Benchmarked: Nvidia's RTX Spark notebook delivers serious local AI compute, at a price
Nvidia’s RTX Spark platform has arrived in a new generation of Windows laptops, including HP’s OmniBook Ultra 16.
By The Register
Nvidia’s RTX Spark platform has arrived in a new generation of Windows laptops, including HP’s OmniBook Ultra 16.
The Register tested HP’s machine this week, focusing on its ability to run demanding artificial intelligence models locally rather than relying on cloud services.
The OmniBook Ultra 16 is built around Nvidia’s N1X system-on-chip, which combines an Arm-based processor with Blackwell graphics. The platform can use up to 128GB of unified memory, allowing the processor and graphics hardware to share the same pool.
HP’s laptop has a 16-inch OLED display with a 2,880 by 1,800 resolution. The screen is rated for up to 1,100 nits of HDR brightness, placing the machine firmly in the premium category.
Testing showed strong results for local AI workloads. A 128GB configuration completed the Qwen3.6-35B-A3B coding task in 72 seconds, producing 89.5 tokens per second. It also completed a larger coding task in 115.3 seconds.
The system used 62.5GB of its memory as GPU-usable capacity in testing. That gave it enough room to run both of the local AI model tiers examined by StorageReview, which tested the OmniBook Ultra 16 alongside other RTX Spark systems.
The laptop also completed an all-core OpenBLAS workload at 98C, while two Microsoft Surface systems shut down during the same test, according to the testing report.
Performance was less uniform outside AI workloads. The RTX Spark laptops were behind Apple’s latest MacBook Pro models in several CPU benchmarks, although they performed strongly in graphics and Stable Diffusion XL testing. The OmniBook Ultra 16 also delivered playable 1080p gaming performance in tests carried out by CNET.
The main drawback is cost. The 128GB OmniBook Ultra 16 configuration tested by StorageReview was listed exclusively through HP’s website at $6,229.99 on 14 October 2026.
The Register described the RTX Spark machines as occupying a niche segment: lightweight, high-end Windows laptops aimed at users who need substantial local AI computing power. Nvidia’s launch line-up also includes systems from Asus, Dell, Lenovo, Microsoft and MSI.
The HP OmniBook Ultra 16 is therefore positioned less as a mainstream laptop and more as a portable workstation for local AI, content creation and other demanding workloads.