Intel Arrow Lake-H Laptop CPU Review: Core Ultra 9 285H Scores Big
MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo With Arrow Lake-H: Acoustics And Thermals
The above image also shows the new MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo engineering sample running the 3DMark Wild Life Stress Test, that loops its graphics benchmark to thermally saturate the laptop's onboard thermal solution. We also tested in a lighter duty workload for the machine, looping Cinebench 24 until thermal saturation as well. Here the fans onboard the MSI Prestige 16 are measuring a little over 44dBa at about a foot away from the machine, or about where a user's head might be. This is a relatively quiet noise signature that won't annoy you at all, with just a dull whir in the background. This result was recorded on the laptop's out-of-the-box Balanced mode setting.
Turn up the load with a 3DMark Stress Test, and things do get a little louder, to the point that you definitely would notice. It's not a deal-breaker, however, and you'll likely only witness this level of noise output if you like to push the machine with extended gaming sessions. Otherwise, this laptop remains fairly tame.
MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo Engineering Sample With Arrow Lake-H: Battery Life
It seems like battery life claims from all of the major silicon players are rising more and more, which is a very good thing—assuming those claims hold true. Specifically for a system like this, battery life is critically important. Businesspeople on the go may or may not have time to stop and charge their laptop between meetings or while traveling, so a laptop needs to last through endless hours of use, whether that means e-mails and poring over spreadsheets, or long runs of content consumption like air travel Netflix binges.
Here, we've calibrated the laptop displays to a fixed brightness in an effort to minimize the effect of that variable, though lots of other variables still come into play such as battery capacity. With all of that in mind, how does the Arrow Lake-equipped MSI machine stack up?
The Arrow Lake-H-powered MSI Prestige AI Evo laptop put up the longest laptop battery life score we’ve ever recorded. This machine does also have the largest battery you can pack in a laptop these days, but a minutes per watt hour calculation tells us Arrow Lake H is at least competitive with AMD’s latest Ryzen AI series, though it can’t keep pace with Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite efficiency.
These tests are also affected by manufacturer configuration of course as well, so it’s quite possible Arrow Lake-H could offer better results in differently tuned, lower power laptop models.
The Arrow Lake-H-powered MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo laptop put up the longest laptop battery life score we’ve ever recorded, chalking up nearly 24 hours of always on video playback performance. This machine does also have the largest battery you can pack in a laptop these days, though. That said, a minutes per watt hour calculation tells us Arrow Lake-H is at least competitive with AMD’s latest Ryzen AI 300 series, though it can’t keep pace (in terms of efficiency) with Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite, it seems.
These tests are also affected by manufacturer configuration of course as well, so it’s quite possible Intel's Core Ultra 9 285H Arrow Lake-H platform could offer better results in differently tuned, lower power laptop models versus the high-end machine that we're showcasing here.
These tests are also affected by manufacturer configuration of course as well, so it’s quite possible Intel's Core Ultra 9 285H Arrow Lake-H platform could offer better results in differently tuned, lower power laptop models versus the high-end machine that we're showcasing here.
MSI Prestige 16 AI Evo Engineering Sample With Intel Arrow Lake-H: Our Takeaways
Overall, we came away impressed by Arrow Lake-H. The platform offers best-in-class general compute performance, with single-threaded speed second only to Apple's MacBook, where cross-platform benchmarks afforded comparison. In terms of graphics performance, once again Arrow Lake-H looks great competitively, offering what seems to be one of the strongest integrated graphics engines on the market currently for x86 laptops with its integrated Arc 140T GPU tile.Beyond performance, Arrow Lake H's power efficiency is solid. The only real chink in Arrow Lake H's armor may be its meager 13 TOPS NPU, which will come up short competitively, at least in applications that specifically target the NPU. Considering Microsoft’s current insistence on classifying Copilot+ PCs as absolutely requiring an NPU with a minimum of 40 TOPS, it isn't much help for marketing purposes either.
The test platform itself, MSI's Prestige 16 AI Evo, is an excellent example of a premium thin-and-light Intel Arrow Lake-H-powered laptop, with a quality 16-inch IPS display, a spacious keyboard and trackpad setup with full numpad, and lots of port options. Weighing in at just 3.3 lbs it's still easily stashed in a bag, and should not prove to be much of a burden even for regularly mobile road warriors.
Couple that with its 99 Whr battery for exceptional battery life and a competitive circa-$1400 expected price tag (MSRP for this machine is still being finalized), and MSI has a solid option for minimalists that want to get work done with the option for even some light duty gaming.
All told, Intel's Core Ultra 200H series platform puts up impressively strong performance with some big hits and minor misses in the mix, and a surprisingly robust Arc 140T integrated GPU. Based on our experience with this MSI machine, we think the new crop of incoming Arrow Lake-H-powered, full-featured laptops should prove to be very competent offerings in the highly competitive premium mobile client computing space.
