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Microsoft just took aim at MacBook Pro M5 Pro. Its new flagship, the Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra, ditches Qualcomm for custom ARM chips that go head-to-head with Apple silicon. This is no doubt Microsoft’s biggest performance leap yet.
ARM is a processor architecture based on RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) principles. Instead of cramming complex instructions, ARM uses smaller sets of highly optimised commands that translate into faster computing performance.
The newly announced Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra is equipped with a powerful 20-core NVIDIA Spark ARM chip that promises to deliver workstation-class performance and directly competes on this front with the MacBook Pro.
Here is a direct comparison of specs and features between MacBook Pro and Surface Laptop Ultra
Surface Laptop Ultra has a hyper-modern, sleek clamshell design, whereas MacBook Pro features Apple's signature style, a uniform aluminum unibody enclosure.
Laptop Ultra dominates in size, with a 30% larger haptic touchpad and a versatile selection of HDMI, USB-A, and USB-C ports compared to MacBook's streamlined but very dense port options, which rely on Thunderbolt 5, HDMI, SD card, and MagSafe, lack USB-A, and require dongles for legacy peripherals.
Surface Laptop Ultra is highly durable with its CNC-machined anodized aluminum, giving it high resistance to chassis flex. It focuses on long-term usability and repairability with its user-customizable SSD. MacBook Pro is renowned for its structural integrity, featuring a rigid metal body and a solid hinge mechanism that provides zero flex. Internal components (such as unified memory and storage) are non-customizable and permanently soldered to the board, which is a major drawback in MacBook Pro variants.
Surface Laptop Ultra features a 15-inch Mini-LED PixelSense touchscreen that delivers up to 2,000-nit peak HDR brightness. The 16:10 aspect ratio allows for an excellent user experience with vertical scrolling and reading.
On the other hand, MacBook Pro uses a Liquid Retina XDR Mini-LED display spanning 14.2 or 16.2 inches. It delivers 1,600-nit peak HDR brightness and exceptional out-of-the-box color accuracy, best suited for professional videographers and designers.
Also read: MacBook Pro M3 vs Dell XPS 17: Ultimate Laptop Showdown
Apple M5 Pro performs 37.5% faster than NVIDIA RTX Spark and 48.5% faster in single-core and multi-core Geekbench 6 benchmarks, respectively. Microsoft’s version takes the prize with its NVIDIA RTX Spark GPU that can run various CUDA programs that won’t run on a MacBook.
Moreover, Surface Ultra is a far better option for gamers than MacBook Pro, which is underwhelming in gaming. Also, the complete specs and features of Microsoft Surface Laptop Ultra have yet to be fully disclosed. It will be interesting to see how tough a competition the new model proves to be to its rival, the MacBook Pro 5.
