Nvidia built the gaming laptop of the future. But don’t buy RTX Spark for games

But when most people think of an “Nvidia laptop,” they probably assume it’s for gaming. And the RTX Spark can do gaming. Quite a lot of gaming, in fact — the pre-release estimate that the integrated graphics run at “5070 level” is approximately on the money. I’ve found the initial testing on HP’s $3199 Omnibook 16 Ultra impressive, extremely so for integrated graphics.

Unfortunately, the price of these RTX Spark laptops — ranging from $2600 to $7000 at launch — simply makes them a poor proposition for anyone primarily interested in gaming. You’re paying a massive premium for the level of gaming performance you get, starting at about a thousand dollars more than an equivalent laptop with a discrete graphics card, and only going up from there. 

Asus

The RTX Spark is amazing. We didn’t need proof that integrated graphics could handle impressive gaming, not with the last few years of handhelds demonstrating it. But Nvidia may have proven that you can do it on Arm just as well, possibly better, than X64 chips. But you won’t be doing it on a budget, at least not with the initial chips and laptop designs. 

Compatibility issues, or lack thereof 

One of the potential problems that cropped up with early Arm-based chips from Qualcomm going into Windows laptops was basic app compatibility. Windows users remember the problems with Windows RT… or perhaps I should say, one of the problems with Windows RT. But in the time since, and the rise of smartphones and other devices based on Arm chips, those seem to have largely been handled. I’d have no problem recommending an Arm laptop to anyone, especially if they prized battery life over power. 

The big exception is gamers. Snapdragon laptops are, plainly, kinda crap at PC games, only handling older 2D titles with any deftness. So I was interested to see how Nvidia would handle this, since as a brand it’s intimately associated with PC games. In the lead-up to the RTX Spark launch, the company promised powerful games and “hundreds” of titles compatible right off the bat, prepared in cooperation with some of the biggest publishers and developers in the industry. 

Michael Crider/Foundry

And not much else. If anything, Nvidia is being a little reticent with its gaming talk for these laptops, preferring to talk about core power and AI capabilities. It lets you know where the priorities are.