Intel’s 14-gen Meteor Lake processors are here and will soon start appearing in laptops. Here’s everything you need to know about them.
Intel’s 14th-gen Meteor Lake processors are here, and they’re ready to compete against some of the best processors for laptops. While they don’t currently — and may never — have desktop counterparts, Meteor Lake chips bring improved graphics performance, AI capabilities, and high core counts to thin and light laptops.
What’s new in Meteor Lake, and what will these CPUs excel at? With Intel’s announcement, we now know the answers to those questions.Pricing and release date
Intel Meteor Lake officially launched on December 14, 2023, with several chips being made available in laptops made by Intel’s partners. Prior to that, Intel revealed more information about the lineup during the Intel Innovation conference held earlier in 2023.
One important piece of news is that Meteor Lake is not coming to the DIY desktop PC market. However, it will eventually also be available in all-in-one PCs, such as the Intel NUC.
According to Intel, the laptops equipped with Meteor Lake will be available right away — but as the market has previously taught us, that may not always be the case. It may take some time for the widespread availability, and it still competes against Intel’s previous-gen CPUs from the Raptor Lake range, not to mention AMD’s mobile CPUs and APUs. All in all, Intel predicts that there’ll be plenty of Meteor Lake laptops to go around, with over 230 unique designs available.
Intel has confirmed Meteor Lake CPUs will carry new branding. The company is ditching the “i” it used for over 15 years and replacing it with “Core Ultra” branding. To that end, we’re expecting eight Intel Core Ultra CPUs at launch, and three more models will follow in the first quarter of 2024.
Intel Meteor Lake will be split into two distinct lineups — The Core Ultra-H and the Core Ultra-U. The CPUs will range from the Core Ultra 5 to the Core Ultra 7 for starters, but there’ll be a Core Ultra 9 185H coming out in 2024.
As far as pricing, it’s tough to say, as laptop chips don’t exactly come with a price tag of their own, and the final price is always affected by the rest of the components and the brand. Some early partners suggest entry-level Meteor Lake laptops could arrive at $1,500, which is much more expensive than the previous generation.Specs
Intel has already shared the specifications of 11 Core Ultra processors, including core counts and clock speeds. There might be more CPUs coming later on, though.
Launching on December 14, the Core Ultra-H lineup serves up four chips. The most powerful processor of the four (and in general, out of all the ones launching in 2023) is the Core Ultra 7 165H, equipped with 16 cores (6 P-cores and 8 E-cores as well as 2 LP E-cores) and 22 threads, 24MB of cache, and a maximum Turbo P-core clock speed of 5.0 GHz. The Intel Arc GPU found within claims 8 Xe-cores. Coming up next is the Core Ultra 7 155H, which has the same core count and a slightly lower clock speed (4.8GHz).
Next, we have the Core Ultra 5 135H, with 14 cores (4 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and 2 LP E-cores) and 18 threads. This CPU sports a smaller cache (18MB), fewer GPU cores (seven), and a decrease in maximum frequency, topping out at 4.6GHz for the P-cores. There’s also the Core Ultra 125H, which once again merely lowers the clock speed to 4.5GHz.
The Core Ultra-U lineup is designed to prioritize battery life and portability, so it has fewer cores across the board.
