.

Using Performance and Turbo modes for maximum power, you're easily getting anywhere between 40 and 60 FPS at 1080p for most games out of the box. Heavier games will benefit more from FSR 4.1 being set to performance mode, which appears as crisp as quality mode did on FSR 3 models. I find FSR Frame Generation is also a good way to loop in more frames at the cost of some latency, although in most games I tried it was barely perceptible.

Heavily-optimized games like Death Stranding and the new Witcher 3 enhanced edition look absolutely stunning on this device, both in high and low power modes. Games with FSR 3 automatically benefit from FSR 4.1, which are presently in beta testing on the Xbox Ally X here. Witcher 3 absolutely sings on this device, although games with heavy reliance on ray tracing, like Silent Hill 2, still struggle a bit.

Either way, FSR 4.1 is going to vastly improve the lifespan of compatible devices like this, and it'll be interesting to see how it boosts the base Xbox Ally Z2A model (and Xbox Series X|S platform) in the future.

The hardware holds up, but Windows 11 still needs work

On the topic of lifespan, I'm someone who uses this handheld very regularly, at least every other day before bed. I've been using it mostly to grind Darktide recently, but I will also be using it for WoW: Forever in the coming weeks since it now supports a controller.

The hardware itself has held up incredibly well for me, but it would be neglectful not to mention the quality issues I've seen with the thumbsticks online and on Reddit. I think ASUS could've done a bit more to reinforce the sticks here, but if you go gently on it, I guess, like I do, perhaps you'll be okay. The most wear I have is that the paint on some of the buttons is beginning to wear off, but besides that, my Xbox Ally X seems rock solid.

I find that even a year in, the battery life is still decent on the Xbox Ally X too. I use Battery Care mode religiously to keep the charge topped off at around 80% to protect the lifespan of the cell, but when fully charged at 100% you're easily getting 4-5 hours in 13w silent mode in 2D games, and maybe 2-3 hours in 17w performance mode in a more intensive game, with trade-offs. If you go turbo mode, then yes, the battery will drain out in an hour or so. However, I find that when traveling these days on planes or trains, there's usually an outlet available to give you some extra juice.

There are a lot of games that offer a solid 3D experience even in silent 13w mode, if you're willing to compromise on visual quality and performance to maximize the Ally's longevity.

What is perhaps less solid is the operating system experience. This isn't ASUS' fault, of course, but more on Microsoft and Windows. Xbox and the Windows teams have been collaborating to improve the experience for users on devices like this, but the results have been mixed. The Xbox Ally X is particularly painful to use when hooked up to a TV in a Switch-like "docked" setting. Sometimes the controller loses the focus window, and there's no way to get it back without tapping the screen.

Basic parts of Windows still aren't navigable without a mouse, and the Xbox PC app still leaves a lot to be desired whether docked or not. Luckily, Microsoft is shipping a big update to the Xbox PC app in the coming weeks, and Windows 11 itself is picking up further refinements. It still feels overall like you're a bit of a beta tester for the OS itself, but you do get the full power of Windows as a trade-off, able to turn this device into a work laptop if you so desire (as I've done while traveling myself). You can run any launcher without hassle, like Steam or GOG, and you can connect any accessory that's compatible with Windows, including gamepads, mice, keyboards, and even printers.

The bottom line: I still adore the Xbox Ally X

But the bottom line is this: when you're actually in a game, this device absolutely sings. In Turbo mode at 35W, it will provide a solid 1080p 30~ish experience in the heaviest AAA games, even on a medium or even high quality setting, particularly with FSR 4.1 tweaks injected. You can get up to 60 FPS if you're willing to compromise on quality, generally speaking. There are many higher-end games that have been well-optimized for handhelds that deliver a 1080p 60 FPS experience too, such as The Witcher 3 Enhanced Edition.

I've never encountered a scenario where I couldn't get a satisfactory experience from a game, which cannot be said about the Steam Deck and other older or lower-end handhelds.

Given the state of the RAMpocalypse and component market in general, I expect it might be a while before developers push their visuals beyond what is available today. The Xbox Series X|S, PS5, Switch 2, and devices like this are probably going to be the baseline for a longer period than usual. If you were to buy the Xbox Ally X today, I expect you're going to get at least 3 to 4, maybe 5 years of solid use out of it before it might start feeling obsolete.

This is a fantastic device, a perfect companion for any Xbox player with a big Xbox Play Anywhere library. Even if you're dedicated to Steam, you can set Big Picture Mode as your default launcher and skip the Xbox ecosystem entirely if you fancy it.

For gaming evenings in bed, portable co-op with friends, or even as an emergency workhorse, the Xbox Ally X is a fantastic PC companion that I hope will be a staple of my gaming experience for a long time to come. And I would absolutely recommend it — as long as you think you'll get a good amount of use out of it.

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This is the new handheld I tested at Computex this year alongside the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+. Both are premium devices landing in a market turned upside down on account of RAM and storage shortages. MSI's new Claw with Intel's Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, for example, launched at $1,799.99.

Here's where Acer's new handheld packing the same Intel G3 Extreme chip offers a big surprise for shoppers. It's priced at $1,299.99 at Best Buy. Or at least it was, for the Best Buy page preorder has since been removed. I'm not exactly sure why — maybe Acer is reconsidering the post-launch price now that preorders are in.

In any case, seeing a handheld with the same powerful mobile chip inside as the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ launch for $500 less should be on every gamer's radar. But how is Acer undercutting the competition by so much?

How does Acer charge $500 less for its Intel Arc G3 Extreme gaming handheld?

On paper, the Acer and MSI devices are quite similar. Both feature the flagship Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip, with 14 cores, a 4.7GHz top clock speed, and a faster Arc B390 integrated GPU compared to the standard Arc G3 chip.

Both devices use an 8-inch IPS display with 1920x1200 resolution, 120Hz variable refresh rate, 500 nits brightness, and 100% sRGB color reproduction.

Both have Thunderbolt 4 ports and Wi-Fi 7. Both have Hall Effect triggers and joysticks. Both use an 80Wh battery. So what's the deal?

Based on my (limited) time with the Predator Atlas 8, it looks like the big price difference comes down to build quality and configuration specs.

Let me get the biggest difference out of the way first: the $1,799.99 MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ ships with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. The Acer Predator Atlas 8 pares that back to 24GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD.

Considering the price of storage and memory these days, this difference likely helps make up a huge chunk of the difference.

Otherwise, as I noted in my Intel Arc G3 Extreme hands-on piece, Acer's device has triggers that don't feel quite as snappy as MSI. The reverse can be said for the joysticks, where I believe Acer has MSI beat.

Audio from both devices was good, and although Acer's Predator Atlas 8 is smaller and ultimately more portable, I found both handhelds to be comfortable to hold.

In terms of performance, the Predator Atlas 8 was running demanding games like Hogwarts Legacy and LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight at a cool, smooth clip.

I'll have to do more testing once Acer's handheld actually arrives here for testing, but I don't expect it to perform any worse than MSI's new Claw.

Bottom line? It's the disparity in RAM and SSD configurations at launch that's helping keep Acer's gaming handheld at a much more reasonable price.

Is Acer's $1,299.99 Predator Atlas 8 actually cheap?

In June, I wrote about how you could buy an Xbox Series X, PS5, and Switch 2 for less money than the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+, amidst rising concerns that the handheld market was cooked for good.

That's not quite the case for Acer's Predator Atlas 8, especially with console prices on the rise, but that doesn't make it affordable.

Keep in mind that the Steam Deck, which kicked off the gaming handheld craze, launched at just $399 in 2022.

No, the Steam Deck isn't nearly as powerful as the new Arc G3 devices, but it was priced to sell. Is Acer's Predator Atlas 8 affordable relative to today's overall market? Absolutely.

As mentioned, the Predator Atlas 8 Best Buy preorder page is down at the time of writing this piece. Check back soon, especially after November 1, when the handheld actually launches, to see if prices have changed.

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Some modern mid-range laptops have become a tougher sell as prices continue to climb from the ongoing memory crisis. Thankfully, Amazon's time-limited deal has dropped HP's OmniBook 5 laptop to $789.99 after its price has fluctuated over the past year. While it isn't a lowest-ever drop, it's certainly a fairer price.

Why buy this laptop?

This laptop features Qualcomm's Snapdragon X processor and 16GB of RAM. Pair that with an NPU capable of 45 TOPS, and the HP OmniBook 5 can handle web browsing, mid-level productivity tasks like typing reports, and local AI-empowered tasks.

It also features a 512GB SSD to store data, a thin design that's able to keep itself cool, a 2K OLED display capable of rendering images with sharp images and vibrant colors to give your work greater clarity, and best of all, a massive battery life of up to 34 hours and 45 minutes before needing a recharge.

So if you need a laptop that will last you all day at the office and doesn't require heavy-duty engineering, the HP OmniBook 5 should be on your list for your next choice.

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It's also been my gaming handheld replacement, my home base for local AI testing, my sketchpad to practice digital drawing, and my entertainment hub.

This pricey Lenovo Pro 9n isn't for everyone despite its broad versatility. That's true about any of the new RTX Spark laptops.

I'm looking to see how Lenovo's offering differs from the others — including the Surface Laptop Ultra and ASUS ProArt P16 we reviewed — in terms of features, design, and performance.

Lenovo sent Windows Central a review unit on loan for testing. It had no input, nor saw the contents of this review, prior to publication.

Lenovo Pro 9n: Price and specifications

Lenovo's Pro 9n starts at $2,999.99, putting it near the middle of the RTX Spark lineup.

For this price, you get an 18-core NVIDIA N1X CPU, integrated RTX Blackwell GPU with 5,120 cores, 32GB of LPDDR5x unified RAM, a 512GB M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, and a 15.3-inch OLED touch display at a 2560x1600 resolution.

Lenovo offers configuration options for CPU, RAM, and storage. The top spec with a 20-core N1X CPU, 6144-core GPU, 128GB RAM, and 2TB PCIe 5.0 SSD balloons to $6,099.99, with several stops along the way.

New designs and updated features for the RTX Spark platform

The design of Lenovo's Pro 9n has grown on me over the weeks. What I first saw as uninspired has morphed into something that's sleek, relatively lightweight, and ultimately perfect for a professional setting.

With an aluminum top and bottom that add rigidity and a more premium feel than plastic, the PC still manages to slide in at 3.64 pounds (1.65kg) while measuring just 0.66 inches (1.67cm) thin.

The 15.3-inch display translates to a smaller footprint than a full 16-inch PC, and I found it to be an apt size for working in the passenger seat of a car. It should also translate well to airplane trays or train seats.

The thermal layout has been redesigned for the new RTX Spark chip (which I explore below), resulting in a massive air intake on the bottom of the PC and larger vents on the rear edge for exhaust.

This setup keeps hot air directed away from the user and, as you'll see below, it does a decent job of keeping the PC cool under load.

This leaves plenty of space along the sides for ports. On the left are HDMI 2.1, USB-A 3.2 (always on), USB4, and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the right side are another USB-A 3.2, USB4, and a UHS-II SD card reader.

At no time did I feel the need to grab a dongle for an accessory, especially with Bluetooth 5.4 on board, and the native HDMI port makes it easy to plug into an external display without a docking station.

On the note of wireless, cutting-edge Wi-Fi 7 is on board for excellent throughput and future-proofing.

