2025 Intel mobile hardware explained – Intel Arrow Lake HX, Arrow Lake H, Lunar Lake V

This article covers the Intel mobile hardware available in modern laptops in 2025, both the platforms released this year and those released last year which are still relevant today in competitive devices.

I already covered the AMD mobile platforms (Strix, Strix Halo, Krackan, etc) in this other article, if interested.

The platforms we’re discussing further down are the following:

• Intel Arrow Lake-HX (Core Ultra 200HX) – highest performance platform with a beefy processor, meant for enthusiast gaming/work laptops, paired with a modern Nvidia RTX 5000 Blackwell dGPU;
• Intel Arrow Lake H (Core Ultra 200H) – mid-range and more balanced platform meant for a wide range of notebooks, from ultrabooks to everyday all-around devices, with or without dGPUs;
• Intel Arrow Lake U (Core Ultra 200U) –  a somewhat peculiar subseries, meant for mid-range affordable devices;
• Intel Lunar Lake-V (Core Ultra 200V) – high-efficiency platform meant for premium thin-and-light designs;
• Intel Raptor Lake Refresh (Core 100U) – efficient entry-level platforms, meant for affordable lightweight laptops;
• Intel Twin Lake (Core Nx50) – low-power and affordable entry-level platforms, meant for mini-computers and basic-tier laptops.

Intel Arrow Lake-HX – Core Ultra 200HX, up to Core Ultra 9 285HX

This is the highest-performance mobile hardware available from Intel as of now, and is meant for full-power gaming and workstation notebooks, but is also implemented in a handful of premium more portable designs.

Arrow Lake-HX is a hybrid platform that combines a processor with up to 24 Cores / 24 Threads with a base-level iGPU and NPU, and advanced I/O.

With this hardware, it’s all about the CPU power, with 8x Lion Cove Performance cores and 16x Skymont Efficiency cores, and sustained TDP of up to 160W.

However, unlike the previous Raptor Lake HX, this platform no longer supports HyperThreading on the Performance cores. That is an approach meant to reduce the overall die-size of these 2025 HX processors, in order to improve efficiency and thermals, and allow the hardware to be successfully implemented in more than just beefy desktop-replacement devices, as with past Intel HX hardware.

At the same time, the updated Cores offer >5% boost in single-threaded and 20+% boost in multithreaded loads, despite having fewer threads. That’s generally due to the generational gains on the Performance and especially the Efficiency Cores, as well as the overall design of the SoC.

This Intel generation hardware is actually built by TSMC, utilizing their 6nm N6 node for the SoC and IO tiles, and their 3nm 3NB for the Compute Tile. Furthermore, everything about the CPU design has been rethought with this generation, with the way the cache memory works, among many others. The design offers dedicated per-core L1 and L2 cache, as well as a common L3 cache ring-bus utilized by all Cores.

At the same time, this hardware doesn’t focus much on the integrated GPU or NPU, which are both older generations. But that’s because these HX processors are always offered alongside dedicated graphics, Nvidia’s latest Blackwell RTX 5000 chips, which take over all the graphics processing and provide excellent capabilities in AI workloads. An advanced iGPU and NPU make sense on platforms meant specifically for thin-and-light computers, but less so here.

As far as the hardware goes, here are the main Intel Core Ultra 200HX SKUs that you will find in actual products:

• Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX: CPU – 8P + 16E Cores, 24 Threads, up to 5.5 GHz P-Cores, 36 MB L3 Smart cache; GPU – Intel Xe, 4x Xe-LPG Cores, up to 1.95 GHz;
• Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX: CPU – 8P + 16E Cores, 24 Threads, up to 5.4 GHz P-Cores, 36 MB L3 Smart cache; GPU – Intel Xe, 4x Xe-LPG Cores, up to 1.9 GHz;
• Intel Core Ultra 7 255HX: CPU – 8P + 12E Cores, 20 Threads, up to 5.2 GHz P-Cores, 30 MB L3 Smart cache; GPU – Intel Xe, 4x Xe-LPG Cores, up to 1.85 GHz;
• Intel Core Ultra 5 235HX: CPU – 6P + 8E Cores, 14 Threads, up to 5.1 GHz P-Cores, 24 MB L3 Smart cache; GPU – Intel Xe, 3x Xe-LPG Cores, up to 1.8 GHz.

And here’s the complete lineup of HX chips.

The two Core Ultra 9 SKUs are identical, with minimally faster speeds for the Ultra 9 285HX and an unlocked multiplier allowing for overclocking. Expect most high-performance notebooks built on Arrow Lake HD hardware to offer an Ultra 9 processor, while some of the mid-range models with mid-tier specs might also come in Ultra 7 and even Ultra 5 assortments.

This article offers a more in-depth look at the Intel Arrow Lake 200HX hardware, as well as a complete list of laptops built on this platform.

