At IFA 2026, the huge tech show in Berlin, Germany, Nvidia announced that laptops running on its ARM-based RTX Spark chip will be available to buy from October.
The biggest names in the laptop industry, including Microsoft, Lenovo, HP, and Dell, will all have RTX Spark devices, and I got to spend a bit more time with some of them at Nvidia’s launch event.
Having already seen a lot of RTX Spark laptops at Computex 2026 earlier this year, quite a bit of what Nvidia showed at IFA was familiar. There was, again, a big emphasis on local AI performance, which is undoubtedly impressive, but a bit niche for consumers, and I can see how Nvidia tech such as DLSS upscaling and Multi Frame Gen (MFG), which RTX Spark devices can make use of, can help content creators working on complex 3D art speed up their workflows (those technologies have in the past mainly been aimed at improving the performance of PC games).
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I also got to play a range of games on RTX Spark laptops, including DOOM The Dark Ages, and 007 First Light, and it remains impressive that these thin and light laptops are able to run such demanding titles with such impressive results. This is especially true when you consider that the games aren’t running natively on ARM, instead they are being run via Microsoft’s Prism emulation layer, which means games developed for traditional Intel or AMD (x86) hardware can run without devs having to make dedicated ARM versions. According to the Nvidia spokesperson I chatted to, the performance hit of running a game via emulation is negligible, at least with GPU-bound titles.
The spokesperson admitted, however, that CPU-intensive games (such as RTS games) could see bigger dips compared to running the game natively.
What is new at IFA is the announcement that RTX Spark laptops will go on sale in October. But, apart from that, details remain scarce – and that means it’s hard to get excited about these laptops just yet.
Keeping their cards close to their chest
Despite being about a month out from going on sale, Nvidia was tightlipped about a lot of things regarding RTX Spark laptops. The biggest question mark, of course, concerns pricing.
These are powerful laptops aimed at creative professionals, and will come with up to 128GB of unified memory, so I can’t imagine they are going to be anything other than very, very, expensive. The continued silence about prices doesn’t bode well for anyone hoping for vaguely affordable laptops.
One spokesperson I talked to did suggest there will be multiple yet to be announced configurations that will appeal to different consumers and price points, though they looked slightly doubtful when I asked if there would be an RTX Spark laptop that students could afford.
We still don’t know more about performance, either, as while there were live demos, raw performance numbers were not available, and I was not allowed to run benchmarks or change settings.
What I can say is that complex AI tools and generative AI features, all run locally on the laptops, and appear fast and smooth. Games also ran well. I was also assured by Nvidia that performance would be roughly the same if the RTX Spark laptop is plugged into a charger, or running on battery.
So, no power-conserving throttling it seems, something that Apple has long boasted about with its M-series chips.
A number of laptops from Nvidia’s partners were on display, but were turned off, and journalists were asked not to even pick them up, again an odd request considering these devices are supposed to go on sale next month.
I’m certainly impressed with what I’ve seen, and the potential of RTX Spark is huge. I’m also glad that Windows laptops look like they could finally give Apple’s modern MacBook Pros a run for their money.
But, on the topic of money, I really won’t be able to ascertain just how excited we should all be with RTX Spark laptops until we know more about the price – and with an October launch, time is running out.
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