Lenovo's keyboard and haptic touchpad are among the best

The Pro 9n is the first Lenovo laptop to receive its new haptic touchpad with inking compatibility. Paired with the bundled Yoga Pen (Gen 2), it turns the PC into a creative tablet of sorts.

I'm no artist, but I was able to get down some rough sketches using the awesome Krita drawing app. I found the touchpad's 3.74 x 3.94-inch dimensions were large enough to comfortably write and draw, and the inking feel is outstanding.

My only gripes are likely from me reading too much into the feature. Drawing on the pad often left my hand hanging off the edge (not comfortable), and it was sometimes difficult to line up my pen on the touchpad with where I wanted it on my screen.

Approach it from a rough sketch viewpoint, and you should find it to be quite useful. As for actual pointing and clicking, I had no issues. The haptics underpinning the pad are spot on.

The keyboard, which arrives flanked by a couple of speakers, offers deep 1.5mm key travel, three-stage backlight, and perfect spacing. This might be the best keyboard that Lenovo's non-ThinkPads have ever received, and I enjoyed every word I typed on it.

Circling back to the speakers, the two that flank the keys are each 2W tweeters, and they're accompanied by two 2W woofers on the bottom of the PC.

Sound gets loud without breaking. There's lots of bass. The highs are clean, even before adding any onboard Dolby Atmos tuning. The laptop is just as good for watching TV and movies as it is for handling creative work or jumping into video meetings.

A crisp webcam handles meetings on the move

Lenovo's raised communications bar located above the display adds a bit of space for camera hardware, and the company made good use of it here.

The Pro 9n comes with a 9.2MP camera, easily trumping the ASUS ProArt P16's 2.1MP and the Surface Laptop Ultra's 1.6MP cameras.

It's crisp and handles lighting quite well even without any Windows Studio Effects in play, and I'd say it's a definite upgrade for anyone who often finds themselves in video meetings and collaborations.

The IR sensor built into the camera handles facial recognition via Windows Hello. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to go the extra step to offer human presence detection. This doesn't seem to be a lock for the new RTX Spark PCs — the Surface Laptop Ultra doesn't have it either, but the ProArt P16 does.

An OLED display with color profiles for any job

Lenovo ships the Pro 9n with a 15.3-inch PureSight Pro OLED display. This is basically Lenovo's top-of-the-line screen for creators and pros, coming at you with X-Rite Pantone calibration and X-Rite SkinTone validation out of the box.

It hits Delta E<0.5, tops out at a 165Hz refresh rate (which can be set to variable for better battery life and eye comfort), and has Dolby Vision support.

Something I learned quickly was that the display presets in Lenovo's Vantage app are actually important. The Default mode in which the laptop ships favors sRGB reproduction. There are presets for AdobeRGB and sRGB (which pump up those sections), as well as P3-D65, REC709, and DCI-P3.

I was able to hit 100% across all color gamuts in my testing, but not all at once. You'll just have to be sure that you select the right config depending on the work you're doing.

I also measured 476 nits of peak brightness in SDR content, which pushes past 1,000 nits when HDR is enabled. I was able to work in a brightly lit room with only a bit of glare, but I imagine an anti-reflective instead of glossy finish would have gone a long way to eliminating glare entirely.

The screen is available in touch or non-touch, and the specs are otherwise the same. Note that the pen only works on the laptop's touchpad, whether or not the screen is touch-enabled.

The inclusion of NVIDIA G-Sync tech really props up the gaming aspect, reducing screen tearing and ultimately making everything feel much smoother, as you'd expect from a premium laptop that can game.

My only complaint is that Lenovo doesn't offer a higher-res panel. The 2.5K default is great for everyday work and gaming, but 4K would probably go a long way for some creators.

Comparing the 18-core and 20-core RTX Spark chips

My colleague Zac Bowden put together a deep-dive review on the 20-core RTX Spark chip, and I mainly wanted to see how the 18-core Spark alternative in the Pro 9n compares.

As it turns out, quite well. You get the same pool of unified LPDDR5x memory to pull from for the system and GPU, albeit in smaller quantities (32GB for my review unit).

You get the coveted CUDA cores (with 5120 in my unit compared to 6144 in the premier chip) to handle local AI inference. And you still get about 26 TFLOPs of graphics performance.

The following graphs show how the 18-core RTX Spark in the Lenovo Pro 9n compares to the 20-core RTX Spark chips we've already tested in other laptops.

As you can see, synthetic Geekbench 7 and Cinebench 2026 CPU scores fall accordingly compared to the 20-core Spark. Not by a lot, but it is noticeable.

The SSD looks comparatively slow, but keep in mind that most of these laptops have a mix of PCIe 4.0 and PCIe 5.0. In my test case, it's the former, but you can get the latter, faster drive in a 2TB config.

The weaker RTX GPU also showed a drop-off in Geekbench 7's GPU test, but it put up a strong fight in 3DMark's Steel Nomad and Speed Way tests.

Considering I was playing The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt Remastered at a smooth frame rate with ray tracing cranked up, there should be no denying the Pro 9n can game. Just don't buy it if that's all you want from your laptop.

I also began a journey with local AI agents on the Lenovo Pro 9n. I set up LM Studio on it and downloaded a hefty Qwen model, which runs surprisingly well on the system despite only having 32GB of unified RAM.

The unit I was sent to test is more geared toward creators who don't need the ultimate 20-core CPU and 128GB of RAM coveted by AI specialists, so I'm pleased that it's proving to be a capable local AI base.

I ran a few AI-focused tests in Procyon to see how the weaker RTX Spark chip in my Lenovo Pro 9n compares to the 20-core option we already reviewed.

There's clearly a drop-off with the 18-core Spark chip in terms of AI performance, and I'd recommend that any AI specialists out there opt for the 20-core option.

For creators, part-time gamers, and professionals without a direct focus on AI, I think the 18-core chip should do just fine.

Does Lenovo's Pro 9n get too hot?

The Lenovo Pro 9n's upgraded cooling system does a good job of managing thermal limits, and fan noise isn't bad, either. This is all with the system managing power automatically, which I found quite convenient.

During a lengthy system stress test, I never clocked the fan noise any higher than 43dB. They're audible in a quiet room, but they'd go unnoticed in a busy office.

My trusty FLIR camera is in the shop, but I did a surface temp test with my lap. During the stress run, it remained comfortable to hold. The keyboard side got a bit hotter, but nothing that gave me pause.

How is the Pro 9n's battery life?

Battery life is not as good as I was hoping, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon chips are not in any threat of being dethroned in terms of efficiency.

My Windows Battery report shows roughly 8 to 10 hours of real-world life on a charge. Keep in mind that I was doing a decent amount of gaming on battery life, which brought that number down. Still, that's in line with the other RTX Spark laptops we've tested.

If you are gaming on battery power and have settings cranked up with ray tracing enabled, know that I was seeing about 10 minutes of runtime for every 10% of battery life.

Indie titles that aren't as demanding don't sap the battery nearly as much, and you can enjoy a few hours of gaming without worrying about power.

Should you buy Lenovo's Pro 9n?

You should buy this if ...

✅ You want an RTX Spark laptop with a 15.3-inch OLED display at 2.5K.

✅ You dabble in drawing, sketching, and writing with a pen.

✅ You're a professional or a creator who wants one PC to handle local AI, demanding apps, and gaming.

You should not buy this if ...

❌ You want the most affordable RTX Spark laptop possible.

❌ You prefer a mini-LED display (go with the Surface Laptop Ultra).

❌ You'd rather use a convertible PC for added versatility (check out the Yoga Pro 9n instead).

Lenovo's first notebook RTX Spark laptop has been a ton of fun to use over the past few weeks, and admittedly, I regret that I soon have to give it up.

It's not perfect. I wish there were human presence detection. I wish there were an extra high-res display option. I wish battery life were a lot better. And I wish it didn't cost as much (which is an effect of the ongoing RAM and storage crisis, not some Lenovo decision).

But for what it is — a specialized portable AI workstation using the first generation of a new NVIDIA computing platform — it's among the most exciting and promising Windows PCs I've used in recent memory.

If you're a general creator who just wants to see the latest chip technology in an ultra-premium package, the 32GB model could be ideal for you, just as long as you can stomach the price.

Otherwise, it's mainly going to appeal to a fairly small set of users, but those who can take full advantage of the RTX Spark chip should love what Lenovo has put together here.

However, some retailers aren't waiting for that. Newegg is offering PC users massive discounts on PC bundles that feature high-end AMD processors, DDR5 RAM, and compatible motherboards to help satisfy your high-end gaming needs at lower prices.

FAQ

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

I said in my Surface Laptop Ultra review that its display features 1,344 local dimming zones, which is significantly lower than the dimming zones you'll find on a MacBook Pro with the same display tech. That results in a lot more ghosting and blooming, which can make the display feel stuttery and not smooth at times.

Notebookcheck's review claimed the Surface Laptop Ultra's display doesn't feature any local dimming at all, which naturally caused a bit of an uproar online. So, what's the truth? Does the display support local dimming or not?

I reached out to Microsoft again to see if it could clarify how the display works. The company told me that Surface Laptop Ultra does feature local dimming by default, with 5,400 LEDs across 1,344 dimming zones.

Much like any other Mini LED display, these zones adjust backlight brightness based on the content in that area. If a bright window is being displayed on a black background, the dark areas of the screen will be dimmed.

This behavior is what causes the ghosting and blooming effect on Surface Laptop Ultra, and is a side effect of Mini LEDs, especially ones with a low local dimming zone count. On my Surface Laptop Ultra in SDR, I can see the local dimming zones brightening and darkening as I move around a white window on a black background.

So, the display definitely does have local dimming capabilities. But it must be said that its performance isn't amazing compared to other Mini LEDs on the market. Whether local dimming is even working also depends entirely on your PCs settings.

The local dimming behavior is controlled by a setting in Windows Settings under System > Display > Brightness. With "Change brightness based on content" enabled, and the "Enhanced" display profile set, the local dimming support should function.

I've also found that you should turn off HDR for local dimming to be most effective. When HDR is on, the backlight is much more noticeable on dark backgrounds, likely because HDR requires much more brightness. A positive side effect of this is that this pretty much fixes the ghosting issue at the expense of local dimming performance.

So, the TL:DR is Surface Laptop Ultra does feature local dimming capabilities. You should have HDR disabled, with "Change brightness based on content" enabled and the "Enhanced" display profile set in Windows Settings for it to be most effective. On the flipside, enabling HDR reduces the ghosting and blooming issues, but decreases local dimming performance.

It must be said that the Mini LED display on Surface Laptop Ultra is somewhat disappointing. It certainly isn't as good as the Mini LED panel in a MacBook Pro, and I'm just left wondering why Microsoft didn't opt for OLED given that's what all the next-gen laptops are going with, including the upcoming MacBook Pro with touch.

Maybe, hopefully, a future firmware update can adjust and improve the performance of the local dimming behavior on Surface Laptop UItra. The most recent firmware update did fix flickering issues that people were having with the display, so anything is possible.

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The Windows Central team has had time to digest some of the new NVIDIA RTX Spark laptops that recently launched, and thanks to our in-depth reviews, I'm here to offer some insights as to which PC might be best for you.

