Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Ultra has built-in magnetic USB-C charging

Microsoft has created a magnetic charging solution for its Surface Laptop Ultra that uses USB-C. After scrapping its proprietary Surface Connect magnetic charging on its smaller Surface devices last year, the Surface Laptop Ultra has a charging cable that attaches magnetically to the right side USB-C port.

During Microsoft’s Windows event on Wednesday, Windows and Surface chief Pavan Davuluri said that you can just “bring the connector close, and it snaps right into place.“ It’s still a proprietary solution, but the USB-C port it slots into still works for video, data, and other USB-C connectivity like you’d expect. Microsoft is calling it Magnetic Connect, and I’m surprised the company hasn’t shortened that to Mag-C.

Microsoft first announced its Surface Laptop Ultra earlier this year. It comes equipped with Nvidia’s RTX Spark chip, which is capable of handling gaming, creative workloads, and on-device AI models. The Surface Laptop Ultra is available for preorder now and starts shipping on October 16th. It starts at $2,599 with an 18-core CPU, 24GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage.