It’s Official — Intel Holds the Windows Battery Life Crown
A new era in Windows computing is here, built around Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC initiative and a few new chipsets. While the most hype is around AI capabilities and performance, the biggest changes today are in performance and battery life. This is good for Windows, as the platform has struggled against Apple’s Silicon MacBooks that have excellent performance and much better efficiency.
Contents
Performance
Battery life
The new chipsets include Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X, AMD’s Ryzen AI 300, and Intel’s Lunar Lake. Each chipset has an NPU that exceeds Microsoft’s 40 tera operations per second (TOPS) requirement. While AMD focuses on performance, Qualcomm and Intel focus on efficiency. So, how does each chipset rank?
Performance
It’s still early, and our review database isn’t fully fleshed out. This is 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. They may be faster, but they’re not as fast as entry-level discrete GPUs like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050.
None 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 the benchmarks just aren’t there yet. Discrete GPUs will be the performance champs regardless, with NPUs offering more efficient on-device AI rather than superfast AI performance.
Model Cinebench R24 (single/multi) Geekbench 6 (single/multi) Handbrake 3DMark Steel Nomad Light
Asus ExpertBook P5 122 / 471 2679 / 10821 104 2636
Asus Zenbook S 14 112 / 452 2738 / 10734 113 3240
HP OmniBook X 101 / 749 2377 / 13490 N/A 1953
Asus Vivobook S 15 108 / 724 2417 / 11319 N/A 1137
Asus ProArt PX13 116 / 897 2710 / 14696 54 7648
Asus Zenbook 14 Q425 103 / 631 2279 / 11806 82 N/A
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 97 / 517 2103 / 8558 101 1523
MacBook Air 141 / 601 3102 / 12078 109 3378
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 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. As we’ll see, it’s much 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 compact but just as fast. 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 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 highly variable based on how demanding the task is in a way that Lunar Lake and Apple’s M3 chipsets are not.
Intel’s Lunar Lake also has several iterations. The Core Ultra 5 and 7 Series 2 versions run at a base TDP of 17 watts, and the Core Ultra 9 Series 2 runs 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, which run at 15 watts. 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 around 28W. Intel’s mobile Arrow Lake chipsets will take over there with, presumably, higher performance. 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—aim to defeat. 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 TDP and clock speeds, but the M3 offers a 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 leads in single-core performance. The M4 will be faster yet.
Battery Life
As mentioned above, efficiency is the name of the game, at least for Qualcomm and Intel. That’s where Apple Silicon has led the way and where Windows laptops have lagged. Looking at early results, it seems Intel’s Lunar Lake might indeed win against Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X, but not quite against Apple’s M3. The M4 is likely to be even more efficient.
Looking at this data, we see that the Asus Zenbook S 14 with the Intel Core Ultra 7 is the best overall performer in terms of battery life. I’ve been in touch with Asus, and it’s possible my ExpertBook P5 review unit had a problem that showed up in its web-browsing battery life. I’ll reserve judgment and update this when I can test a new unit. I’ll also update this as we add new machines to our database, and these results don’t adjust for differences in display technology.
Model Web Browsing Video Cinebench R24
Asus Zenbook S 14 16 hours, 47 mins 18 hours, 35 mins 3 hours, 33 mins
Asus ExpertBook P5 8 hours, 54 mins 16 hours, 29 mins 2 hours, 15 mins
HP Omnibook X 13 hours, 37 mins 22 hours, 4 mins 1 hour, 52 mins
Asus Vivobook S 15 13 hours, 10 mins 16 hours, 19 mins N/A
Asus ProArt PX13 8 hours, 7 mins 11 hours, 12 mins 1 hour, 12 mins
HP Spectre x360 14 8 hours, 6 mins 13 hours, 3 mins N/A
Asus Zenbook S 14 8 hours, 45 mins 12 hours, 25 mins N/A
Apple MacBook Air 19 hours, 38 mins 19 hours, 39 mins 3 hours, 27 mins
Going by the Zenbook S 14, which uses an OLED display, we see consistently excellent battery life not only in the least demanding video-looping test but also when running intensive tasks like web browsing and the Cinebench R24 multi-core benchmark. The AMD chipset isn’t meant to break ground in efficiency and is in last place. Intel’s Meteor Lake chipsets have performed similarly.
That leaves the Apple M3 chipset in first place, although not by a significant margin, and Qualcomm shows it’s most efficient when its CPU isn’t pushed hard. Apple’s lead will likely increase with the M4 MacBook Air. Still, Lunar Lake is the strongest chipset yet for Windows laptops.
