Intel Unveils Core Ultra 200H And 200HX Mobile CPU Lineup To Turbocharge Laptops
The overwhelming majority of the announcements are for laptops, so we'll start with those. The Core Ultra 200H series CPUs are "Arrow Lake" in the sense that they use the same Lion Cove P-core architecture paired with Skymont E-cores, but there's a fair few changes here from the desktop parts. First and foremost is a big drop in TDP, as you'd expect.
However, Intel says that the new parts still represent a 15% performance uplift over Meteor Lake in both single-threaded and multi-threaded CPU performance as well as graphics. That's not bad considering there's been nearly no change in clock rates at all, and a drop in thread count. While the core counts have not shifted (maxing out at 6+8+2), these chips miss Hyper-Threading like their desktop counterparts.
Intel isn't saying much about the NPUs on these parts, even though they do include same. That's probably because their NPUs aren't based on the fast NPU4 architecture from Lunar Lake and instead come with the slower NPU from Meteor Lake and desktop Arrow Lake. However, they're still strong at AI thanks to the return of XMX units to their integrated "Xe-LPG+" GPU, allowing the top-end model to deliver 77 TOPS from GPU compute alone.
If you're not satisfied with 16 CPU cores, you could always go with a Core Ultra 200HX. These parts implement the Arrow Lake-S silicon in mobile form, meaning that they top out at a full 24 cores: eight Lion Cove P-cores and 16 Skymont E-cores. You also get a 13 TOPS NPU and a relatively meager Arc GPU, although as usual, Intel specifically points out that these chips are meant for pairing with dGPUs.
The story here is basically the same as with desktop Arrow Lake, although clock rates do take a hit as expected given the mobile form factor. Intel describes these parts as having a 55W base power with a 160W maximum turbo power; we're interested to do some battery tests with them as Arrow Lake was pretty efficient on the desktop when it wasn't being goosed with power to compete with >200W last-gen chips.
On stage at CES 2025, Intel compared the Core Ultra 9 285HX—essentially the mobile version of the Core Ultra 285K on desktop—against AMD's Ryzen AI 9 HX 375. Intel claims a huge performance advantage in multi-core workloads, which makes sense given that the Core Ultra processor has twice as many CPU cores.
If battery life is a big concern to you, you'll be pleased to hear that Intel is bringing along a handful of Core Ultra 200U processors. For those playing along at home, "U" refers to ultra-low power chips designed for maximum battery life in power-constrained situations. Just like the Core Ultra 100U chips, these parts have two P-cores and eight E-cores, as well as the same two LP E-Cores you'll find on the Core Ultra 200H parts.
Intel really didn't have much to say about these, and that may be because they are at least in part re-heated Meteor Lake silicon. We say that because of a few specific details: the two P-cores on these parts appear to have Hyper-Threading enabled, and they also don't get the update to Xe-LPG+ graphics architecture that the Ultra 200H parts got. The specifications are nearly identical to the Core Ultra 100U chips, so these may be refreshed rather than brand-new.
Intel notes that systems with all of these chips will be arriving in Q1 alongside machines with the "non-K" Core Ultra 200S series CPUs. As far as the latter goes, though, the company did not provide us with any information, not even a list of models. We heard back in November that there will be Core Ultra 9 285s, Core Ultra 7 265s, and Core Ultra 5 225s, but that's all fairly speculative.
That's not the only interesting desktop CPUs that Intel is vaguely launching, though. The company's edge computing division is also announcing the launch of "Core 200" series processors. These seem to primarily be re-refreshed Raptor Lake Refresh chips, but there's also the enigmatic Bartlett Lake CPUs. We first heard about Bartlett Lake way back in February of last year, and Intel has been mum on the topic this whole time.
Now we have confirmation that these new Intel chips are very definitely real, but Intel gave absolutely no information about them including when they will actually launch. Given that the edge market is more-or-less exclusively B2B, it's unlikely that these parts will find their way to DIY unless some enterprising reseller takes matters into their own hands.
Intel tells us that everything launched today will be available in the first half of the year, with Core Ultra 200H and 200U-based machines shipping in February. Meanwhile, the 35-watt and 65-watt desktop CPUs are already shipping out and should be available in both OEM systems and retail box form on January 13th.