I'm looking at Microsoft's flagship Surface Laptop Ultra — the first RTX Spark PC we reviewed — and the ASUS ProArt P16, a slightly larger option that we actually rated higher than the Surface.

Here's why the ProArt PC gained a bit of extra score over the Surface Laptop Ultra (and why that doesn't necessarily mean it's the right RTX Spark laptop for you).

Surface Laptop Ultra vs. ASUS ProArt P16: Specifications

Before I get too deep into my comparison between the Surface Laptop Ultra and ASUS ProArt P16, I put together this table for easy reference.

Standout differences at this point should be the display size and type, the port selection, and the dimensions, which I cover and explain in more depth below.

Pro-grade designs and features available in both laptops

The ProArt P16 is larger than the Surface Laptop Ultra. That's a given considering it has a larger 16-inch display. The overall footprint is a bit larger, but otherwise, the ProArt P16 comes out ahead.

The P16 weighs just 3.9 pounds (1.77kg) compared to the Surface Laptop Ultra's 4.41 pounds (2kg), and it's also quite a bit thinner, starting at 0.51 inches (12.9mm) compared to 0.71 inches (17.9mm).

The neat thing is that ASUS really doesn't make you regret that upsizing. As Windows Central Editor-in-Chief Daniel Rubino says in his ProArt P16 review:

Rubino does give Surface a nod for its "pure premium feel," although I'm sure some will love the ProArt P16's fingerprint-resistant coating that reduces smudges.

Which laptop offers better ports?

This first wave of RTX Spark laptops is fairly unified across brands in terms of port selection. Both laptops offer three USB4 hookups (using the USB-C form factor), but only the Surface Laptop Ultra has the nifty Magnetic Connect feature on one of them.

Magnetic Connect allows a connected USB-C cable to pull away from the PC instead of dragging it off a table, much like Apple's MagSafe. It's a great feature to have, especially with a laptop at this price.

You're otherwise getting USB-A, HDMI, an SD card reader, and a 3.5mm audio jack across both PCs.

Is the keyboard and touchpad different across PCs?

Speaking on the Surface Laptop Ultra's keyboard and touchpad, Windows Central Senior Editor Zac Bowden said, "This is probably the best keyboard and trackpad experience I've ever had on a Windows laptop to date."

Digging into that statement, Bowden clearly appreciated the 1.4mm tactile key travel that he called "incredibly satisfying and not at all fatiguing." The Surface's haptic touchpad is the largest ever in Microsoft's lineup, and Bowden says it "makes a huge difference in how easy it is to use."

Not to be outdone, the ASUS ProArt P16 offers deeper 1.7mm key travel and an equally enormous haptic touchpad.

Which laptop has a better webcam and speakers?

On the spec sheet, both laptops offer an FHD (1080p) front-facing webcam with IR capabilities for facial recognition.

Rubino states that "Microsoft still wins this category with Surface" and notes how HP's OmniBook Ultra with a 5MP webcam trumps both ASUS and Microsoft.

The big deal? The ProArt P16 includes human presence detection for increased security and convenience, whereas the Surface Laptop Ultra does not.

As for audio, each laptop comes with four speakers and Dolby Atmos support. Both laptops deliver some of the best sound we've ever heard, but only the ProArt P16 has top-firing speakers flanking the keyboard.

Mini-LED or OLED? Our reviewers prefer the latter

Display tech is where these two laptops really show a difference. Most noticeable is the Surface's taller 3:2 aspect ratio compared to the P16's 16:10 aspect ratio. The differences don't stop here.

The Surface Laptop Ultra has a 15-inch mini-LED screen at a 3270x2180 resolution, with 1,344 dimming zones, 1000-nit SDR brightness, and 2000-nit HDR peak brightness. It packs in a 120Hz dynamic refresh rate and Dolby Vision IQ support.

Though it's brighter than the ProArt's screen, Bowden says the mini-LED tech results in "a bit of blooming around bright elements on a dark background."

He adds that the backlight doesn't always keep up with what's on your screen, causing a slight ghosting effect in dark mode.

The ProArt P16 has a larger 16-inch OLED screen with a 120Hz dynamic refresh rate, and it's available in either a 3840x2400 (4K) or 2880x1800 (2.8K) resolution.

The 4K version is the primary option for models with 128GB of RAM, though Best Buy seems to offer a 4K version with 32GB of RAM. Despite a lower resolution, you still get 500 nits of SDR brightness and 1,100 nits of peak HDR brightness.

The 4K version hits 700-nit peak SDR brightness, climbing to 1,600 nits with HDR. An anti-reflective coating is included.

None of the mini-LED issues discovered in the Surface Laptop Ultra's mini-LED screen are apparent here, and you get the standard OLED perks of perfect contrast and vivid color no matter how you're using it.

It's worth noting that the P16 display offers pen support for inking. The Surface Laptop Ultra has no pen support.

NVIDIA's RTX Spark chip keeps performance close

A neat aspect we're discovering as we test RTX Spark laptops is how performance is quite similar. That's not surprising. These laptops use the same NVIDIA N1X chips in either 18- or 20-core CPU and 5120- or 6144-core GPU configs.

We tested both with the 20-core CPU and 6144-core GPU, and the Surface Laptop Ultra and ProArt P16 trade blows across benchmarks. For example, CPU performance is close enough that I wouldn't spend much time worrying about it.

The Laptop Ultra does great in lighter graphics benchmarks, though the ProArt P16 takes over in more demanding tests. Considering the ASUS laptop is thinner and lighter than the Laptop Ultra, that's a real achievement.

One area where the Surface Laptop Ultra pulls ahead is with its 1TB and 2TB M.2 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs that are way faster than the PCIe 4.0 options in the ProArt P16. Microsoft does drop back to PCIe 4.0 with a 512GB capacity.

Which laptop has better battery life?

The ProArt P16 has a larger 99.9Wh battery capacity compared to the Laptop Ultra's 92Wh, but that matters less than you might expect.

Both Rubino and Bowden were able to get around 10 hours of real-world use when not leaning heavily on the GPU. Both the ProArt P16 and Laptop Ultra struggle to put up strong efficiency numbers when that GPU is in demand, and in both cases, an AC charger should be kept nearby.

As for heat and noise, the Surface Laptop Ultra hit about 123 degrees Fahrenheit just above the keyboard. That's very hot, but at least the fans don't exceed 42 decibels.

Using the same FLIR imaging, we measured 105 degrees Fahrenheit in the same spot on the ProArt P16. That's quite a bit cooler, although the fans did climb closer to 50 decibels.

Surface Laptop Ultra vs. ASUS ProArt P16: Which should you buy?

Microsoft's Surface Laptop Ultra starts at $2,599.99 for a model with an 18-core CPU, 24GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. The ASUS ProArt P16 starts at $2,799.99 for a model with an 18-core CPU, 24GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD.

If they're so similar, why the price difference?

I'm pointing to the ProArt P16's superior OLED display with pen support, its thinner and lighter design, its cooler thermals, its deeper key travel, its human presence detection, its top-firing speakers, and its larger battery.

These are all noticeable benefits, and whether or not they're worth a $200 upcharge (to start) is really up to you.

I can confidently say that the Surface Laptop Ultra is a great PC regardless of how well ASUS put together its ProArt P16, and perks like a smaller footprint, a better FHD webcam, a cheaper starting price, a magnetic USB-C port, and quieter fans could weigh heavier on your shopping list.

It's worth noting that ASUS also makes a 14-inch ProArt P14 with many of the same benefits, all in a more portable package. Starting at $2,599, it might be the perfect third option for shoppers.

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According to the changelog, this firmware update was released on October 22, 6 days after the Surface Laptop Ultra launched. It appears under the name "Microsoft Corporation System Hardware Update (200.0.7.0)" in Windows Update, and includes the following fixes:

• Resolves an issue that could cause extended reboot times.
• Resolves an issue that could cause screen flickering.
• Resolves an issue that could cause unexpected restarts.
• Includes additional bug fixes and general performance improvements.

Reviewers (myself included) had noted that the Surface Laptop Ultra's Mini-LED screen was disappointing as the display suffered from ghosting and flickering. Microsoft says the flickering issue should now be fixed with this latest update, though the ghosting issue is still present.

I also mentioned in my review that the Surface Laptop Ultra suffered from really long reboot times, which made installing Windows updates and drivers a pain as it made the process take twice as long. That issue is now also fixed as of this latest firmware update.

Other fixes include performance improvements and a reduction in unexpected restarts (BSODs,) something I am yet to encounter on Surface Laptop Ultra anyway. It's good to see Microsoft moving so quickly to improve the Surface Laptop Ultra, which is expected to get firmware updates for 6 years, until 2032.

Surface Laptop Ultra is on sale now starting at $2,599. It's Microsoft's first RTX Spark powered Surface PC, which explains why there have been some teething problems with the platform. I expect Microsoft to issue more bug fixes and improvements via firmware updates over the coming weeks.

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That distinction matters when laptops start at $2,799.99 and go up to nearly $7,000, but I have a good reason for this caveat.

ASUS has designed this new ProArt P16 (H7607) primarily for people who create more than they consume: developers, engineers, AI enthusiasts, 3D artists, video editors, and professionals experimenting with increasingly sophisticated local AI and agentic workflows.

Indeed, NVIDIA's RTX Spark N1X combines a 20-core Grace CPU, 6,144-core Blackwell RTX GPU, native CUDA support, and up to 128GB of unified LPDDR5X memory. ASUS says the latter configuration can even run LLMs with up to 120 billion parameters.

If CUDA, local inference, LLMs, agentic workflows, GPU memory, or ComfyUI mean absolutely nothing to you, there are better laptops for your money.

If those terms interest you, even if you're just starting to learn about them, things get much more interesting, and you'll want to read on.

ASUS and NVIDIA had no input, nor did it see the contents of this review, prior to publication.

ASUS ProArt P16: Price and specifications

I focused on two configurations for this review. My 3K Nano Black unit packs 64GB RAM and a 1TB SSD for $4,399.99, while the top model jumps to 128GB RAM, 2TB storage, and a 4K OLED for $6,999.99.

ASUS also offers Nano Black and Neo White, although configuration choices are strangely interdependent. Changing color can alter the display and Windows edition, so pay attention when ordering. ASUS currently lists Windows 11 Home and Pro, 3K and 4K OLED options, and memory capacities reaching 128GB.

Interestingly, Best Buy offers a model with 4K OLED, 32GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage in that Nano Black ($3,399). While it's not cheap, it is still one of the more affordable models, and I think it's one of the more intriguing configurations for the general creator category.

But you can go even lower, as Best Buy's $2,799 model still has that 4K OLED, but 512GB of storage (you can add more later) and 24GB of RAM (obviously, RAM is the cost multiplier here in late 2026).

And don't confuse this H7607 model with the existing (and slightly older) AMD-powered ProArt P16 H7606. RTX Spark makes the H7607 a fundamentally different computer.

ASUS ProArt P16: Design and hardware

This may be ASUS's greatest achievement with the ProArt P16.

At just 3.9 pounds, it's remarkably light for a 16-inch workstation, undercutting the 4.5-pound Surface Laptop Ultra, 4.7-pound 16-inch MacBook Pro, and especially HP's surprisingly hefty 4.9-pound OmniBook Ultra 16 RTX Spark.

You absolutely feel the difference.

