It really feels saying at this moment, yet it holds true. Intel can not capture a break. The brand-new Arrowhead Lake-H chips seem like a trend change for Group Blue, however, leveraging the extremely effective designs the business debuted with Lunar Lake to provide efficiency and battery life worthwhile of the best laptops on the marketplace.
By the numbers
We have actually currently seen what Intel’s Lunar Lake cpus can– review our Asus Zenbook S 14 review for even more on that particular– yet these brand-new Arrowhead Lake-H offerings are a bit various. Under the hood, Intel is still utilizing its Lion Cove and Skymont core designs, which Arrowhead Lake-H show to Lunar Lake. Nonetheless, these chips obtain a bigger core matter, greater power spending plan, and beefier incorporated graphics based upon Intel’s Battlemage architecture.

Jacob Cockroach/ Digital Trends
The power spending plan is truly essential below. The base power is 45W, yet Intel enables the chip to improve approximately 115W for brief amount of times. The core split is intriguing, also. You obtain 16 complete cores, yet they’re divided in between 6 efficiency cores, 8 effective cores, and 2 low-power effective cores. If you keep in mind, the effective cores are really the major efficiency motorist in this design, so the added 2 low-power ones are merely there for a little added multi-core grunt.
I have actually generated a couple of contrasts from AMD below. First is a the same laptop computer loading the Ryzen AI 9 365– which Intel contrasts the Core Ultra 9 285H to– and 2nd is an Asus Zenbook S 16 with a beefier Ryzen AI 9 HX 370. These are 10-core and 12-core CPUs, specifically, yet they utilize synchronised multi-threading. The Core Ultra 9 285H does not, so while Intel has a core benefit, AMD really has a string benefit.
MSI Status 16 (Core Ultra 9 285H) |
MSI Status 16 (Ryzen 9 AI 365) |
Asus Zenbook S 16 (Ryzen AI 9 HX 370) |
|
Cinebench R24 (single/multi) |
128/ 918 |
111/ 819 |
110/ 871 |
Geekbench 6 (single/multi) |
2,776/ 15,773 |
2,832/ 14,059 |
N/A |
PCMark 10 |
7,508 |
7,352 |
7,229 |
PugetBench for Photoshop |
7,717 |
7,656 |
7,248 |
PugetBench for Best Pro |
3,520 |
3,107 |
2,971 |
3DMark Time Spy |
4,018 |
3,565 |
3,207 |
3DMark Steel Wanderer Light |
3,494 |
3,088 |
3,219 |
Intel’s technique plainly functions, as you can see in both Cinebench and Geekbench. These applications generally prefer a string benefit, yet Intel is still triumphing. That’s possibly as a result of a strong lead in single-core rate, which you can see in Cinebench.
PCMark 10 is a bit various, with all 3 laptop computers basically dropping in the very same variety. That’s not also shocking. These are premium CPUs in a few of the very best laptop computers cash can acquire, so obviously they can take care of fundamental workplace and performance jobs easily.
The distinction manufacturers are Photoshop and Best. Intel is offering a minor side in Photoshop, yet there’s a huge increase in Best. The Battlemage GPU is absolutely assisting there, together with QuickSync. Pc gaming sees a substantial increase, also– truthfully, AMD isn’t also gather its incorporated graphics, at the very least up until we see the Ryzen AI MAX chips later on this year.
Intel is familiar with efficiency, and truthfully, it’s not remarkable that Intel can top the competitors (particularly thinking about the bigger power spending plan). What goes over is that Intel has the ability to provide this degree of efficiency while maintaining its battery life in check.
Ridiculous effectiveness

Jacob Cockroach/ Digital Trends
It was extremely weird marking time a video clip to loophole on the Core Ultra 9 285H when I left job, just to discover it still knotting the following early morning, and with around half the battery to save. That’s the type of effectiveness Intel is providing below and with no of the common methods in Windows that begin when the battery obtains reduced sufficient.
In regional video clip playback, I obtained virtually 21 hours of battery life out of the MSI Status 16– 20 hours and 46 mins, to be precise. For context, the Acer Swift 14 AI with the Ryzen AI 9 365 handled 18 hours and 36 mins, the MacBook Air M3 lasted 19 hours and 29 mins, and the HP Omnibook X with the Snapdragon X Elite remained on for 22 hours and 4 mins. The Snapdragon chip prevails, yet Intel is damn close considering this is a 16-core front runner chip.
I anticipated suitable battery life considered that Intel is utilizing the very same core designs as its Lunar Lake offerings, yet with even more cores and a greater spending plan, I really did not anticipate this Arrowhead Lake-H chip to be as close as it is to Intel’s Lunar Lake offerings. Not just is Intel’s efficiency wonderful below– its battery life stands up similarly also.
Intel required a win

Jacob Cockroach/ Digital Trends
Something struck me when examining Intel’s brand-new Arrowhead Lake-H chip. It simply functioned. Intel has actually truly had a hard time to capture a break, and although its Lunar Lake laptop computer chips were a tiny emphasize, they weren’t sufficient to turn around the story developed by the desktop computer Arrowhead Lake variety. Arrowhead Lake-H makes a great deal of feeling, however, and it confirms Intel was onto something when it determined to concentrate on effectiveness. Currently, lastly, we can see just how Intel has the ability to scale its style to provide piece de resistance and battery life in a solitary plan.
It’s a fantastic adjustment of speed for Intel, that approximately this factor had a hard time to offer a tidy ramp in between efficiency and effectiveness in laptop computers, instead dividing the arrays in fifty percent with 2 totally various strategies to design. Arrowhead Lake-H seems like whatever integrating, and for a firm that’s been guaranteeing that whatever will certainly collaborate quickly for many years, that’s a big win.