Intel Panther Lake laptop CPU review: call it a comeback

Intel’s been talking the talk for months about its new generation of laptop chips, the first made on its long-anticipated 18A process. 18A is meant to steer Intel back toward bluer waters by making its chips better, and, if possible, attracting chip designers like Qualcomm and Nvidia to use Intel’s foundries, not just its rival TSMC’s. Last year’s Arrow Lake chips received a mixed reception, particularly desktop versions. The mobile-only Lunar Lake chips, on the other hand, were great, showing that the x86 architecture still has plenty of fight in it against a slowly rising tide of Arm-based Windows laptops. But Lunar Lake was a one-off that Intel designed more than manufactured, relying on TSMC silicon to do the heaviest lifting. Panther Lake puts homegrown Intel inside once again.

I’ve been testing the flagship Intel Core Ultra X9 388H Panther Lake chip in the 2026 Asus Zenbook Duo dual-screen laptop, and it’s been a treat. It’s fast enough for intensive work and multitasking, powerful enough for 1080p gaming at high settings, and lasts well over a full workday using productivity apps on battery power. With Panther Lake, Intel is walking the walk.

Panther Lake CPUs come in 8- and 16-core versions, made up of Cougar Cove performance cores (P-cores) and Darkmont efficiency cores (E-cores). The Core Ultra X9 388H in the Zenbook Duo is the top-tier 16-core model with an Intel Arc B390 GPU (consisting of 12 Xe graphics cores), a base power of 25W and a maximum turbo power up to 80W. Intel hyped it as more efficient than Lunar Lake while simultaneously more powerful than the Arrow Lake chips that are typically found in higher-power workstation and desktop replacement laptops.

Against its closest competition, Panther Lake isn’t an outright winner. Most benchmark scores in our table below are dominated by Apple’s M5 and AMD’s top-tier Strix Halo. But the Intel 388H Panther Lake chip handily beats AMD’s highest-end Strix Point chip in all but one of the tests we ran. That’s a solid leapfrogging by Intel, considering Strix Point handily beat Lunar Lake just a year ago. Now, Panther Lake also trounces our examples of both Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake-H.

While Apple is still the speed champ in most of these categories, I was pleasantly surprised to see Panther Lake slightly edge out the MacBook Pro in our 4K video export in Adobe Premiere Pro. That’s those 12 graphics cores at work.

In real-world use, Panther Lake’s speed is palpable. When I fired up my Adobe Lightroom Classic catalog and started editing some of my 50-megapixel RAW files, it felt as quick — or nearly as quick — as a MacBook Pro. I could make heavy-handed changes in the Develop module, and bounce around between images, without everything bogging down as it often does on other Windows laptops. Even subject detection and healing brush removal were snappy.

And I did my photo editing on battery power. Unlike most Windows laptops I’ve used up till now, the Zenbook Duo is just about as fast on battery power as it is connected to the wall. This is often something that Windows laptop makers restrict in their hardware designs, but I’m relieved it’s not the case with Panther Lake on the Zenbook Duo. It’s a big win for editing and content creation on Windows, as it lets the platform match one of the major strengths of modern MacBooks. I just hope all Windows laptop manufacturers follow suit.

Speaking of battery power, Panther Lake in the Zenbook Duo is a champ. Especially when you consider it’s powering two bright, high-resolution OLED displays. You can read deeper details on my real-world experience with the Zenbook Duo’s battery life in my full review of the laptop, but here are a couple quick hits: It lasted over 14 hours in our rundown test, and I could easily last a nine-hour workday of dual-screen multitasking with enough juice left over for some lighter casual use in the evening.

As for gaming, Intel claims that Panther Lake’s 12 Xe graphics cores are on par with Nvidia’s discrete RTX 4050 laptop GPU, much like how Strix Halo goes toe-to-toe with the RTX 4060. Digital Foundry’s early testing at CES found Panther Lake to be nipping at the heels of a desktop RTX 3050 card at 1080p resolution.

I only did a handful of scripted gaming benchmarks, because I wanted to spend more time actually playing. But one benchmark that stood out to me was Cyberpunk 2077, which averaged 40fps at 1920 x 1200 resolution on Ultra settings. That’s without ray tracing, but also without any XeSS (Intel’s version of super resolution upscaling). Panther Lake is no slouch, even if AMD’s beefy Strix Halo chip still has the edge on graphics.

Once I dove into playing titles like Cyberpunk, Helldivers 2, Battlefield 6, and a few others, I discovered that Panther Lake can typically hit 60fps or slightly below at 1920 x 1200 resolution on High settings with XeSS Balanced enabled. You can push the graphics quality further by turning on ray tracing or flipping XeSS from Balanced to Quality, but I’d only do that if you’re comfortable playing closer to 30fps. I prefer 60fps as my baseline.

Setting game graphics to hit a baseline of 40 to 60fps means you can flip on the new XeSS multi-frame generation, which can make games look buttery smooth at well above 120fps. You can control multi-frame generation in Intel’s app, and pick between 2x, 3x, and 4x frame generation. It felt smooth enough to use in Battlefield 6 and got close to the Zenbook Duo’s native 144Hz refresh (though I turn it off in multiplayer to ensure there’s no chance of increased input latency). Nvidia may be marching on toward 6x Multi Frame Generation with DLSS 4.5, but Intel’s doing a fine job on its slower cadence — and it’s still ahead of AMD’s Redstone, which doesn’t support multi-frame gen.

As excited as I am for Panther Lake to finally arrive, and to stick its landing this well, I’m now looking forward to further testing of slightly lower-end versions — ones found in more moderately priced laptops than this $2,300 dual-screen with a massive battery. (A handheld, perhaps?) And I’m equally excited to see how new contenders from AMD and Qualcomm stack up, including those cheaper gaming-focused Strix Halo variants. It’s an exciting time for new laptop releases (rising prices aside, of course).

There’s plenty of upcoming competition, but Panther Lake is first out of the gate and looking like the Windows laptop chip to beat. Welcome back to the show, Intel.