---
title: "Surface Laptop Ultra’s Nvidia chip trails MacBook Pro in CPU and battery"
description: "Macworld's comparison: Microsoft's $3,699 Surface Laptop Ultra trails a two-year-old Apple A18 Pro in single-core tests and lasts about eight hours of video playback."
url: https://mactoreality.com/surface-laptop-ultras-nvidia-chip-trails-macbook-pro-in-cpu-and-battery
published: 2026-10-17T07:14:30Z
updated: 2026-10-17T07:14:30Z
author: "Mac to Reality Newsdesk"
category: Rumours
tags: ["Mac"]
publisher: Mac to Reality
ai_assisted: true
apple_heat_impact: 1
---

# Surface Laptop Ultra’s Nvidia chip trails MacBook Pro in CPU and battery

*Macworld's comparison: Microsoft's $3,699 Surface Laptop Ultra trails a two-year-old Apple A18 Pro in single-core tests and lasts about eight hours of video playback.*

**Key points**

- Macworld's comparison of early Surface Laptop Ultra review results found its Nvidia RTX Spark N1X CPU slower than Apple's two-year-old A18 Pro in single-core Geekbench 7 and 21 per cent behind the M5 Pro in multi-core.
- Microsoft's 15-inch Surface Laptop Ultra costs $3,699, while a 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro, 48GB RAM and a 1TB SSD costs $3,599.
- Microsoft promotes the Surface Laptop Ultra for local AI, but Macworld did not run AI benchmarks; Macworld also says Apple's M5 Pro and Max are the last chips of that design before an AI-focused M7 next year.

Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra has begun shipping, and [Macworld](https://www.macworld.com/article/3261999/microsoft-thinks-it-has-a-macbook-pro-killer-were-not-so-sure.html) compared the first review results, from its sister publication PCWorld, with Apple’s MacBooks on 16 October. The 15-inch model’s single-core Geekbench 7 score came in below Apple’s two-year-old A18 Pro from the MacBook Neo, and it managed only about eight hours of streaming 4K YouTube video, against roughly 20 hours of local 4K playback in Macworld’s MacBook Pro tests.

In Geekbench 7 multi-core, Nvidia’s RTX Spark N1X 20-core CPU beat Apple’s M5 but trailed the M5 Pro by 21 per cent, with the M5 Max well ahead. Cinebench 2024 results followed the same pattern: the Nvidia chip was slower than the A18 Pro in single-core and behind the M5 Pro in multi-core.

Macworld notes Microsoft’s marketing directly targets the MacBook Pro and encourages trade-ins. The prices do not help Microsoft’s case:

| Model | Specification | Price (US) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Surface Laptop Ultra 15-inch | Nvidia RTX Spark N1X, 20-core CPU, 6,144-core GPU, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD | $3,699 |
| MacBook Pro 16-inch | M5 Pro, 18-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 48GB RAM, 1TB SSD | $3,599 |
| MacBook Pro 14-inch | M5 Pro, 18-core CPU, 20-core GPU, 48GB RAM, 1TB SSD | $3,299 |

Microsoft promotes the Surface for local AI, but Macworld does not run the same AI benchmarks as PCWorld and held off on judging that area. According to Macworld, Apple’s M5 Pro and M5 Max are the last generation of that chip design; the M7, expected next year, is reported to focus heavily on AI performance.

## Sources

- [Macworld: Microsoft thinks it has a MacBook Pro killer. We’re not so sure](https://www.macworld.com/article/3261999/microsoft-thinks-it-has-a-macbook-pro-killer-were-not-so-sure.html)

*This report was written by the Mac to Reality newsdesk with AI assistance from the sources listed above, under the editorial policy at https://mactoreality.com/editorial-policy.*