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RTX Spark laptops from ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft and MSI are on sale now, from US$2,599
NVIDIA's Arm-based RTX Spark laptops are on sale now from ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft and MSI, with up to 128GB of unified memory and a big local AI pitch. The Surface Laptop Ultra starts at NZ$5,599, and early reviews say gaming isn't its strong suit.
RTX Spark laptops from ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft and MSI are on sale now, from US$2,599
One NVIDIA superchip: Blackwell RTX GPU, Arm-based Grace CPU and up to 128GB of unified memory
Heavy local AI focus: one-click agents, Nemotron 3.5 Bolt, Adobe and Blender betas, Broadcast 2.3
"Hundreds" of games, but most run through Arm emulation, and NVIDIA is still working on support for anti-cheat like EA Javelin, Ricochet (CoD) and Vanguard (Valorant)
Surface Laptop Ultra: NZ$5,599 / AU$4,399. Reviews say it's not a gaming laptop
NVIDIA’s big “one laptop for everything” push is here. RTX Spark laptops went on sale on 16 October (US time) from ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft and MSI. They’re slim Windows machines built around a single NVIDIA superchip, with up to 128GB of memory shared between the CPU and GPU. NVIDIA pitches them at creators, AI developers and gamers in roughly that order, and the press release landed in our inbox calling it “a new beginning for Windows PCs”.
Here’s what’s in them, what they cost here, and the bit the press release skips over: these are Arm laptops, and that matters a lot if gaming is why you’d buy one.
This is clearly where NVIDIA’s head is at. RTX Spark comes with guided installers for local AI agents (GitHub Copilot, Hermes, OpenClaw, Perplexity, Pi and WorkBuddy) that don’t need a command line, and NVIDIA’s own Nemotron 3.5 Bolt model on supported configurations. NVIDIA PAIR lets a Spark laptop run AI for other Windows, Linux and Mac computers on your home network.
For creators, Adobe has RTX Spark-native beta versions of Photoshop and Premiere out at launch, with Substance 3D to follow, and Blender support is in beta. NVIDIA Broadcast 2.3 can now clean up audio in recordings you’ve already made, not just live, and new RTX Video nodes in ComfyUI turn 15fps AI-generated video into smooth 60fps HDR. Developers get native CUDA and tools prepared with Microsoft.
There’s a launch freebie too: eligible buyers who are new to Perplexity get two months of Perplexity Pro and 3,000 bonus credits with the code PERPLEXITYRTX in the Perplexity Windows app.
NVIDIA says “hundreds” of games run on RTX Spark from day one. Its launch list of anti-cheat-protected games that work includes ARC Raiders, Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Fortnite, Marvel Rivals, Rocket League, Rust, The Finals, War Thunder and World of Tanks. Gears of War: E-Day and NBA 2K27 get a shout-out in the press release, and DLSS 5 arrives on Spark today, with a model NVIDIA says is twice as fast. Hogwarts Legacy gets DLSS 5 on 5 November.
Now for the fine print. On the same page, NVIDIA says it’s still “working with the industry” to bring BattlEye, EA Javelin, Easy Anti-Cheat, Ricochet, Vanguard and Tencent’s ACE to RTX Spark. Ricochet is Call of Duty, Javelin is Battlefield and other EA games, and Vanguard is Valorant and League. If a game you play uses one of those, check it actually runs before you spend the money.
The reason is the CPU. Grace is an Arm chip, so most Windows games, which are built for x86 Intel and AMD processors, run through Microsoft’s Prism emulation layer. The early reviews are in, and they’re consistent. Windows Central was impressed by how good the emulation feels. Tom’s Hardware tested the Surface Laptop Ultra and said gaming “isn’t its strong suit”, with CPU-heavy games hurt by the Grace cores plus emulation overhead. PC Gamer called it impressive, but not a laptop it would recommend buying just for PC gaming, and in its tests it trailed RTX 5070 gaming laptops at 1080p.
Laptops start at US$2,599, and NVIDIA says pricing and configurations vary by region. Microsoft’s local stores have the Surface Laptop Ultra, the cheapest model, at:
We haven’t seen confirmed NZ pricing for the ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo or MSI models yet. Check the manufacturers’ NZ and AU sites and the usual retailers.
Credit where it’s due: on paper, 128GB of unified memory and a real RTX GPU in a thin laptop with a proper battery is genuinely cool. If you run local AI models, edit 8K video or build huge 3D scenes, this could be the laptop you’ve been waiting for, and the ability to serve AI to the other PCs in your house is a neat trick.
But we’re a gaming site, so let’s be straight. This isn’t a gaming laptop, whatever the “Get gaming” bullet in the press release says. Games run through emulation, a pile of the biggest competitive shooters are stuck waiting on anti-cheat support, and the early reviews have it losing to cheaper RTX 5070 machines. For NZ$5,599 at the bottom of the range, “hundreds of supported titles” is not good enough when a normal Windows laptop runs basically all of them. And that’s NZ$5,599 against AU$4,399 for the same Surface. Aotearoa tax strikes again.
If you mostly game, buy a regular RTX 50-series laptop and keep the change. If you’re a creator or AI tinkerer who games on the side, RTX Spark is worth a look, as long as you check your games’ anti-cheat first. And if NVIDIA’s priorities lately are anything to go by, it’s pretty clear where gamers sit on the list.
Would you drop five grand on an Arm laptop that runs local AI agents and maybe your games? Tell us in the comments, or come and argue about it in the GetRekt Discord.
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