The ProArt measures just 0.51 to 0.63 inches thick, yet ASUS still squeezes in an enormous 99.9Wh battery.

Build quality is excellent. I'd give Microsoft and HP a very slight advantage for pure premium feel, but ASUS wins enough other categories that I hardly care. For instance, Nano Black's fingerprint-resistant coating also works surprisingly well. As someone who despises smudgy black laptops, I appreciate details like this.

Thermals are even more impressive. Under sustained heavy workloads, my thermal camera recorded around 105°F across the keyboard deck and approximately 120°F near the rear exhaust. That's a few degrees cooler than both the Surface Laptop Ultra and HP OmniBook Ultra 16 RTX Spark in my testing. Fan noise never exceeded 50dB under extreme workloads.

For something this thin, that's outstanding, since I expected sacrifices in both areas, not the opposite.

Connectivity is arguably best-in-class for RTX Spark laptops. It has three USB4 Type-C ports, with two on the left and one on the right, so I can charge from either direction, plus USB-A, HDMI 2.1b, a headphone jack, and a full-size SD card reader. To me, this is the right port configuration for this demographic on an RTX Spark laptop. I wish more companies would split Type-C ports on either side for easier charging, but some still don't.

All these small conveniences add up.

ASUS ProArt P16: Display, keyboard, touchpad, and audio

Both displays are gorgeous 16-inch OLED touchscreens with 100% DCI-P3 coverage, HDR support, and variable refresh rate from 30 to 120Hz. The 3K panel runs at 2880 x 1800 and peaks at 1,100 nits for HDR, while the 4K panel runs at 3840 x 2400, peaks at 1,600 nits for HDR, and adds ASUS's excellent anti-reflection treatment.

It's also worth noting that you get presence detection, an auto-brightness sensor, and adaptive (ambient) color, which are extra bonus display features I like to see at this price point.

Here's my controversial advice: I'd get the 3K display.

Placing both laptops together, I routinely guessed incorrectly when trying to identify them by resolution alone. Pixel peeping exposes the difference, but at normal viewing distances, 3K is plenty for 16 inches.

Unfortunately, ASUS forces the 4K configuration if you want 128GB RAM (unless you go through Best Buy, which has a 32GB model). I wish there were a 3K anti-reflective, 128GB option. That said, as someone who is a stickler for glossy displays, the 3K one is pretty good for glare, considering how much it bothers me.

I've also encountered extremely subtle flickering on my 4K unit. ASUS tells me a fix is coming, but I could also have a bum unit, so I have to have a chat with them about it.

ASUS deserves enormous credit for its display controls, though. MyASUS (its main control and configuration app) provides profiles, color gamut controls, OLED flicker-free dimming, pixel refresh, burn-in mitigation, and other OLED Care options. You can even directly adjust memory allocation to the integrated GPU, which is particularly relevant on a unified-memory machine.

Overall, I think ASUS has the best out-of-the-box software, at least compared to HP and Microsoft, with the most configuration options for audio, connectivity, display, gestures, and more, not to mention direct driver updates from ASUS, warranty info, etc. I rarely praise OEM apps, but this is the way to do it.

This is also the part where I lament some pre-installed junkware, except I didn't find any on either laptop. These are relatively clean installs (except for whatever you dislike about Microsoft's inbox apps).

The keyboard is similarly excellent, with springy keys, 1.7mm travel, and a three-stage backlight with automatic sensing.

The enormous haptic touchpad might be even better. Haptic feedback feels superb; it supports Windows Haptic Signals, and ASUS adds gestures for brightness, volume, playback, and ScreenXpert. Those gestures are quirky, but also completely optional.

The four-speaker Dolby Atmos system is outstanding, and among the best I've heard from a Windows laptop. The 2.1MP webcam is less impressive on paper, particularly against HP's 5MP camera, but ASUS's processing produces a surprisingly sharp picture. Microsoft still wins this category with Surface.

There's even support for the optional $129 ASUS Pen 2.0. Using a pen on a traditional clamshell laptop remains awkward, but it's surprisingly handy for signing documents, marking up images, or quickly diagramming something.

ASUS ProArt P16: RTX Spark and performance

Unified memory allows the CPU and GPU to access the same large pool rather than dividing system RAM and dedicated GPU VRAM into much smaller fixed buckets. With up to 128GB available, that changes what can realistically be done locally with large AI models, complex 3D scenes, development workloads, high-resolution video, and anything else that can consume enormous amounts of GPU memory.

Then there's CUDA, NVIDIA's massively established parallel computing platform and ecosystem. For developers and creators, CUDA acceleration is fundamental to everything from AI frameworks and local inference to scientific computing and applications like Blender. Having massive unified memory alongside a CUDA-capable Blackwell RTX GPU is what makes RTX Spark particularly interesting.

I've already been experimenting with Osaurus and Hermes, combining models including Gemma 4 26B A4B, GPT-OSS-20B, Qwen3VL-8B, and Raptor 0.6 4B. I'm still learning local AI and agentic computing myself, and I'll be updating this review and writing more about that journey as I figure out what works, what doesn't, and what you can realistically accomplish locally.

Looking across all my benchmarks, however, there's another interesting conclusion: which RTX Spark laptop you buy matters considerably less for raw performance than you might expect.

The ProArt P16, Surface Laptop Ultra, and HP OmniBook Ultra 16 (review forthcoming) trade places depending on the benchmark, but they're generally clustered surprisingly close together. In Geekbench 7, for instance, the ASUS actually posts the best multi-core result of the three, while single-core performance is separated by barely anything. CUDA testing is essentially a three-way tie. The 4K ASUS scored 187,547 against HP's 187,569, a difference so tiny it is meaningless.

That's good evidence of how consistent NVIDIA's N1X platform is between manufacturers.

Graphics benchmarks reveal somewhat more variation. The ProArt P16's 11,840 result in 3DMark Time Spy trails the Surface Laptop Ultra's 12,771 and HP's 13,080 by around 7% and 9%, respectively. Speed Way and Steel Nomad tell roughly the same story, with ASUS usually sitting a few percentage points behind Microsoft and HP.

Yet even that isn't universal. In the heavier Time Spy Extreme test, the ProArt P16 actually beats both of them, scoring 6,006 compared to 5,857 for Surface and 5,492 for HP.

In other words, I wouldn't declare any of these RTX Spark laptops the definitive performance winner. We're talking about variations of the same extraordinarily powerful NVIDIA platform, and the rankings shift depending on the workload.

It's also worth remembering what ASUS has achieved physically. At 3.9 pounds and as little as 0.51 inches thick, the ProArt P16 is substantially lighter than its RTX Spark rivals while still maintaining excellent temperatures and relatively restrained fan noise. Some performance variation could plausibly be the consequence of fitting N1X into a thinner, lighter thermal envelope, but ASUS certainly hasn't compromised performance enough that I'd choose a much heavier laptop based on these benchmark differences alone.

The one performance result I would criticize is the SSD.

Both ASUS configurations are well behind the competition. Sequential reads hover around 7,300 MB/s, compared with 10,389 MB/s on the HP and a massive 14,647 MB/s on the Surface Laptop Ultra. Writes vary considerably between my ASUS configurations, too, from 4,124 MB/s on the 3K model to 6,720 MB/s on the 4K machine. Microsoft reached 12,711 MB/s.

Those ASUS numbers aren't slow in isolation, and Windows still feels exceptionally responsive, but this is a $2,800 to $7,000 workstation. Faster storage should come with the territory. At least ASUS provides a second PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot for expansion, so you can add a seriously fast SSD later.

Gaming performance is also surprisingly good. I've played Gears of War: E-Day at maximum settings without issue, while Minecraft Dungeons II looked and played fantastic aside from occasional frustrating stutters. NVIDIA's latest Game Ready Driver appears to have fixed the latter on my machine, which suggests some of RTX Spark's early gaming quirks may improve as drivers mature.

And RTX Spark is legitimately fast here. Time Spy places the ProArt P16 ahead of the RTX 5070-equipped Dell 16 Premium, while Steel Nomad and Speed Way put it comfortably ahead of an RTX 5050 Laptop GPU. A conventional gaming laptop remains the smarter purchase if gaming is your priority, but RTX Spark owners certainly don't need a second computer just to play PC games.

Ultimately, that's the performance story of the ProArt P16: ASUS gives up remarkably little despite building one of the lightest and thinnest RTX Spark laptops I've tested. Its N1X CPU and CUDA performance are right up there with Surface and HP; GPU performance is sometimes a little behind and sometimes ahead, and the only consistent disappointment is the SSD.

For a machine that's almost a full pound lighter than HP's OmniBook Ultra 16, I'll happily make that trade.

ASUS ProArt P16: Battery life

Battery life is good given what's inside (a 99.9 WHr battery, the legal limit), though Apple and Qualcomm still have an obvious efficiency advantage here, and I expect NVIDIA to improve over the coming years.

The Windows Battery Report recorded 9 hours and 58 minutes of real-world usage averaged over several weeks, including web browsing, video, messaging, and lighter creative work, basically standard laptop work with more focus on multimedia production and some lighter local AI work.

Hammer the GPU continuously with rendering, AI, or gaming and expect substantially less. Physics eventually wins.

Still, I can't say I've ever had a Windows laptop this powerful, this capable, and this thin/ligyht, and still get that kind of "regular" battery life.

Standby performance is exceptional. Leaving the ProArt P16 overnight resulted in less than 1% battery loss over 14 hours, finally making this Windows laptop behave the way I expect a modern premium portable PC to.

The included 140W USB-C charger is slightly bigger than HP's, though still compact, and ASUS gets bonus points for the excellent thick braided cable.

ASUS ProArt P16: Should you buy it?

You should buy this if ...

✅You know the benefits of unified memory and CUDA

✅You want the best RTX Spark laptop

✅You want to learn about cutting-edge agentic AI workflows

✅You need a light, very capable workstation for 3D creation, video editing, or coding

You should not buy this if ...

❌You think this is just a gaming laptop in disguise

❌You don't know what agentic AI is and don't care to learn about it

❌You spend most of your time consuming content instead of creating it

So, should you buy the ASUS ProArt P16 with RTX Spark? Probably not.

And I mean that as a compliment.

The ProArt P16 H7607 is a specialized workstation for people operating near the frontier of what portable Windows computers can do. Someone mainly browsing the web, writing documents, editing the occasional photo, or even gaming can get an excellent laptop for dramatically less money.

But developers, creators, 3D professionals, AI researchers, and people seriously experimenting with local models and agentic workflows finally have what Windows has desperately needed: a thin, premium laptop that combines massive unified memory with NVIDIA RTX graphics and CUDA.

That's a really big deal.

ASUS then wraps that technology in what is arguably the best RTX Spark chassis on the market. And I mean that. ASUS has been killing it on design and features over the last 3 years.

At 3.9 pounds, the laptop almost feels impossibly light (for its class). The OLED display is beautiful, the keyboard and haptic touchpad are excellent, the speakers are outstanding, the ports are plentiful, the thermals are exceptional, and ASUS offers a level of hardware customization through MyASUS that competitors should copy.

Even the weird stuff is charming. My $4,399 3K review unit included ASUS's excellent $99 ProArt MD301 mouse and a protective sleeve, while the $6,999 128GB machine inexplicably included neither. ASUS notes that bundled accessories vary by country and territory, so your experience may differ.

