The last two laptop central processing unit (CPU) families to come from Intel (INTC -0.10%) were more focused on efficiency and AI capabilities than raw performance. Intel launched Meteor Lake in late 2023, which moved to a tile-based architecture and used the Intel 4 manufacturing process for the compute tile. Meteor Lake delivered solid efficiency gains and graphics performance, but performance regressed in other areas compared to older chips.
Intel followed up Meteor Lake with Lunar Lake in the latter half of 2024. Lunar Lake went all-in on efficiency, taking advantage of an external manufacturing process from TSMC and moving the memory on-chip. Lunar Lake laptops boast impressive battery life, making the chip family the perfect counter to Qualcomm's efficient Arm-based PC chips. Like Meteor Lake, though, Lunar Lake was not focused on raw performance.
Bringing Arrow Lake to laptops
Intel launched its Arrow Lake desktop CPUs in late 2024. Like Lunar Lake, Arrow Lake outsourced manufacturing to TSMC after switching from the canceled Intel 20A process. Compared to the last-generation Raptor Lake Refresh desktop chips, Arrow Lake chips delivered large gains in energy efficiency and performance across many productivity workloads. Unfortunately, the chips initially exhibited erratic behavior in gaming workloads that led to subpar reviews.
Intel has been rolling out software fixes that should improve the gaming situation just in time for the launch of the laptop variants of the Arrow Lake family. Intel announced a slew of new laptop chips at CES 2025 with a complicated lineup that spans multiple architectures. The Core Ultra 200H and Core Ultra 200HX families are both Arrow Lake-based and bring the performance and efficiency improvements of Arrow Lake to laptops.
While Lunar Lake maxed out at 8 cores, with a mix of performance and efficiency cores, these Arrow Lake laptop chips sport as many as 24 cores. The top-tier 200HX model comes with 8 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, a setup that should deliver solid single-thread and multi-threaded performance. Importantly, these Arrow Lake chips should also be far more energy efficient than older Raptor Lake laptop chips.
Beating back AMD
Intel has been steadily losing share in the PC CPU market to Advanced Micro Devices over much of the past decade. In the laptop CPU market, Intel still held a 77.7% unit market share in the second quarter of 2024. However, that's down from more than 90% in 2016.
Intel's new Arrow Lake laptop chips should improve the company's competitive positioning in the enthusiast and gaming portions of the laptop markets. Lunar Lake does a good job addressing the thin and light portion of the market, and it makes Qualcomm's Arm-based chips less attractive, especially considering Qualcomm laptops suffer from some compatibility issues. For mainstream and performance laptops, Raptor Lake is power hungry and suffered from embarrassing stability problems that likely drove some laptop buyers to AMD. Intel's new Arrow Lake chips should right both wrongs.
The PC market isn't particularly strong right now, although Windows 10 will reach the end of support in October 2025. Since Windows 11 requires fairly modern hardware, this could trigger a flood of new laptop purchases, especially among businesses. With Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake laptops available to start 2025, and with Panther Lake coming in the second half of the year built on the Intel 18A process, Intel should be in a good position to reap the benefits of any upgrade cycle.
Intel faces tough competition from AMD, but its new Arrow Lake laptop chips could help it regain some lost market share, or at the very least hold the line as it pushes its manufacturing roadmap forward.
