Geekbench 7
Results are expressed as Geekbench scores. Higher scores/longer bars are faster. Surface Laptop Ultra’s Windows power slider set to “Best performance”
Geekbench 7 is an overall, general-purpose performance benchmark, and in Single-core CPU testing, the Nvidia RTX Spark N1X 20-core CPU chip in the Surface laptop ranks below that of the two-year-old A18 Pro chip in the MacBook Neo. In Multi-core CPU testing, the Nvidia chip beat Apple’s M5, but is 21 percent slower than the 15-core M5 Pro. As you can see in the chart, the M5 Max has a sizable lead over the RTX Spark.
Cinebench 2024
Results are expressed as Cinebench scores. Higher scores/longer bars are faster. Surface Laptop Ultra’s Windows power slider set to “Best performance”
Cinebench 2024 is more media-focused, rendering an image using Maxon’s Redshift engine. In Single-Core CPU performance, the Nvidia chip is even slower than Apple’s A18 Pro-surprising that a chip made for a mobile phone is faster. In Multi-Core CPU benchmarks, the Nvidia chip still lags behind the M5 Pro.
As far as battery life, PCWorld couldn’t run the same test we do (playing a 4K video saved to the laptop’s SSD until the battery runs out). However, their testing, which involved streaming a 4K YouTube video, lasted about 8 hours, a far cry from the 20 hours we got in our tests.
One last thing to note about the 15-inch Surface Laptop Ultra is its price. The model PCWorld tested costs $3,699 and has an Nvidia RTX Spark N1X 20-core CPU, a 6,144-core GPU (Nvidia counts cores differently than Apple), 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. For comparison, Apple sells the 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro 18-core CPU, a 20-core GPU, 48GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD for $3,599. So for $100 less, you can get an M5 Pro MacBook Pro that’s much faster in general use than Microsoft’s laptop. The 14-inch model with the same specs is $3,299, $300 cheaper than the Surface Laptop Ultra.
