Intel Lunar Lake Review Roundup: Chipzilla Is Back With Strong Performance & Efficiency, Xe2 GPU Shines

Intel’s Lunar Lake SoCs have finally debuted in the markets, and it looks like the reception from tech outlets has been superb, marking a big comeback for the blue team.

Intel’s Lunar Lake CPUs Deliver Tremendous Performance Uplifts In Reviews, Great Efficiency & Graphics Performance Are The Highlights

Intel’s Lunar Lake “Core Ultra 200V” or “Core Ultra Series2” has been highly anticipated as it was going to be a major turnaround for the blue team and it looks like hands-on reviews from various tech outlets agree that this is a return-to-form moment for Intel.

In general, it’s safe to say that the Intel CPU design team that worked on Lunar Lake + TSMC’s process technologies has managed to nail out the platform’s capabilities, with Team Blue bringing in efficiency, performance, and durability all in a single package. Intel certainly did hit the bullseye here.

Before we go into the reviews, we just want to slide in that our team is preparing an extensive review on Intel’s Lunar Lake platform, including hands-on details and in-depth benchmarking, so make sure to keep your eyes open as it can drop by anytime.

So, starting, ETA Prime was one of the first tech YouTubers to showcase ASUS’s Zenbook S14, featuring Intel’s Lunar Lake Core Ultra 7 258V mobile chip. The SoC features eight cores: four P-cores (Lion Cove) and four E-cores (Skymont Cores), which can be categorized as a mid-tier chip in the lineup. For more in-depth details on Lunar Lake, you can head over to one of our previous coverages in the following links:

We won’t discuss the laptop model itself, given that the focus of the coverage is on the new Lunar Lake SoCs, but synthetic benchmarks shared by ETA Prime on Geekbench, Cinebench R24, and 3DMark show that the Core Ultra 7 258V manage to oust its previous-gen counterparts by decent margins, and even comes head-to-head with ARM-based chips such as Apple’s M1 Max.

Similarly, gaming on the new platform is a delight as well since the gaming scenarios shared by ETA Prime shows that the Core Ultra 7 258V manages to deliver consistent performance in AAA titles such as Forza Horizon 5 and Red Dead Redemption 2, achieving around 60-80 FPS in low-to-mid settings under the new Xe2 iGPU. This is certainly a great result for Intel’s newest chip, given that it manages to maintain the temperatures, even if not being switched to “Performance Mode”

The next pivotal point to consider is battery life, and with Intel’s Lunar Lake, it is safe to say that Apple’s Macbooks have been dethroned when it comes to longevity. The test conducted by ETA Prime shows that the Zenbook S14 managed to run 16 hours and 37 minutes, under 50% brightness and 1080p video streaming, which is beyond impressive at this point. This shows how far Intel has come when it comes to SoC efficiency, and this particular result is consistent across all chips, not just a certain high-end SKU.

Interestingly, the above viewpoints are consistent across all reviews made over the internet, but a noticeable point we noted was an Intel Lunar Lake driver issue, which was highlighted by a review from The Phawx, where he claims that the new drivers don’t support several titles out there, but that is a preview driver issue for now, and given that a few days post-launch pass by, we will see the drivers in a much better state. The company has already rolled out a new patch as of yesterday which addresses most of these concerns.

The performance numbers posted by “The Phawx”, especially regarding the Arc 140V “Xe2” iGPU are certainly a delight. The Techtuber uses various TDP targets and benchmarks Lunar Lake against the older Meteor Lake and also AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 APUs. The Lunar Lake chips deliver substantial performance per watt and Xe2 is looking to be a strong iGPU solution, especially at lower wattages which is great news for those looking forward to gaming handhelds such as the next-gen MSI Claw.

PCWorld’s Gordon says that Intel has “saved x86” or, in simple terms, has managed to make one of the biggest comebacks in the laptop segment. Team Blue has nailed SoC efficiency here, by all means. And, to top it all off, PCWorld’s review discloses that ASUS’s Zenbook S14, which we discussed earlier, delivers up to 23 hours of battery life under 720p video streaming. So, it won’t be wrong to say here that Intel has managed to close down the efficiency gap created by the ARM-based chips.

Intel’s Lunar Lake architecture might prove to be the breakthrough moment for the firm when it comes to decorating the SoCs to present a unified package that features the best of everything. Surely, Intel hasn’t managed to meet the benchmarks created by AMD’s “Strix Point” APUs, but the generational difference is massive this time and the performance per watt in a thin and light package is amazing, mainly due to how Intel designed the architecture, coupled with their foundry choice. Interesting times are ahead for the laptop segment and Intel but overall, it’s just glad to see Intel back in action with a solid product.