One caveat: Those 24GB and 32GB Best Buy models are, I think, perfect, more general laptops for creators who want a premium Windows 11 experience with the latest technology. That's an easy recommendation if you can afford it.

The SSD should be faster, battery life can't match the best Snapdragon X2 or Apple Silicon laptops, and $7,000 is still an extraordinary amount of money for any laptop (though about $150 cheaper than a similarly spec'd MacBook Pro 16).

Yet none of those complaints change my overall impression.

The ASUS ProArt P16 is one of the best laptops I've ever used. For the relatively small group of people who can actually exploit everything RTX Spark offers, it may also be one of the most exciting Windows PCs in years.

And if you're simply curious about local AI and want to learn where personal computing may be heading next, the ProArt P16 deserves a spot very near the top of your shortlist.

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That includes the Dell 15 ($1,099.99 at Dell, was $1,149.99), Dell 16 ($1,199.99 at Dell, was $1,349.99), and Dell 14 Plus ($1,399.99 at Dell, was $1,579.99).

• See all deals at Dell.com

Which of these Dell laptops is best for you?

If you're looking for an affordable yet capable laptop, the Dell 15 offers the best value compared to the other laptops in this roundup.

It's equipped with a 15.6" (Non-Touch) FHD display with 1920x1080 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate to render images, videos, and writing with sharp details, so you don't have to squint at your work when typing or worry about blurry video feed when hosting stream meetings.

It comes with an AMD Ryzen 7000 7730U CPU and 16GB RAM that will make short work of Office, web browsing, and other productivity tasks while offering a ton of space to back up your precious files with its 1TB SSD.

However, if you've got the budget for more processing power, then go for the Dell 14 Plus Laptop.

It's won high praise from our friends at TechRadar for its 13+ hour battery, great portability due to its ultra-thin design, and 14-inch non-touch QHD+ display with 120Hz and Anti-glare protection.

Best of all, the Dell 14 Plus offers the best single-core performance for everyday use and heavy workloads thanks to its Intel Core Ultra 7 256V CPU, 16GB, and 1TB SSD.

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All the talk of passport-shaped phones, mobile multitasking, and optimized apps sent me back to the days of Microsoft's Surface Duo. A lot of the phrasing in iPhone Duo reviews could have been copied and pasted from reviews of the Surface Duo.

So, I put together a quiz to see if people can identify if a quote is from an iPhone Duo review or a Surface Duo review.

I've changed all of the quotes in this quiz as little as possible and all changes are noted with brackets. I only altered a quote if it includes something that's a giveaway like iPhone Duo, Surface Duo, Apple, or Microsoft.

I sent this quiz to a few friends and colleagues before publishing it. No one got a perfect score, and many only got 50% correct. I'm curious to see if that trend continues as more people take the quiz. Please let me know how you did in the comments!

Below are all of the reviews I used to create this quiz.

• TechRadar iPhone Duo review
• TechRadar Surface Duo review
• The Verge iPhone Duo review
• The Verge Surface Duo review
• 9to5Mac iPhone Duo review
• Tom's Guide Surface Duo review
• Tom's Guide iPhone Duo review
• Windows Central Surface Duo review

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X user Miguel C shared his progress on the project recently. The video shows macOS 27 running on an ASUS Zenbook A16.

Snapintosh is still in its early days. The Zenbook A16 can boot the macOS desktop with GPU acceleration and render what's supposed to appear, but interaction with the interface is "usable but not yet smooth," according to Miguel C.

You can learn more about the project on GitHub.

The term Hackintosh refers to a non-Apple PC modified to run macOS (hack + Macintosh). It was popular for years and not just among enthusiasts or niche creators.

It was popular because it allowed people to run macOS on less expensive or more customizable hardware than Apple's own computers.

New Hackintosh builds became increasingly uncommon after Apple switched to Apple silicon. Apple designs macOS around its own chips and hardware, making it increasingly difficult to run the operating system on unsupported devices.

Until recently, I would have said the days of the Hackintosh were over. But Miguel C's Snapintosh project suggests there may still be a way to run modern versions of macOS on non-Apple hardware.

"Hackintosh Lives," exclaimed Miguel C on X. He noted that people should expect the experience to be "very rough" and that he's "working on de-slopifying the codebase."

If Miguel C is able to refine the experience, it would be interesting to try macOS on a Snapdragon X2 chip. The general consensus is that Apple makes the best ARM processors right now, so even a perfectly optimized Snapintosh would not beat an M-Series MacBook.

But some people prefer hardware made by companies apart from Apple. There are also more affordable Snapdragon X2 chips on the market, so you could potentially get better value on a Snapintosh using certain chips. Right now, the project is limited to the Snapdragon X2 Elite.

Even if a Snapintosh fails to ever compete with a Mac, the project is an intriguing engineering feat and a reminder of the fun days of Hackintosh computers.

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This laptop is a great mid-range choice for students and office workers alike, with its above-average performance, battery life, and high-contrast OLED display that will help you get through the day.

Why buy the HP Omnibook 3?

Our friends at TechRadar have praised and recommended the HP Omnibook 3 in their coverage a couple of times, and it's easy to agree with them. It's a well-made laptop for school learners or desk workers who need a reliable solution for daily homework, assignments, research, creative tasks, and casual use without breaking the bank.

This laptop is equipped with Qualcomm's (8-core) Snapdragon X CPU to give it faster and more responsive performance when running apps, 16GB of RAM to help it multitask multiple apps without slowing it down, and a 512GB SSD to store precious data.

The HP Omnibook 3 also features a 14-inch 2K OLED touchscreen that displays images, videos, and livestreams with crisp and vibrant details, and a massive battery life of potentially up to 41 hours so you won't have to worry about it shutting down during work.

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Then again, I don’t hate Android with a burning passion, either, and I did recently stumble across something that might make me reconsider. ztOS is a new operating system designed to look and feel exactly like Windows Phone 8.1. It’s built on Arch Linux for ARM, complete with its own suite of apps.

According to the project notes, the ztMETRO shell and its components are written in C and accelerated with OpenGL. It also includes an SDK for building apps in Python and Qt, along with an updater to keep the system maintained. It’s a surprisingly robust setup for a passion project.

Windows Phone lives through Linux and AI

There is a catch, as usual. Currently, the project seemingly only works on the Samsung Galaxy S9. The project itself is in alpha, so expect some bugs and install at your own risk.

And yes, whether you care or not, the project is spearheaded by Claude. Because, well, everything seemingly happens through AI coding now. I’m guilty of it myself, having jumped on the FreeMyTV bandwagon to debloat my TV, improve performance, and get rid of adverts.

Still, I do long for Windows Phone. There’s a small part of me that hopes we’ll see it return in some fashion. Seeing all these wild AI-driven projects, whether it’s Xbox Labs reviving the Blades dashboard or Steam games running natively on Android or the iPhone, we're really in the midst of unknown territory.

Thinking of Windows Phone, though, really does make me facepalm at the idea that we maybe could have had a future where Windows Phones would natively play your Xbox games via the Xbox app. Imagine full cloud saves and achievements, giving you even more reasons to invest in Game Pass. But again, this is all just wishful thinking. Windows Phone is sadly, truly dead. Even I admit it.

Regardless, let me know what you think. Would you install a Windows Phone-like OS on your Android, or do you think Windows Phone should be left for dead and forgotten? Leave a comment down below and make sure you take part in our poll!

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The XPS 13's work-focused 16GB configuration normally sells for $999.99 at Dell, but Best Buy now has a cheaper alternative for $799.99, thanks to a limited-time 20% discount.

Why buy Dell XPS 13 laptop?

The new Dell XPS 13 has been making waves in the PC market for its shockingly high quality for an entry-level laptop.

Even our Windows laptop connoisseurs Zac Bowden and Cale Hunt were blown away by this laptop, with Cale calling it the "perfect starter PC" and Zac saying, "MacBook Neo's reign as the best deal in computing is well and truly over, all thanks to Dell".

They don't make those comments lightly because the Dell XPS 13 has plenty of features to help it live up to the hype and make it an easy recommendation for beginner PC users, students, and workers.

These include a strong battery life of nearly 15 hours per charge, a 13.4" 3K Touchscreen with 2560x1600 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate to provide crisp and detailed images and videos, and a solid, thin 0.5 inches thick chassis weighing in at 2.2lb for easy portability.

On top of that, the Dell XPS 13 has a solid and responsive keyboard, a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports to plug in useful accessories, an IR sensor for facial recognition, great-sounding speakers, Wi-Fi 7 support for faster and more stable internet connections, and decent performance for casual use and mid-level intensive workflows thanks to its Intel Core 5 Series 3 320 CPU and 16GB of RAM.

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Normally, the ASUS Zenbook A14 with its $1,349.99 price tag can seem like a hard sell compared to its cheaper (yet very capable) Snapdragon X Plus predecessor (usually $939.00 — $969.99), and its premium-grade Zenbook A16 sibling with its powerful X2 Elite Extreme CPU ($1,599.99 — $1,899.99).

Thankfully, with this 26% discount, the Zenbook A14 with Snapdragon X2 Elite is now at a smarter price of $999.99 at Best Buy, compared its siblings.

Why buy the ASUS Zenbook A14?

For starters, ASUS' Zenbook A14 laptop with Snapdragon X2 Elite offers vastly superior performance for casual use and heavy workloads compared to its 2025 Snapdragon X Plus predecessor, while also outperforming Apple's M5 chip.

Additionally, this laptop also earned high praise from us for its exceptional battery life of 17 hours per charge, crisp 14-inch OLED display that runs at 1920x1200 resolution with a max refresh rate of 60Hz, and vast selection of USB4, HDMI 2.1, and USB-A ports.

Plus, this version of the ASUS Zenbook A14 laptop also has Wi-Fi 7 support for faster and more stable wireless internet connections.

So, if you're looking for a lightweight, compact Windows laptop that will make mincemeat out of CPU-heavy apps and workflows, then the ASUS Zenbook A14 laptop with the Snapdragon X2 Elite CPU will serve you well in the office or school.

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Indeed, I'm not even saying they sold out today, but rather that today was the first day I checked to see if there was any inventory left. Going by a Reddit thread, it appears it sold out sometime yesterday or Sunday.

That's a very impressive metric, when you consider the pricing here. The current ROG XBOX Ally X is available for $999, while this refreshed model (which is better in every way) is $300 more. And the $2,500 bundle is also no joke, especially for what many would consider a secondary gaming PC.

Sure, we can attribute this to limited production and a finite inventory on hand, but it’s worth noting that preorders began almost two months ago on August 25th, giving ASUS ample time to prepare for demand.

And we know there was demand. Looking at our internal numbers for click-throughs, we saw back in August an unusually high amount of interest in the ROG XBOX Ally X20, more than you might expect from the most expensive ROG Ally to date.

A lot of this goes back to what I've been saying for years: Gaming is one of the few price-proof areas in tech, practically insulated from the harsh economic realities that many people are facing, on top of the overall higher prices attributed to AI-driven demand for RAM and NAND (storage).

Whether a recession, a pandemic, a RAM shortage, or a crypto mining craze (remember that?), gamers are almost always willing to fork over big bucks to have the latest gear. It's one reason that, despite some of the doom-and-gloom over PC sales in the last decade, gaming PCs grew year-over-year consistently.

