This week on the channel +19M views this week

Linus Tech Tips puts RTX Spark through the difficult questions

Linus Sebastian tests gaming, creative work and AI on laptops he ultimately finds tough to recommend.

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Linus Tech Tips Story of October 22, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? The channel's weekly summary: what went up this week, what is drawing views now, and where the channel stands among similar channels.

NVIDIA Tried to Tell me How to Benchmark RTX Spark

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0:00Linus introduces RTX Spark laptops and describes Nvidia's restrictions and advice on benchmarking.
4:01Gaming tests find good rasterization performance but inconsistent results against Apple and AMD hardware.
5:46Cinebench and Blender tests show the CPU trailing Apple Silicon and Snapdragon.
7:48CUDA helps with AI prompt loading, while text-generation speed is less distinctive.
9:08Playback battery tests fall behind the Asus Zenbook despite the Spark machines' large batteries.
10:48Linus concludes that the laptops' high prices make them difficult to recommend.

"Is keeping up enough?" Linus Sebastian asks during the productivity tests in "NVIDIA Tried to Tell me How to Benchmark RTX Spark." For laptops priced in the thousands, it is the question that gives this week's biggest new Linus Tech Tips upload its bite.

The review has drawn about 1.5 million views. Linus examines Nvidia's benchmarking guidance, then works through gaming, Blender, AI and battery tests. The picture is mixed: CUDA brings an advantage in AI prompt loading, but text generation is less remarkable, and the CPU trails competing hardware in productivity tests. His conclusion is plain: "These new N1X devices are tough to recommend."

Viewers are questioning the comparisons as well as the machines. Several ask whether a higher-spec MacBook Pro would have been a better match at these prices. That makes the discussion more interesting than a simple verdict on Nvidia: what belongs on the other side of the benchmark chart matters, too.

Spark occupied three of the week's five uploads, including launch-event coverage and an explicitly MSI-sponsored Short. Away from the laptops, a supposedly simple leak-sensor installation gave the Tech House team a multi-day headache. That episode had the strongest first-day start among the week's regular videos.

The freshest practical experiment is now drawing the most daily views: "Hard Drives are Expensive...What if I Compress my Windows folder instead?" Inspired by a Reddit user's storage predicament, it asks what happens when WinRAR meets the operating system itself. It is already approaching a million views.

Subscribers held steady while the channel added roughly 19 million views over the week; its current daily viewing is below its usual pace. Among nearby gadget channels, Marques Brownlee had a particularly busy week, while Unbox Therapy is running quieter than usual. For Linus Tech Tips, the liveliest ongoing question has shifted from expensive new hardware to squeezing more out of the Windows folder.

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What viewers say

Wouldn't a M5 Max Macbook Pro be a more apt comparison given they cost similar amounts to the RTX Sparks with the same specs?
@weiranSee it on YouTube
Would have been much more fair to compare M5 Max 128gb if we consider the spark laptop being tested were around 7000 dollars…
@baybursa6202See it on YouTube
Why not comparing with M5 Max with 40 cores? That is a direct competitor to AMD 395+.
@mk_quattroSee it on YouTube

1 more comment

I don't know about the other laptops but it really doesn't seem fair to us a Macbook M5 Pro with only 24 gb as comparison, it seems like a M5 Max competitor with that price.
@UYNikoSee it on YouTube

Public comments from the video's page on YouTube