Intel Arrow Lake-H – Core Ultra 200H, up to Core Ultra 9 285H

Arrow Lake-H is the middle-ground jack of all trades platform in this hardware generation, meant for a multitude of possible devices.

It offers the same Performance and Efficiency Cores as the HX subseries, but fewer of them and at lower TDP power settings. And then, it adds a few Low Performance Efficiency cores to the mix as well, for increased efficiency with light use on battery power. The overall CPU design is similar to the HX platform, with the same kind of memory ring-bus and IO capabilities, including support of CPU-attached PCIe gen5 storage and Thunderbolt 5, among others.

However, Arrow Lake H pairs the CPU part with a far more capable graphics chip called Intel Arc 140T, with Xe2 graphical cores and higher clocks than in the Arc 140V implemented with Lunar Lake hardware. This is the fastest iGPU technology available to date from Intel, and one of the fastest overall, aside from the powerful Radeon iGPUs offered with AMD’s Strix Halo APUs.

This approach makes Arrow Lake H hardware versatile in both stand-alone implementations in various forms and at various power levels, but also as companions for dedicated GPUs in portable performance and gaming devices. Think of this as Intel’s alternative to AMD’s Strix Point hardware.

The NPU is still a previous-gen NPU3 implementation with limited 13 TOPS capabilities, but the CPU and Arc iGPU compensate for it, allowing for up to 99 total TOPS on the Ultra 9 285H, something to consider for configurations built exclusively on the Intel hardware. And then, configurations with a dGPU take over and provide far greater processing capabilities for AI workloads.

These are the main Intel Core Ultra 200H SKUs that you will find in actual products:

• Intel Core Ultra 9 285H: CPU – 6P + 8E + 2LP Cores, 16 Threads, up to 5.4 GHz P-Cores, 24 MB L3 Smart cache, 35+W TDP; GPU – Intel Arc 140T, 8x Xe2 Cores, up to 2.35 GHz;
• Intel Core Ultra 7 255H: CPU – 6P + 8E + 2LP Cores, 16 Threads, up to 5.1 GHz P-Cores, 24 MB L3 Smart cache, 20+W TDP; GPU – Intel Arc 140T, 8x Xe2 Cores, up to 2.25 GHz;
• Intel Core Ultra 5 225H: CPU – 4P + 8E + 2LP Cores, 14 Threads, up to 4.9 GHz P-Cores, 18 MB L3 Smart cache, 20+W TDP; GPU – Intel Arc 130T, 7x Xe2 Cores, up to 2.2 GHz.

And here’s the complete lineup of H chips.

For the most part, expect the Core Ultra 9 to be implemented in some higher-tier portable chassis as a standalone platform, but especially in all-purpose 14 to 16 inch models alongside a dGPU, especially later in the year once the mainstream GeForce RTX 5050/5070 chips come out.

The Ultra 7 and Ultra 5 models are mostly meant for mid-range ultraportables, due to their lower TDP starting levels of 20W, but expect most to run at 28-35 W or even higher. I’d also expect these to be implemented in some mid-range performance and gaming options, especially the more affordable kind.

This article goes more in-depth on the Arrow Lake-H hardware particularities, as well as provides a full list of laptops built on this Intel Core Ultra 200H hardware lineup.

Intel Arrow Lake-U – Core Ultra 200U, up to Core Ultra 7 255U

Based on past experience with Intel Core U hardware, you’d expect the Arrow Lake U platform to be a low-powered version of the Arrow Lake H hardware, perhaps with fewer processor cores, fewer graphics units, and lower power settings.

But no, Arrow Lake-U is actually a version of Intel’s previous-gen Meteor Lake hardware, with a gimped CPU and GPU.

That means Core Ultra 200U processors implement previous-gen Redwood Cove P-Cores and Crestmont E-Cores, with only 2x Performance Cores and low power settings (15+W TDP), alongside a basic Intel iGPU with 4x Xe-LPG cores, not even the Arc iGPU offered with Meteor Lake Core Ultra 100H SKUs.

We’ll get this hardware in mid-tier and budget-level thin-and-light designs. It’s still a fairly competitive platform for daily use and casual multitasking, but not meant for heavier mixed-use or sustained loads. Don’t expect much in graphics or AI capabilities, either. And efficiency on battery isn’t going to be quite on par with the updated microarchitectures either.

These are the main Intel Core Ultra 200U SKUs that you will find in actual products:

• Intel Core Ultra 7 255U: CPU – 2P + 8E + 2LP Cores, 14 Threads, up to 5.2 GHz P-Cores, 12 MB L3 Smart cache, 15+W TDP; GPU – Intel iGPU, 4x Xe-LPG Cores, up to 2.1 GHz;
• IIntel Core Ultra 5 225U: CPU – 2P + 8E + 2LP Cores, 14 Threads, up to 4.5 GHz P-Cores, 12 MB L3 Smart cache, 12+W TDP; GPU – Intel iGPU, 4x Xe-LPG Cores, up to 2 GHz.