To wit, the MSI Claw 8 EX AI+ has an MSRP of $1,799, and still sold out within days, resulting in resellers on eBay pushing $800 over retail. And people were absolutely buying those, too, as I wrote back in August. That device is still sold out at Best Buy, which raises all sorts of questions about how tight production is on it.

What's the big deal, anyway?

If you haven't followed this story closely, you'd be forgiven for thinking this is just a simple refresh of last year's XBOX Ally X, albeit with an OLED panel replacing the IPS.

That ... would be way oversimplifying it.

Yes, the same AMD Z2 Extreme and 24GB of RAM are here (albeit slightly faster memory), so overall performance is very much the same, but ASUS basically completely rebuilt this entire device with all new components. In fact, I've been documenting all the changes that I've noticed and collected from talking to ASUS and from past press events.

So, here's what's actually new:

• Larger 7.4-inch OLED panel (up from 7.0 IPS)
• 1,400 nits peak HDR (no HDR before)
• 600 nits peak SDR (was 500 before)
• Dolby Vision support
• Corning Victus + DXC anti-reflection coating
• Smaller bezels
• Redesigned airflow channel specifically for cooling the OLED panel
• Completely redesigned PCB USB4 ports
• Upgraded fan and heatsink fins for better cooling
• Hybrid metal dome switches for a more tactile D-pad
• Transforming D-pad
• TMR joysticks (Hall-effect style)
• LEDs increased from 2 to 4 per stick
• Quieter, more tactile ABXY buttons
• Realigned shoulder buttons
• Smoked black translucent housing
• Rubberized ergonomic grips
• Upgraded microSD Express slot (up to ~1 GB/s)

And this translates into a major real-world difference in terms of fit and finish, as well as overall enjoyment of the device, which is why so many people are praising the build quality.

While Intel's G3 Extreme trounces AMD in performance, the overall gaming experience on the ROG XBOX Ally X20 is very likely the best of any handheld. Plus, a faster AMD or newer Intel chip would have driven the price up even further (see MSI's $1,800 Claw).

Of course, the one pain point is still ... Windows 11. At least for the out-of-the-box experience (OOBE), but we'll talk about that another time. Once you're set up, the Ally X20 is top-tier.

ROG XBOX Ally X20 is getting great reviews

It's worth noting that reviews, both professional and from consumers, have been near-universal in their acclaim for the ROG XBOX Ally X20.

Yeah, Best Buy only has 10 reviews posted, but it's a solid 5.0 across the board, with some noting, "This is the single most refined PC handheld ... I’ve tried." and "it might be the best quality handheld device in the market," and "ASUS Definitely hit it out of the park with this one."

Going by more professional reviews, IGN says the OLED takes the machine "to a completely new level" and argues that the extra $300 is "absolutely worth it" if you have the cash. Notebookcheck is similarly effusive, calling the OLED a "game changer" and describing the image quality as "simply stunning."

And one of my favorite YouTube channels, 128KB, dedicated to handheld gaming, also gave high praise (you can see the podcast embed above).

That kind of word of mouth goes a long way, and ASUS seems to have quite a hit on its hands despite the current market circumstances.

Of course, my review is coming out shortly, but spoiler alert: I don't differ much from most of the other conclusions. Sure, "The X20 should have been the original Ally X last year" is a common theme, but OLED displays this small with variable refresh were hard to come by in 2025, so ASUS went with what it could mass-produce at the time.

The Ally X20 selling out across every configuration shows just how aggressively ASUS has captured the handheld gaming PC conversation. This launch isn’t a blip or a lucky surge; it’s a clear sign that ASUS understands what Windows handheld buyers want and is willing to push the category forward faster than anyone else.

When a premium bundle disappears instantly, it tells you the audience is hungry, confident, and ready to invest in hardware that feels genuinely next‑gen. ASUS, in my opinion (and others'), set a new bar, and the rest of the industry now has to decide whether it can keep up with the pace ASUS just established.

Now, just give me that AMD FSR 4.1 update!

Anyway, let me know in the comments what you think about the state of handheld gaming in 2026, and whether the ROG XBOX Ally X20 is on your radar (if it comes back in stock).

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Thankfully, Razer didn't phone it in.

The new Razer | XBOX 25 Anniversary Collection (now available) takes three existing Razer products, the BlackWidow V4 75%, Basilisk V3 Pro 35K, and Hammerhead V3 X HyperSpeed, and transforms them with translucent green shells, Xbox detailing, and some fantastic use of RGB lighting. Razer officially announced the limited-edition collection in August, describing it as a collaboration with Xbox celebrating 25 years of the brand.

I've now spent some time with all three, and there's one product that immediately stands above the rest.

The keyboard is ridiculously good.

The BlackWidow V4 75% is the star of the show

If I could only buy one thing from this collection, it would unquestionably be the BlackWidow V4 75%.

It's absolutely awesome-looking in person.

The translucent green chassis and keycaps make exceptionally good use of Razer's Chroma lighting because you're not simply seeing RGB through the legends. The light spills through the translucent structure of the keyboard itself, illuminating the switches and keys and giving the whole thing this glowing, almost radioactive Xbox-green appearance.

My photos don't really do it justice. I've generally kept mine predominantly green for obvious reasons, but you aren't locked into the Xbox color scheme. Razer Chroma gives you full RGB customization, including per-key lighting, while the keyboard also has two-sided underglow.

There are some lovely smaller touches, too. The spacebar carries the XBOX 25 branding; there are Xbox-inspired symbols scattered across the keycaps, and the familiar ABXY colors appear around the arrow cluster. Razer has even included a dedicated Xbox key for opening Game Bar.

But perhaps my favorite finishing touch is sitting in front of the keyboard.

The included magnetic wrist rest has Razer and XBOX 25 branding prominently printed on it in green, and that's the type of detail that pushes this beyond feeling like a basic special-edition colorway. It completes the look.

More importantly, this isn't just a keyboard that photographs well. It feels fantastic to type on (read our original BlackWidow V4 75% review for more details).

Razer uses its Orange Tactile Switches Gen-3 here, while retaining the BlackWidow V4 75%'s hot-swappable design.

At $209.99 on Razer.com, it's admittedly not cheap. But if I'm buying something specifically because it's a limited Xbox 25th-anniversary edition, I want it to actually feel special. This does.

The Basilisk V3 Pro 35K completes the look

My second favorite is easily the Basilisk V3 Pro 35K (see my review of the original non-35K Razer Basilisk V3 Pro for more info).

I'm already a fan of the Basilisk line, and underneath the translucent green makeover, this remains a very capable wireless gaming mouse. You get Razer's Focus Pro 35K Optical Sensor Gen-2, HyperScroll Tilt Wheel, 13 customizable controls, HyperSpeed Wireless connectivity, and Chroma RGB.

Razer lists up to 140 hours of battery life over HyperSpeed Wireless as well.

However, once again, it's the execution of the anniversary design that makes the difference.

The translucent green upper shell lets you see hints of the mouse's internal structure, while XBOX 25 branding runs down the side. RGB lighting beneath the mouse creates a bright green glow that makes it look fantastic beside the BlackWidow.

Honestly, if you're getting the keyboard, you really should just get the mouse too (sorry about your wallet).

There's even a translucent green 2.4GHz wireless dongle! Nobody needed to do that. Razer did it anyway, and that's precisely my point about this collection. Everywhere I look, there's another little bit of attention to detail.

The Basilisk costs $179.99 on Razer.com. Yes, Razer has subsequently moved the Basilisk family forward, so you're not buying the newest generation simply because this is a new Xbox edition. But considering what you're really paying for here, namely an excellent mouse transformed into a collectible anniversary design, I'm not going to complain too much.

The Hammerhead V3 X HyperSpeed does exactly what it needs to

Finally, there are the Hammerhead V3 X HyperSpeed earbuds.

I've been using these with my ASUS Xbox Ally X, where they've made a great little companion for handheld gaming. They sound great, and the transparent green design is wonderfully nostalgic without looking cheap.

The earbuds themselves are translucent right down through the stems, while the charging case gets the same treatment with a large XBOX 25 logo across the front. It's distinctive without Razer needing to reinvent the product underneath.

To be clear, I'm not sure what else Razer could have done here.

These support both Razer HyperSpeed Wireless over 2.4GHz and Bluetooth 5.3, including Razer SmartSwitch, alongside up to 35 hours of total battery life. They're also IPX4-rated, and Razer lists surround-sound support across Xbox and PC.

At $119.99 on Razer.com, they're also the least expensive route into the collection.

This is how you do an anniversary collection

The three anniversary models carry roughly a $10 to $20 premium over their standard counterparts, depending on the product. That's the sort of "special edition tax" I can live with when I'm actually getting something special in return.

And, in my opinion, Razer really went over the top here.

There's a consistency across all three products that makes them feel like an actual collection, rather than three unrelated products that happen to share a logo and color. Put the BlackWidow and Basilisk together on a desk, and they look fantastic.

The translucent green plastic immediately evokes Xbox, while the XBOX 25 logos, custom keycaps, ABXY colors, wrist-rest embroidery, RGB implementation, and even that ridiculous little green wireless dongle demonstrate that somebody cared about sweating the details.

And that's ultimately why I like these so much.

Razer started with some of its best hardware rather than using Xbox's anniversary to dress up cheaper peripherals, and then went far enough with the aesthetic changes that they feel genuinely unique.

The Razer | XBOX 25 Anniversary Collection is available to order from October 20, with the BlackWidow V4 75% at $209.99, Basilisk V3 Pro 35K at $179.99, and Hammerhead V3 X HyperSpeed at $119.99.

These are limited edition, so don't be shocked if they sell out.

If I were choosing only one, I'd take the BlackWidow without hesitation. (But let's be honest: the keyboard and mouse belong together.)

A+ from me, Razer. This is how you do anniversary hardware.

Hit me up in the comments if you have any questions while I still have these on hand! And you can follow the rest of our XBOX 25 coverage as we round out 2026.

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That document outlines how long each Surface device will receive driver and firmware updates.

The support window for the Surface Laptop Ultra is not surprising. In fact, it's perfectly in line with other Surface devices. Microsoft splits its driver and firmware lifecycle into two different categories: devices released before January 1, 2021 and devices released on or after January 1, 2021.

Devices that shipped before 2021 receive at least four years of driver and firmware updates. All Surface PCs in that category have already reached the end of the driver and firmware lifecycle.

The Surface Laptop Ultra will continue to receive driver and firmware updates until October 16, 2032. Microsoft is quite specific about its lifecycles. For context, the newly launched Surface Pro 12-inch and Surface Laptop 13-inch will only receive driver and firmware updates until October 13, 2032.

Surface Laptop Ultra owners will need to make sure their PC is running a version of Windows 11 from the prior 30 months to continue to receive driver and firmware updates.

Even when a device reaches the end of its driver and firmware lifecycle, it will continue to receive Windows 11 updates.

Firmware is low-level software built into hardware components, while drivers allow Windows to communicate with those parts. Driver and firmware updates keep everything running smoothly. They can fix hardware bugs, battery drain, and security flaws behind the scenes.

Six years is a fair time for a PC to receive driver and firmware updates. Generally, the biggest bugs and issues should be sorted by the end of the Surface Laptop Ultra's driver and firmware lifecycle.

