It’s official — Intel now holds the Windows battery life crown

It’s still early, and so our review database isn’t fully fleshed out. That’s particularly true with Lunar Lake, as we’ve only reviewed two machines so far and Intel hasn’t rolled out the entire lineup. I’m going to focus on CPU performance here because none of the integrated GPUs in these chipsets are meaningful upgrades over their predecessors. That is, maybe they’re faster, but they’re not as fast as even entry-level discrete GPUs like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050.

None of them make for good gaming or creator laptops unless they feature discrete graphics. I’m also not going to talk about AI performance with the faster NPUs because, frankly, the benchmarks just aren’t there yet. And, discrete GPUs will be the performance champs regardless, with NPUs offering more efficient on-device AI rather than superfast AI performance.

Right now, AMD is in the lead among the chipsets we’ve reviewed. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chipset is very fast at CPU-intensive tasks, particularly in its multi-core performance. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite comes in a close second. Intel’s Core Ultra 7 285V comes in last place, but notably, it’s essentially a low-power version of the Lunar Lake lineup and, as we’ll see, it’s a lot stronger in efficiency than sheer performance.

Specifications are important here. The Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 chipset has 12 cores and 24 threads, running at up to 5.1GHz. It’s a 28-watt chip that’s configurable between 15 watts and 54W, making it the most power-hungry of the new chipsets. Its 12 cores are apportioned between four full-size Zen 5 cores and eight Zen 5c cores that are more compact, but just as fast. So, it doesn’t have low-power cores. There are other versions of the chipset, but we’ve only reviewed the HX 370. The other major variant is the Ryzen AI 9 365 with 10 cores and 20 threads running at up to 5GHz.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon X has several versions that we’ve tested, including variations of the Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus chipsets. The graphic below provides information on the full lineup. Qualcomm doesn’t publish the thermal design power (TDP), but from various sources, it varies from 23 watts for the Snapdragon X Plus to 45 watts nominal (up to 80 watts) for the Snapdragon X Elite. The efficiency with these chips is apparently highly variable based on how demanding the task is in a way that Lunar Lake and Apple’s M3 chipsets are not.

Intel Lunar Lake also has several iterations, With the Core Ultra 5 and 7 Series 2 versions running at a base TDP of 17 watts and the Core Ultra 9 Series 2 at a base TDP of 30 watts. Each chipset is configurable between 17W and 37W. Lunar Lake is the most direct replacement for Intel’s U-series Meteor Lake chipsets that runs at 15 watts. As you can see below, the 8-core (four Performance and four Low Power Efficient), 8-thread chipsets aren’t as fast as Intel’s Meteor Lake H-series chips that run aground 28W. Intel’s mobile Arrow Lake chipsets will take over there with, presumably, higher performance. And as we’ll see below, Lunar Lake does succeed in being more efficient.

It’s important to mention Apple’s M3 chipset as well, given that it’s the performance-efficiency leader that these Windows chipsets — at least Intel’s and Qualcomm’s — are aimed at defeating. For our purposes, we’re mostly talking about the base M3, which comes in both 8-core CPU/8-core GPU and 8-core/10-core GPU versions. Apple doesn’t publish much detailed information on things like TDP and clock speeds, but suffice it to say that the M3 offers a very solid combination of performance and efficiency. I’m only including those chipsets aimed at thin-and-light laptops, which excludes Apple’s M3 Pro and Max and Intel’s faster Meteor Lake chipsets.

From the laptops we’ve tested so far, the clear performance leaders are the AMD and Qualcomm chipsets. Intel’s Lunar Lake is a step up from Meteor Lake U-series, but it’s not impressive among today’s leaders. Apple’s M3 chipset is quick enough and it leads in single-core performance. The M4 will be faster yet.