This isn’t the entire story. We’ll need to continue gathering data as we review more laptops with each chipset. More chipsets, like Intel’s Arrow Lake mobile and Apple’s M4, will roll out. For now, Windows laptops have never been better. Intel is mostly leading that charge when it comes to battery life.
Contents
Performance
Battery life
The new chipsets include Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X, AMD’s Ryzen AI 300, and Intel’s Lunar Lake. Each chipset has an NPU that exceeds Microsoft’s 40 tera operations per second (TOPS) requirement. While AMD focuses on performance, Qualcomm and Intel focus on efficiency. So, how does each chipset rank?
Performance
It’s still early, and our review database isn’t fully fleshed out. This is 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. They may be faster, but they’re not as fast as entry-level discrete GPUs like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050.
None 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 the benchmarks just aren’t there yet. Discrete GPUs will be the performance champs regardless, with NPUs offering more efficient on-device AI rather than superfast AI performance.
Model Cinebench R24 (single/multi) Geekbench 6 (single/multi) Handbrake 3DMark Steel Nomad Light
Asus ExpertBook P5 122 / 471 2679 / 10821 104 2636
Asus Zenbook S 14 112 / 452 2738 / 10734 113 3240
HP OmniBook X 101 / 749 2377 / 13490 N/A 1953
Asus Vivobook S 15 108 / 724 2417 / 11319 N/A 1137
Asus ProArt PX13 116 / 897 2710 / 14696 54 7648
Asus Zenbook 14 Q425 103 / 631 2279 / 11806 82 N/A
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 97 / 517 2103 / 8558 101 1523
MacBook Air 141 / 601 3102 / 12078 109 3378
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 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. As we’ll see, it’s much 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 compact but just as fast. 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 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 highly variable based on how demanding the task is in a way that Lunar Lake and Apple’s M3 chipsets are not.
Intel’s Lunar Lake also has several iterations. The Core Ultra 5 and 7 Series 2 versions run at a base TDP of 17 watts, and the Core Ultra 9 Series 2 runs 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, which run at 15 watts. 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 around 28W. Intel’s mobile Arrow Lake chipsets will take over there with, presumably, higher performance. 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—aim to defeat. 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 TDP and clock speeds, but the M3 offers a 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 leads in single-core performance. The M4 will be faster yet.
Battery Life
As mentioned above, efficiency is the name of the game, at least for Qualcomm and Intel. That’s where Apple Silicon has led the way and where Windows laptops have lagged. Looking at early results, it seems Intel’s Lunar Lake might indeed win against Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X, but not quite against Apple’s M3. The M4 is likely to be even more efficient.
Looking at this data, we see that the Asus Zenbook S 14 with the Intel Core Ultra 7 is the best overall performer in terms of battery life. I’ve been in touch with Asus, and it’s possible my ExpertBook P5 review unit had a problem that showed up in its web-browsing battery life. I’ll reserve judgment and update this when I can test a new unit. I’ll also update this as we add new machines to our database, and these results don’t adjust for differences in display technology.
Model Web Browsing Video Cinebench R24
Asus Zenbook S 14 16 hours, 47 mins 18 hours, 35 mins 3 hours, 33 mins
Asus ExpertBook P5 8 hours, 54 mins 16 hours, 29 mins 2 hours, 15 mins
HP Omnibook X 13 hours, 37 mins 22 hours, 4 mins 1 hour, 52 mins
Asus Vivobook S 15 13 hours, 10 mins 16 hours, 19 mins N/A
Asus ProArt PX13 8 hours, 7 mins 11 hours, 12 mins 1 hour, 12 mins
HP Spectre x360 14 8 hours, 6 mins 13 hours, 3 mins N/A
Asus Zenbook S 14 8 hours, 45 mins 12 hours, 25 mins N/A
Apple MacBook Air 19 hours, 38 mins 19 hours, 39 mins 3 hours, 27 mins
Going by the Zenbook S 14, which uses an OLED display, we see consistently excellent battery life not only in the least demanding video-looping test but also when running intensive tasks like web browsing and the Cinebench R24 multi-core benchmark. The AMD chipset isn’t meant to break ground in efficiency and is in last place. Intel’s Meteor Lake chipsets have performed similarly.
That leaves the Apple M3 chipset in first place, although not by a significant margin, and Qualcomm shows it’s most efficient when its CPU isn’t pushed hard. Apple’s lead will likely increase with the M4 MacBook Air. Still, Lunar Lake is the strongest chipset yet for Windows laptops.
This isn’t the entire story. We’ll need to continue gathering data as we review more laptops with each chipset. More chipsets, like Intel’s Arrow Lake mobile and Apple’s M4, will roll out. For now, Windows laptops have never been better. Intel is mostly leading that charge when it comes to battery life.