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For example, the HP Omnibook X Flip 2-in-1, with its crisp 16-inch display, all-day battery, and next-gen performance, is currently on sale with a 25% discount for $1,199.99 at Best Buy.

Why buy the HP Omnibook X Flip 16" laptop?

This configuration of the HP Omnibook X Flip 2-in-1 is the total package when it comes to casual use and productivity efficiency thanks to its AMD Ryzen AI 7 445 CPU, 16GB RAM, and 1TB SSD, offering fast performance when running programs, transferring files, or simply booting up.

It also features a 16" 2K OLED Touchscreen that delivers vibrant colors with 100% DCI-P3 coverage for accurate colors and 120Hz adaptive refresh rates to deliver smooth visuals.

On top of that, the HP Omnibook X Flip features an NPU with 50 TOPS to help perform local AI tasks, a smart hybrid build that can swap between laptop, tent, reverse, and tablet modes, and a massive battery life of 15 hours before needing a recharge.

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OEMs are also on board, with RTX Spark laptops launching alongside Microsoft's Surface from brands like HP, Dell, ASUS, and MSI. Our team at Windows Central has followed NVIDIA's efforts closely since its inception and has since gone hands-on with its wave of launch devices. This is everything we know so far about RTX Spark and what we expect to see in the future.

ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, and MSI all have new laptops with the RTX Spark inside, and reviews for many of those PCs just went live. We're still waiting for reviews of several RTX Spark laptops, but first impressions are in.

• DEAL: Get Surfshark VPN 86% OFF with Windows Central 🦈

Reviews for these devices rolled out a bit differently than other product launches. Experts and reviewers were allowed to share their thoughts about the RTX Spark a day before publishing any reviews of laptops with the RTX Spark inside.

So, if you want to see what people have to say about the processor, check out our RTX Spark review roundup. Below is a collection of opinions about the first wave of RTX Spark laptops.

Note that these reviews were made possible thanks to review samples provided by NVIDIA or laptop makers.

Surface Laptop Ultra: Reviews

• Windows Central (4/5): "It's a laptop for those who know they need it, and it's mainly for AI developers and high-end content creators. If you find yourself leaning on local agents to complete tasks for you, or enjoy generating images and videos using AI models, this is the laptop for you."
• Tom's Hardware (3.5/5): "If you want the nicest Surface Laptop Microsoft has ever released, the Surface Laptop Ultra is for you. The system definitely copies the MacBook Pro in some areas, but is a luxury machine with a solid build, exceptionally bright display, a clever charging connector, and powerful components. It's the most exciting Surface hardware in years, and I hope it’s a signal that Microsoft is looking at the brand for more reinvention."
• The Verge (6/10): "Microsoft has come closer than ever to building a Windows alternative to the MacBook Pro. The hardware looks and feels great, and Nvidia’s GPU brings CUDA support and decent gaming capabilities to a high-end laptop design. But the Surface Laptop Ultra’s biggest selling point is also its biggest question mark: local AI. It all feels like a work in progress."
• Wired (7/10):"The Surface Laptop Ultra is a true MacBook Pro competitor for Windows—if only it weren't for the lack of battery life."
• Gizmodo: "It’s not the most performant laptop available today. It’s not the cleanest PC experience, either. It is, however, a laptop that can finally close the gap between performance and battery life. With all the wrinkles ironed out, the Surface Laptop Ultra is the laptop I wish I could carry with me for work, pleasure, or whatever the AI overlords think to do with my degrading body next."

Asus ProArt P16: Reviews

• Tom's Guide (4/5): "The Asus ProArt P16 is an outstanding laptop for creativity, with its legacy continuing with the might of Nvidia's RTX Spark N1X. With an even slimmer design that's light enough to bring with you anywhere, a knockout OLED touchscreen with amazing brightness and colors, the right ports and battery life that can (finally) get you past a workday and still have juice left, Asus has done its creator laptop justice."
• Trusted Reviews (4.5/5): "The Asus ProArt P16 (2026, RTX Spark) is a slim, stunning creator laptop that shows what RTX Spark can do, with standout integrated graphics, capable performance and nearly 14 hours of battery life. Gaming is a little behind a discrete RTX 5070 and the screen is slightly dim next to other ProArts, but it’s an impressive debut for Nvidia’s Windows chip."
• Notebookcheck (9/10): "The new ProArt P16 is a stunning laptop and even after using it for more than a week, we are still baffled how thin and light this 16-inch laptop really is without compromising in terms of stability, build quality or features. "
• Wccftech: "The ASUS ProArt P16 with NVIDIA RTX Spark N1X feels like a genuine first-class Windows PC rather than a compromised “Windows on Arm” experiment."

HP OmniBook Ultra 16: Reviews

• Tom's Guide (4/5): "The HP OmniBook Ultra 16 isn’t a laptop for general customers, but it’s great at what it was designed for. If you want a portable device for on-device AI work or creative projects, you won’t go wrong here. The fact that the laptop is a beautiful piece of work only sweetens the deal."

RTX Spark laptops reviews

Overall, reviews of the first RTX Spark laptops are positive. Unsurprisingly, they focus largely on the RTX Spark itself. That makes sense considering many of these laptops have sibling devices with chips from other companies.

Many called the RTX Spark laptops "MacBook Pro competitors," which is praise when coming from just about any laptop reviewer. Being mentioned alongside the MacBook Pro remains one of the highest compliments a laptop can receive.

Like the RTX Spark itself, these laptops should be viewed in the context of their target audience. They're primarily designed for creators and developers, though different models lean more heavily toward one group or the other.

While they're capable of playing games, gaming is not the primary focus of these devices. None of them are gaming laptops at this point, even though they're capable of playing many games.

But with so many devices launching today, we're still waiting for hands-on experience with quite a few RTX Spark laptops. Publications have taken different approaches to covering these laptops since so many RTX Spark devices launched at once. Some got their hands on as many as possible and are working to review each one separately. Others focused on the Surface Laptop Ultra, presumably due to availability and the fact that it's made by Microsoft.

As we wait for more first-hand experience with the RTX Spark laptops in everyday use, you can check out gaming comparisons of the PCs. Our friends at Tom's Guide tested six RTX Spark laptops for gaming.

The first wave of RTX Spark laptops are hitting shelves now. Our Cale Hunt rounded up all the RTX Spark laptops you can buy.

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

Lenovo is aiming its 15.3-inch Pro 9n directly at creators handling demanding 3D rendering and video editing tasks. Its 2.5K OLED display with Pantone color validation, its four Dolby Atmos speakers, its pen-enabled haptic touchpad, and its newfound RTX performance all play into this direction.

Of course, thanks to NVIDIA's RTX Spark chip, it's also suited for local AI workflows, software development, and gaming.

I received the new RTX Spark-powered Lenovo Pro 9n laptop a couple of days ahead of the review embargo. I've been using it steadily since then to get some early first impressions before I start harassing it with benchmarking software. Here's what I've learned so far.

This hands-on was made possible by a review sample provided by Lenovo. The company had no input on the content of this article, nor did it see the article before it was published.

Lenovo Pro 9n: What's in the box?

The Yoga 9n laptop comes packaged — in a fully recyclable box — with a fairly compact 140W USB-C power adapter.

I haven't actually had to use it yet at the time of writing this portion, as all the downloads and puttering around I've done so far on the PC have only sapped the battery to about 35%. I talk about battery life, good and bad, in more detail below.

Lenovo also bundles the Yoga Pen (Gen 2) with each laptop. It's designed to work with the new pen-enabled haptic touchpad (which Lenovo calls a Force Pad), giving users plenty of space to sketch, draw, design, and write.

Lenovo Pro 9n early impressions — 3 things I already love

Lenovo's Pro 9n already has several features that stand out to me after a couple of days of use. I've rounded them up here to give you an idea of what we're working with.

I've also included some of the more concerning things I've noticed, which you'll definitely want to check out if you're thinking about buying this laptop.

Let's start with the good stuff.

Battery life seems solid ... most of the time

Battery life falls into both categories: What I like and what I'm worried about.

First impressions are very good. As mentioned, the laptop is sitting at about 35% after a day of downloads and tinkering around. That's with the PC adjusting its own power profile depending on the task at hand.

If you aren't hammering the hardware and are instead browsing the web, streaming video, answering email, etc., I'm confident that the laptop will deliver awesome battery life for day-to-day tasks.

I explain the flipside to the battery segment below.

Inking on the haptic touchpad

The Pro 9n's display accepts touch input, but it does not work with the Yoga Pen (Gen 2). Instead, the Pro 9n's new haptic touchpad measuring about 3.74 x 5.9 inches (95mm x 150mm) is pen-enabled.

As someone who rarely uses an active pen on any laptop that's not at least a convertible (allowing me to rotate the display around for tablet mode), I love this change.

The oversized touchpad provides plenty of space to work, and the feel and sound of the pen nib on the surface come out natural. The pen has 8,192 levels of pressure sensitivity thanks to AES 3.0, far more than I'm used to.

Lining up the touchpad area and the on-screen canvas takes a bit of guesswork, but I'll try it in more apps between now and my full review.

Display quality is outstanding

The Yoga 9n's 15.3-inch display uses a "PureSight Pro" OLED panel with X-Rite Pantone calibration, ensuring it's ready for specialized design work requiring accurate color reproduction.

It might be the slim bezels, or it might be the 2560x1600 resolution; in any case, it feels a lot larger than 15.3 inches.

I haven't tested it with a colorimeter yet, but Lenovo says the screen can hit 1,100 nits peak brightness with HDR enabled. I'd wager that's about right, because this thing gets very bright and I've had only minor issues with glare.

It's super smooth too, thanks to a 165Hz variable refresh rate that can automatically lower or raise depending on what you're doing. Lenovo wanted to deliver a screen for creators, and it certainly seems like it achieved its goal.

Lenovo Pro 9n early impressions — 3 things I like less

Admittedly, these three aspects I like less could turn out to be nothingburgers once I've spent more time with the PC. In any case, here they are, including more information about battery life.

A rather plain design

The Lenovo Pro 9n's design is not exactly inspiring.

This isn't just an issue I have with Lenovo's RTX Spark PC; it's largely the same across the entire product catalog, including ASUS, Dell, HP, MSI, and Surface. I imagine second-gen devices will receive a bit more flair, especially as brands branch out into more focused approaches.

In Lenovo's case, with such an emphasis on modern creators, the plain design doesn't quite sit right. Let me know in the comments section below if you disagree with me or have more to add on the subject.

I will say that the laptop is super sleek and not nearly as heavy as I was expecting. It only weighs about 3.6 pounds (1.6kg), and it's well balanced. Port selection is also quite good, with dual Thunderbolt 4, dual USB-A, HDMI 2.1, SD card reader, and 3.5mm audio jack.

Will it overheat?

The first few hours with the Lenovo Pro 9n involved some noticeably hot surfaces, but that seems to have abated now that it's all set up and finished downloading/installing updates.

Playing games causes heat to rise, especially when the AC adapter is plugged in, and it will be interesting to monitor actual temperatures and whether or not the dual-fan system can keep up with sustained heavy loads.

Battery life ... again

As noted, battery life seems great when you aren't pushing the system with anything too demanding.

I need a lot more time with the laptop to get a better idea of how efficient it can be, and I am concerned about how long the battery will last when the PC is under heavy load, for AI work or for gaming.

