A week with RTX Spark: everything we’ve learned using Nvidia’s new laptops

Nvidia’s RTX Spark N1X processor is finally here, and we’ve been collectively testing a small fortune’s worth of powerful laptops sporting this new “superchip.” RTX Spark is designed to be a high-performing Arm-based SoC for laptops and small desktop computers, rivaling the best from Apple, Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. It has loads of cores, Nvidia RTX Blackwell graphics, and enough power and unified memory to run sizable local AI models. The flagship placement is inside Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra with a staggering 128GB of unified memory, which our own Tom Warren fully reviewed. Sean Hollister has been testing a 64GB version of the Asus ProArt P16, which I’ve also been testing in its top-spec 128GB config. Since I’m the most spoiled of the lot, I also have a 64GB Lenovo Yoga 9n 2-in-1 and a 32GB HP OmniBook Ultra in for testing. All of these laptops have the same N1X chip with 20 CPU cores and 6,144 GPU CUDA cores, and they’re all wildly expensive — ranging from the HP OmniBook at $3,199.99 to the Asus ProArt’s $6,999.99. There’s an 18-core / 5,120 CUDA N1X chip in lower cost configs, but that only gets as cheap as $2,599.99 for a…