I was at Computex this year when NVIDIA's RTX Spark System-on-Chip (SoC) was revealed to the world, and from the start, I had a hunch that it would be a big deal.
A powerful chip for Windows on ARM that can run every Windows app ever made? That was one of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's first promises.
With Microsoft as its launch partner, the Surface Laptop Ultra was one of the first RTX Spark laptops announced, but ASUS was right up there with its ProArt P16 and ProArt P14, two laptops I got to see firsthand in Taipei.
Incredibly sleek and streamlined, these laptops were a smash hit on the show floor. Apparently, they're also far more popular than ASUS was expecting.
In a recent ASUS Q2 earnings call, it was revealed that the company is completely out of ProArt P14 and P16 units to ship to its partners (aka third-party retailers and distributors) as part of pre-order efforts.
As one of the first manufacturers to launch RTX Spark-based systems, the market response to pre-orders for our ProArt notebook P16 and P14 has been intense. They are currently completely sold out. [...] Regarding current demand, the market response has far exceeded our expectations. Essentially, the initial quantities we planned have already been fully pre-ordered by our channel partners. We’re continuing to place additional orders with our partners.
S.Y. Hsu, Co-CEO ASUS (ASUS Q2 earnings call)
More RTX Spark laptops are on the way, of course, and ASUS has some time to shore up supplies before the planned Q4 2026 release of the new Spark-powered ProArt PCs.
It's too bad that the earnings call doesn't mention anything about exact volumes, because it's hard to say exactly how popular these laptops really are. However, ASUS says that it's "very optimistic about next year's sales" thanks to the "high AI computing power relative to its compact size" in the RTX Spark laptops.
What is NVIDIA's RTX Spark?
NVIDIA's RTX Spark is an ARM-powered SoC that's expected to compete directly with the likes of Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm for space in Windows 11 PCs.
I covered rumors of the "N1X" chip for months in the lead-up to Computex 2026, and indeed it seems just as powerful and efficient as pre-announcement estimates.
Spark takes efficient ARM-based CPU cores similar to those found in Qualcomm Snapdragon chips and pairs them with an NVIDIA Blackwell RTX GPU, all while drawing from a unified memory setup that can hit 128GB.
This combination allows for massive performance that can shred standard and AI-related tasks without requiring a bulky discrete GPU.
Throw these chips into ASUS ProArt laptops with "all-day-long" battery life, wide port variety, super slim bodies, and 4K OLED displays, and it's easy to see why there's so much interest from retail partners.
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