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Intel has officially launched Lunar Lake, its new CPU line for thin-and-light laptops. We’ve had hands-on time with some of the first laptops using the platform, and they might just give Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm some real competition.
Lunar Lake, now known as the Core Ultra 200V series, is billed as Intel’s “most efficient” x86 chip range to date even as the new architecture delivers some tangible performance improvements. The performance cores (P-cores in Intel speak) are built to provide more power per area on the chip, while the efficiency cores (E-cores) can handle more tasks thanks to a claimed 68% boost in instructions per clock. RAM and other components are stacked on top of the chip to further improve the energy savings.
Graphics also get some help with an integrated Arc GPU whose second-gen Xe cores, eight upgraded ray tracing units, and Xe Matrix Extensions (XMX) that help with AI processing.
In practice, the company touts up to an 80% peak performance jump versus the first-gen Core Ultra (Meteor Lake) and up to 20 hours of battery life with productivity apps. The GPU is reportedly 30% faster on average than before, and can handle up to three 4K monitors. Wi-Fi 7 support also makes sure your network connection isn’t a bottleneck.
Not surprisingly, Intel is boasting about strong AI performance: the GPU alone provides up to 67 trillion operations per second (TOPS), while the combined platform delivers as much as 120 TOPS. That potentially trounces the 50 TOPS of AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 series, not to mention the 45 TOPS of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite. However well it performs in real life, it should translate to speedier on-device AI that also reduces your dependence on the cloud.
Laptops based on the new CPU are available to pre-order today, with over 20 brands committed to the platform including Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, LG, MSI, and Samsung. Intel says the first Lunar Lake systems have a release date of September 24th, although they won’t support Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC features until an update arrives in November.
Hands-on with Lunar Lake laptops
At an Intel briefing, Techopedia had the opportunity to see and briefly try prototypes of three ASUS laptops based on Lunar Lake: the Zenbook S 14, Zenbook S 16, and a business-oriented ExpertBook P5.
If they look familiar, they should. In a sense, the Zenbooks are the Intel equivalents to the AMD Ryzen AI version of the Zenbook S 16. That’s not a bad thing as they’re slim, sturdy and light, with even the 16-inch Zenbook S 16 weighing 3.3lbs (the 14-inch Zenbook S 14 weighs just over 2.6lbs). They have better I/O than Apple’s MacBook Air and Snapdragon-based portables like the Surface Laptop 7. I’m particularly enamored with the Zenbook S 16 — it could be a good desktop replacement if you value a large screen and healthy battery life.
Both Zenbooks have the good keyboard and trackpad combo from before, and a “Ceraluminum” lid that’s both premium-feeling and scratch-resistant. It’s not very fingerprint-resistant, though, so expect smudges that could last a while. The OLED display on both PCs is vibrant, as you’d expect.
More importantly, they’re quiet. Intel spokesman Felipe Curcio told me that these and other Lunar Lake PCs will still have fans, but it’s clear they won’t generate much noise under typical conditions. The 2.1GHz Core Ultra 5 226V in the Zenbook S 14 prototype was virtually silent during the demo, although we’d like to see how it fares in a stress test.
The Zenbook S 14 gets about 10 hours of battery life in the real world, according to Intel.
The ExpertBook P5 isn’t as slim and has the conservative design you’d anticipate from a workplace-oriented machine.
Intel vs. the competition: Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm
Is Lunar Lake enough to challenge the current crop of mobile processors? On paper, at least, the answer is yes. It’s a system on chip (SoC) akin to Apple’s M series and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X parts, with all the energy-efficient performance that entails. You ideally get the all-day battery life of a MacBook or Surface, just in an Intel-equipped laptop that should run virtually every Windows app.
The quicker AI processing should also help address worries that Intel is falling behind on that front.
It’s not yet known how well Lunar Lake runs in everyday use. Also, some of the competition hasn’t launched yet — Apple is expected to unveil the M4 MacBook Pro this fall, and it might offer significant gains in AI alongside the usual computing updates.
Curcio notes that the first chips are aimed at premium and “lifestyle” laptops rather than more affordable devices. And if you’re looking for gaming, you’ll still have to wait for mobile Arrow Lake processors. There’s also the same caveat that applies to other SoC laptops: you can’t upgrade the memory after the fact, so you might need to buy more RAM than you need if you want to future-proof your purchase.
Still, it’s hard to object to more choices in this category, especially for people who absolutely need full x86 compatibility. And with all the major Windows brands onboard, there won’t be a shortage of form factors and configurations to pick from.
