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After a tumultuous 2024, Intel has much to do if it wants to regain its groove. The chipmaker’s first act of the new year is to unveil a wealth of new chips designed for enterprise and gaming laptops with the all-new 200H and 200HX series. In addition, Intel says it will make up for Arrow Lake’s initially disappointing gaming performance with a new Ultra 200S lineup.
Alongside the new chips, Team Blue finally offered a glimpse of which PCs will be getting Intel’s top-end Lunar Lake SKUs, and it’s the business-end PCs debuting during CES this week. The chipmaker is dropping a number of new laptop and desktop CPUs early this year, some of which are meant for the enthusiast or business-end notebooks.
Intel’s Lunar Lake has proven to be a solid chipset in modern laptops. However, the story is slightly different when comparing the company’s Arrow Lake desktop chipset, even with Intel’s previous 14th generation. We saw this play out in our Origin Neuron 3500X PC review. That’s where the Intel Core Ultra 200HX and 200S series come in. These add to the current laptop and desktop CPU lineup to improve graphical performance and support Thunderbolt 5.
Laptops still seem to be the first thing on Intel’s mind; the 200H Arrow Lake series is supposed to lead the pack on mobile computers. There’s an Intel Core Ultra 5 235H, an Ultra 7 265H, and the top Ultra 9 285H. Both the Ultra 7 and Ultra 9 feature 16-core configurations, though the top-end chip includes six performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and two LPE (low-power efficiency) cores.
The new HX lineup of 200HX CPUs for the mobile workstation crowd goes from an Intel Core Ultra 5 245HX up to the Ultra 9 285HX. The top-end chip uses an eight-performance core, 16-efficiency core layout. The chip also includes four Xe graphics cores, the same as the 200V series. These chips likely won’t run quite as well as their desktop counterparts, but they may have more in store for PCs with or without a discrete GPU for the sake of graphics or gaming.
We’ll need to see where they stand on power consumption. According to Intel, the high-performance 200H operates between 28W and 45W, while the 200HX will require 55W. I’d be very interested to see how the 200H laptops can handle more intensive tasks in a thin frame without overheating. As for the performance of the 200HX, we’ll want to compare the 285HX to other current champions like the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370.
Lunar Lake is sticking around for thin and light laptops, though we’re finally seeing some leftover SKUs in more enterprise-end notebooks. Intel pointed to the newly-announced HP EliteBook X with an Intel Core Ultra 7 268V. That SKU includes four performance cores and four efficiency cores in an eight-by-eight core/thread configuration. It boosts the P-core frequency to 5.1 GHz with the 12 MB cache. It’s one of those chips we only saw in action from Intel itself, and so far, neither the top-end Ultra 9 288V—has made much of a stir in the months since September 2024.
As you would expect, these business-end laptops are supposed to include some security apparatus. Still, Intel promises that its chips will use their neural processing capability to detect threats better.
As for desktop, the big changeup will be the Intel Core Ultra 200S series, such that the Ultra 9 285S is supposed to be much better at AI performance than the company’s 14th gen. Whether or not any AI processing capabilities matter to you, at least we finally get to see what was up Intel’s sleeve for non-light laptops. We’d love to see Intel regain its mojo, but we have to see for ourselves if these chips prove a good first step.
Gizmodo is covering all the coolest and weirdest tech from the show floor at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. Follow our live coverage here.
