The Verge tested the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra and found a gorgeous build, decent gaming and a local-AI pitch that still feels like a beta.
The Verge spent a week with the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra and came away impressed by the metal and unconvinced by the pitch. The outlet calls it a beautiful laptop built for an AI future that has not quite arrived. The verdict below belongs to The Verge, not to Savvy VibeZ, and we have not tested the machine ourselves.
What Microsoft built
Microsoft's own product page describes the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra as its most powerful Surface laptop ever, built for local AI and 3D graphics around Nvidia's RTX Spark chip. The Verge's unit was the top model at $5,899, with a 20-core CPU, a 6,144-CUDA-core GPU, 128GB of unified memory and a 1TB SSD. The base version is $2,599 with 24GB of memory.
The reviewer liked the all-aluminum design, the large haptic trackpad and a 15-inch mini-LED touchscreen that peaks at 2,000 nits. Magnetic Connect, a snap-on charging port, was a favourite. The complaints were smaller: some display ghosting and lag, loud speaker pops that a reboot fixed, slow restarts, and a battery meter that reads 97 percent right after unplugging. Microsoft told The Verge the meter is deliberate, to reduce battery wear.
Local AI: where the review gets cooler
This is the part The Verge struggled with. Owners are asked to pick an AI agent during setup, and the reviewer tried Hermes and OpenClaw. A simple photo conversion that would take seconds with a PowerToys utility took minutes, with the fans running flat out. An OpenClaw request for a smart home dashboard ran for 30 minutes and ended in an error. The report says the agents are far from user-friendly and aimed at developers and power users.
The Verge did see a case for it: leaving an agent running overnight, or keeping private audio and video off the cloud. Still, many tasks would be quicker with a free cloud model.
How the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra handles games and the Mac gap
Gaming looked better. According to the review, the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra averaged 70fps in Black Myth: Wukong, 66fps in Cyberpunk 2077 and 57fps in Forza Horizon 6, all at medium settings with DLSS performance mode. Gears of War: E-Day managed 40fps, and Doom: The Dark Ages needed low settings to reach 60fps.
A 4K Premiere Pro export took two minutes and 18 seconds, about a minute behind the top MacBook Pro. CPU tests trail Apple's M5 chips by a wider margin. Battery life landed around seven hours with local AI and gaming, and ten or more with lighter work.
Our take
The Verge's conclusion is blunt: for everyone outside developers and AI tinkerers, cheaper laptops cover the basics without the premium. That is the outlet's judgment. Our own read is simpler. A laptop priced like a used car has to justify itself on day one, and this review suggests the software is not there yet. Waiting for updates looks like the safer move.
Picture credit: Microsoft
