The commercial debut of RTX Spark laptops drew more than 100 people to a line outside a Best Buy store in San Francisco, but not everyone in line was a committed buyer. Some attendees wanted to try the devices, meet creator iJustine, or get giveaways—a reception that shows interest in NVIDIA’s new offering but does not, by itself, demonstrate its sales success.
Before Friday’s celebration began, the line already wrapped around the store and stretched along one side of the building. Inside, there were laptop demonstrations, conversations with company founders, and promotional activities. Some visitors said they preferred to get to know the machines before deciding whether to buy one.
Cost was a concrete concern for several attendees. Some said they couldn’t buy a laptop at that time or thought it was expensive. Others stayed for the drawing for five devices signed by NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang; after the winners were announced, many visitors left the store.
NVIDIA lists a starting price of 2,399 dollars for the RTX Spark family, with devices from ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, and MSI. That figure is the company’s announced entry-level price, not the price of every configuration.
The offering combines a Grace CPU with Blackwell RTX graphics and up to 128 GB of unified memory. NVIDIA presents these Windows computers as an option for running artificial intelligence locally, as well as for gaming and content creation. These are capabilities promoted by the manufacturer, not results from an independent performance evaluation.
San Francisco was one of six event locations, along with Berlin, Beijing, Istanbul, Seoul, and Taipei. In Berlin, Huang made a surprise appearance and gave away five signed laptops. The events gave the public a chance to try the offering; attendance and enthusiasm, however, are different from a measure of purchases or sustained adoption.
Image: Attendees at the RTX Spark launch celebration in San Francisco. Credit: NVIDIA.