I gave The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt Remastered a brief play last night, and what I saw was not exactly inspiring. I was getting about 10 minutes of gaming from each 10% of battery, with NVIDIA's Multi Frame Generation turned on and off.

Final thoughts on the Lenovo Pro 9n before a full review

Lenovo's Pro 9n has a lot to unpack, and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what this new class of PC can do. First impressions are generally positive, although, as noted, there are some concerns about battery life and heat.

Do you have any questions that need answering regarding the Lenovo Pro 9n or the RTX Spark platform in general? Drop them in the comments section below, and I'll do my best to address them in my full review.

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

Antonline is getting in on the launch-day action by offering Microsoft Surface and Lenovo laptops packed with the RTX Spark, and we've rounded up Antonline's available RTX Spark offers for your perusal.

Do note that some of Antonline's RTX Spark laptop offers are only up for pre-order, while others are not in stock yet, so check back on its website frequently for stock updates.

What is the RTX Spark?

The RTX Spark is a brand-new ARM-based superchip platform designed by NVIDIA to make a PC more efficient when running high-end PC games and local AI-workflow tasks securely without compromising its performance.

The RTX Spark has an NVIDIA Grace CPU that can support up to 20 cores for boosted performance efficiency, and its Blackwell-generation RTX GPU has gaming performance rates on par with the RTX 5070 graphics card,

Additionally, the RTX Spark can support up to 128GB of unified RAM between its CPU and GPU, and it can generate up to 1,000 TOPS to boost its power when running local AI workflows.

One of our tech experts, Zac Bowden, recently benchmark-tested the RTX Spark and concluded that, and I quote, "RTX Spark is a super interesting chipset. It's forward leaning in a lot of ways, built on the Arm64 architecture that delivers serious performance and great efficiency. While its N1X CPU is just okay, its Blackwell RTX GPU really shines.

This is the first time we've seen RTX 4070-5070 level performance in an SoC that is this small and efficient. It's optimized for AI workloads, which is its strongest workflow by far. Quantized AI models run great, and with up to 128GB of unified memory, most mainstream models will fit entirely on the GPU without a hitch."

Zac also mentions that while it's great for content creators and gamers, the RTX Spark is best recommended for workers who run AI models locally all day, develop software, crunch complex data, and manage source code using thin laptops.

So, If you're one of those hard-working data crunchers in need of a powerful productivity laptop, then laptops built with the RTX Spark are for you.

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

Unlike most Surface PCs we see ship these days, the Surface Laptop Ultra is a lot of firsts for Microsoft. It's the first ultra-class Surface Laptop, designed from the ground up to compete squarely with high-end professional creator or developer mobile workstations.

It's also the first Surface to ship with a new silicon partner in the way of NVIDIA and the RTX Spark, which the entire ecosystem is rallying around to give Windows on Arm a shot in the arm. It's also Microsoft's first ever Mini LED screen, and the world's first laptop to ship with magnetic USB-C charging.

What I find fascinating about Surface Laptop Ultra however is that it exists because Microsoft's own developers and engineers wanted it. They built this laptop for themselves. It feels like the company got tired of looking over the fence at the MacBook Pro, and decided "why don't we just make our own version of that?"

It really is Microsoft's most powerful and most capable Surface PC ever, and a great stage for Windows. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's the best Surface PC for everyone. I've been testing the laptop over the last 8 days, and here are my thoughts on Microsoft's new flagship computer.

This review was made possible thanks to a review unit supplied by NVIDIA & Microsoft. Neither company had editorial input and did not see the contents of this review prior to publication.

Price & Availability

Surface Laptop Ultra is Microsoft's most expensive Surface Laptop to date. It starts at an eyewatering $2,599 for the entry-level configuration with 24GB of RAM, 512GB SSD storage, and an 18-core RTX Spark with 5,120 GPU cores. That's an expensive laptop, and it only gets worse the higher you climb up the specs ladder.

The model I've reviewed is the very top end configuration, with a crazy 128GB RAM, 1TB SSD, and a 20-core RTX Spark with 6,144 GPU cores. That model will set you back $5,899, which at these prices basically makes this a $6,000 laptop. That's an insane amount of money to spend on a laptop, but this configuration only really exists for professionals who need the extra power to run local agents and data crunching.

For video creators, gamers, and prosumers, you'll be more than well served with the lower tier models with 24-32GB RAM. All models come with the same mini LED screen, speaker setup, ports, keyboard, and trackpad. It's also available in Platinum or Nightfall colorways (aka, silver and black.)

Design & Ports

We have to start with how this thing looks, and we do need to address the fruit-shaped elephant in the room. Yes, Surface Laptop Ultra looks an awful lot like a MacBook Pro. I wouldn't blame the layman for even thinking it was a MacBook Pro from a distance. The square edges, large trackpad, and minimalist design echo the MacBook Pro from pretty much every angle.

But I'm not here to tell you that's a bad thing. The MacBook Pro is a beautiful device, which is to say Surface Laptop Ultra is also very beautiful. In fact, I think it even improves upon the MacBook Pro's design in subtle ways. The keyboard deck isn't surrounded by a plastic bezel like on MacBook Pro, instead it's softly indented into the metal keyboard deck which looks lush and seamless.

The corners on Surface Laptop Ultra are also a little rounder than the MacBook Pro, a design choice that trickles down from the corners of the chassis to the keys on the keyboard, and corners on the trackpad. It's an entirely consistent and well thought out design, which I highly appreciate.

Microsoft also doesn't suffer from the godawful notch that you'll find on a MacBook Pro. Surface Laptop Ultra's display bezels are uniform along the left and right, and slightly thicker on the top to accommodate the Windows Hello IR face unlock sensors, which are much better than a fingerprint reader.

I should also mention that the display hinge on this laptop is perfectly tuned. It opens with one finger, and is perfectly balanced to provide a satisfying level of friction as you open and close it. It's also rock solid when typing, meaning it doesn't wobble around at all when on a desk.

The port selection is good enough. It features three USB-C ports, a USB-A port, a 3.5mm audio jack, HDMI 2.1, and a full-sized SD card reader. Of course, the star of the show in the ports department is Microsoft's clever magnetic USB-C port, which replaces the proprietary Surface Connect charge port found on older Surface Laptops.

It's great to see a laptop manufacturer attempting to innovate and improve on the universal USB-C standard. Here, we have a USB-C port that is compatible with all your USB-C peripherals, but it's also magnetized, and with the included charging cable, magnetically snaps to the device just like Apple MagSafe, while using the same universal USB-C port.

How did Microsoft do this? Well, most of the innovation is actually on the cable side. On the laptop itself, the only real change is that the USB-C port is slightly wider at its opening, but the rest of the USB-C port itself is typical in its design. Microsoft placed magnets on either side of the port, and redesigned the USB-C connector that's attached to the cable to allow for the magnetic connection to be seamless.

The cable's male USB-C end is shallower than a normal USB-C connection. This allows for it to connect to the USB-C port without clicking in, which is what locks a cable to a USB-C port normally. Instead, the magnets hold it in place, which enables the breakaway design that differentiates this USB-C port from the rest.

That does mean the USB-C cable that comes included only works with Surface Laptop Ultra, and only in this particular port. Microsoft realized this would be a problem, and designed the power brick that comes with Surface Laptop Ultra in a way that allows the magnetic cable to attach to the brick instead. The other end of the charging cable is a normal male USB-C end, which connects to any USB-C port you want.

So you can still use the Surface Laptop Ultra's power brick and cable on any device or any port you like, you just have to plug the magnetic end into the power brick first. It's a genius design, and proves that Microsoft really thought of everything when it comes to this unique magnetic USB-C experience. I love it, and I hope to see it on more laptops in the future.

Surface Laptop Ultra is available in just two colorways: Platinum and Nightfall. To me, I think the Platinum version looks the nicest, but the Nightfall version looks clean too. The good news is the dark color does a relatively good job at fending off fingerprints thanks to an anti-fingerprint coating that has been applied to the chassis.

Display & Features

Surface Laptop Ultra ships with Microsoft's first ever mini-LED display, which delivers better contrast and brighter peak brightness over your standard LCD that has been found in all other Surface Laptops to date. Unlike an LCD, the Surface Laptop Ultra's mini-LED screen packs 1,344 local dimming zones, which allows the laptop to dim darker areas of the screen that don't need as much light.

This number is not as high as the mini-LED screen on the MacBook Pro, and this results in a bit of blooming around bright elements on a dark background. If you use Windows in light mode, this will almost never bother you. But in dark mode, in a dimly lit environment, it becomes quite a bit more apparent.

The backlight also takes a fraction of a second to keep up with what's going on on your screen. If you move a bright window around on a dark background, you'll notice the backlight brightening and dimming around the edges of the window. This gives off a slight ghosting effect which degrades the 120Hz refresh rate somewhat. It isn't noticeable at all in light mode, however.

This all leads me to say I wish Microsoft had opted for an OLED panel on the Surface Laptop Ultra. I've been daily driving OLED displays for the better part of a year now, and a mini-LED panel just isn't a vibrant or contrasty as an OLED display can be. The mini LED display is good, but not the best on the market, and it's certainly no OLED.

Microsoft tells me it opted for mini LED over OLED primarily for the brightness and efficiency gains. At 2,000 nits peak brightness, it is the brightest screen ever put on a Surface. But Tandem OLED displays are also very capable of reaching similar peak brightness levels these days, and so I feel the benefits of a mini LED screen don't carry much weight here.

If you're coming from a standard LCD, the mini LED screen will be nothing but an upgrade to you. It's color accurate, very bright, and its high resolution and 120Hz make reading text and scrolling webpages look and feel great. But if you're coming from a MacBook Pro mini LED screen, or an OLED display, you will notice the downgrade in contrast and more noticeable blooming.

• What is Mini LED? Everything you need to know about display tech

The display is also a touch screen, which is the case on pretty much all Surface PCs since the line began in 2012. Microsoft truly believes that touch has a place on the laptop form factor, and I agree with it. Being able to reach out to tap on a notification or hit OK on a window prompt is really nice, even if I don't use it all the time.

For pen lovers, sadly the Surface Laptop Ultra does not support pen input. Microsoft dropped pen input from the Surface Laptop with Surface Laptop 7, and the Surface Laptop Ultra has not restored it. This makes sense however, as the screen does not lay flat so drawing on it would be uncomfortable.

I also want to mention the fact that Surface Laptop Ultra features a user upgradeable SSD drive. That means you don't have to splash out on the most storage at the checkout screen. You can opt for a lower amount, and when you finally fill it, upgrade the SSD to something larger later down the line. You can't say that about the MacBook Pro.

Unfortunately, Surface Laptop Ultra is missing a key quality of life feature that I have come to enjoy on other flagship Windows laptops over the last year: presence sensing capabilities. My daily driver is able to wake up and go to sleep whenever I approach it or walk away, and Surface Laptop Ultra is missing this functionality entirely. A crying shame.

It's also missing all Copilot+ PC features currently. Microsoft tells me that RTX Spark is a Copilot+ PC capable chip, but that the suite of Copilot+ PC features aren't yet ready for the platform, and to expect them to show up in the coming months. The RTX Spark has a 50 TOPS NPU that will power these experiences when they finally do arrive.

Keyboard & Trackpad