A week with RTX Spark: everything we’ve learned using Nvidia’s new laptops
Three Verge writers tested five Nvidia RTX Spark laptops for a week; the chip is fast but expensive, hot, and battery-hungry.Summary
Nvidia’s RTX Spark N1X processor, an Arm-based SoC with 20 CPU cores and 6,144 CUDA cores, has arrived in premium laptops from Asus, HP, Lenovo, and Microsoft. Three Verge writers spent a week testing five of these machines, ranging from a $3,199.99 HP OmniBook Ultra to a $6,999.99 Asus ProArt P16. On Windows on Arm, everyday apps mostly just work, and gaming is surprisingly viable at medium settings with DLSS performance, though CPU-bound titles like Helldivers 2 and Star Wars Zero Company struggle. Battery life is mediocre—around five to six hours of real work on the Asus P16, far less under heavy AI or gaming loads. Local AI is still a beta-style experience aimed at developers: it is private but slow, hot, and often beaten by cloud models. The hardware itself is largely excellent, with great keyboards, haptic trackpads, OLED screens, and solid build quality, but the laptops run hot, loud, and very expensive.
Compared with Apple’s M-series chips, RTX Spark delivers strong GPU performance without a discrete GPU, but its CPU trails Apple’s super cores and even a lowly M6 Mac Mini in multicore performance. The overall verdict: impressive for a first generation and a meaningful boost for Windows on Arm gaming and creative work, but too pricey, too hot, and too loud to wholeheartedly recommend. The writers hope for cheaper, more gaming-focused N1 variants and better CPU performance in the next generation.
(Source：The Verge)