RTX Spark laptop review roundup: a monster GPU, a so-so CPU, from $2,599

Our RTX Spark laptop review roundup starts with the change: for the first time, Nvidia makes the whole chip inside a Windows laptop, not just the graphics card. The RTX Spark (codename N1X) went on sale on October 16, 2026, from $2,599, and the first reviews now agree on what it is: the strongest graphics and AI laptop chip on Windows, paired with a CPU that is merely good.

Our 29-second version:

Image: NVIDIA (press release)

What is RTX Spark?

RTX Spark is a "superchip" that puts an Nvidia Grace CPU (built with MediaTek, on Arm) and a Blackwell RTX GPU in one package, sharing up to 128 GB of unified memory. The top version has a 20-core CPU and 6,144 CUDA cores; the other has 18 cores and 5,120 CUDA cores, according to Tom's Hardware. Nvidia says it delivers up to 1 petaflop of FP4 AI compute.

Launch laptops: ASUS ProArt P14 and P16, Dell XPS 16, HP OmniBook Ultra and OmniBook X 14, Lenovo Yoga Pro 9n, Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra, and MSI Prestige N16 and N16 Flip AI+.

How it works, in plain English

A normal gaming laptop has a CPU with its own RAM and a separate GPU with its own, smaller video memory (often 8–16 GB). RTX Spark gives both chips one big pool. That matters for AI: a model has to fit in GPU memory to run fast, so 128 GB lets a laptop run models that normally need a workstation or the cloud. It is the same idea as Apple's M-series Macs, now with Nvidia's CUDA software on top.

What did reviewers find in the RTX Spark laptop review tests?

Chart: NextDiff, from the reviews linked below

• Graphics: Notebookcheck found the ASUS ProArt P16 performs roughly like a laptop RTX 5070, with far more memory available to the GPU.
• Local AI: StorageReview ran a 35-billion-parameter coding agent at 89 tokens per second on the Surface Laptop Ultra.
• CPU: HotHardware calls multi-core performance strong, but single-core Geekbench scores land around Snapdragon X Elite territory and behind Apple's M5 Pro.
• Battery: Tom's Hardware measured 10 h 43 min on the Surface Laptop Ultra; HotHardware got 14 h 35 min, though it ranks near the bottom on minutes per watt-hour. Notebookcheck estimates about 14 hours of office work and about 3 hours of gaming on the ProArt P16.
• Unplugged: reviewers saw only modest slowdowns on battery, which supports Nvidia's claim of full performance off the charger.

Why it matters

Running AI locally is the main pitch. If you have been following open models like Kimi K3.1, RTX Spark is the first Windows laptop that can hold large ones in memory. It also makes Nvidia a direct rival to Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and Apple in laptops. New to the terms? Read What is an LLM?

Caveats and what's next

• Windows on Arm: most apps run, but StorageReview found some Arm builds (for example SVT-AV1 and GROMACS) lag their x86 versions badly, and some games or anti-cheat tools may not work.
• Price: $2,599 is the entry point; bigger memory configurations cost more.
• Early days: these are first-wave reviews; drivers and app support should improve over the coming months.

Verdict: buy one if you run AI models, 3D or 8K video on the go. For everyday work or value gaming, a cheaper x86 laptop is still the smarter pick.