And here’s the complete lineup of Core 200U chips.

Intel Lunar Lake-V – Core Ultra 200V, up to Core Ultra 9 288V

Lunar Lake hardware was unveiled mid-last year, as a high-efficiency SoC platform meant for mixed-use in premium thin-and-light devices, and it’s one of the better Intel mobile platforms released over the last many years.

It bundles a mid-level processor section built on the latest-gen Lion-Cove Performance and Skymont Efficiency cores alongside competent Intel Arc 140V graphics, a modern NPU, and RAM integrated into the chip. In fact, Lunar Lake is what you would have called a U-series platform variant of the Arrow Lake microarchitecture, even if there are some differences in the overall SoC design between Arrow Lake-H and Lunar Lake-V chiplets.

This platform offers fair performance for daily-use and medium-multitasking, alongside competent NPU performance for AI workloads and solid graphics performance as well. In fact, at time this was launched, about 6 months ago, the Arc 140V was the fastest iGPU platform on the market, faster than the Radeon 890M in the Ryzen 9 AI APUs.

These are the main Intel Core Ultra 200V SKUs available in multiple laptops today:

• Intel Core Ultra 9 288V: CPU – 4P + 4LPE, 8 Threads, up to 5.1 GHz P-Cores, 12 MB L3 Smart cache, 17+W TDP; 32 GB LPDDR5x onboard RAM; GPU – Intel Arc 140V, 8x Xe2 Cores, up to 2.05 GHz;
• Intel Core Ultra 7 258V: CPU – 4P + 4LPE, 8 Threads, up to 4.8 GHz P-Cores, 12 MB L3 Smart cache, 17+W TDP; 32 GB LPDDR5x onboard RAM; GPU – Intel Arc 140V, 8x Xe2 Cores, up to 1.95 GHz;
• Intel Core Ultra 7 256V: CPU – 4P + 4LPE, 8 Threads, up to 4.8 GHz P-Cores, 12 MB L3 Smart cache, 17+W TDP; 16 GB LPDDR5x onboard RAM; GPU – Intel Arc 140V, 8x Xe2 Cores, up to 1.95 GHz;
• Intel Core Ultra 5 226V: CPU – 4P + 4LPE, 8 Threads, up to 4.5 GHz P-Cores, 12 MB L3 Smart cache, 17+W TDP; 16 GB LPDDR5x onboard RAM; GPU – Intel Arc 130V, 7x Xe2 Cores, up to 1.85 GHz.

A more detailed article on the Intel Lunar Lake V platform and all laptops built on this hardware is available here.

Intel Raptor Lake Refresh (Core 100U)

This is another low-power platform meant for affordable portable devices, built around older-generation technology, but still a decent fit for general use and light multitasking.

It’s based on the 13th-gen Intel Alder Lake architecture and bundles a hybrid CPU with 2x Golden Cove Performance Cores and 8x Gracemont Efficiency Cores, alongside an Intel Xe graphics chip of that generation.

The highest-tier CPU in this subseries is the Core 7 150U, which is roughly a refreshed Core i7-1355U from a few years ago. Here are the specs for the main Core 100U SKUs:

• Intel Core 7 150U: CPU – 2P + 8E, 12 Threads, up to 5 GHz P-Cores, 12 MB L3 Smart cache, 12+W TDP; GPU – Intel Iris Xe, 96 EUs, 1.3 GHz;
• Intel Core 5 120U: CPU – 2P + 8E, 12 Threads, up to 5 GHz P-Cores, 12 MB L3 Smart cache, 12+W TDP; GPU – Intel Iris Xe, 80 EUs, 1.3 GHz;
• Intel Core 3 100U: CPU – 2P + 4E, 10 Threads, up to 4.7 GHz P-Cores, 10 MB L3 Smart cache, 12+W TDP; GPU – Intel Iris Xe, 64 EUs, 1.25 GHz.

Intel Twin Lake (Intel Nx50)

Finally, this is Intel’s lowest-performance and most efficient platform of this generation, with a CPU built exclusively on Efficient Cores (Gracemont Architecture, 13th-gen), an Intel iGPU with limited EUs, and a TDP of 6-15W.

Twin Lake is a successor for Alder Lake-N (Pentium Gold/Silver processors), a hardware assortment meant for the most affordable notebooks, entry-level ultracompact PCs, or potentially for some fanless chassis designs.

While some products built on Twin Lake hardware have been announced, particularly based on the lowest-tier Twin Lake Intel N150 processor, a handful of other SKUs are expected as well, with up to 8x Cores and an iGPU with up to 32 EUs on the Intel N355 and N350, and 4x Cores with 24 EUs iGPU on the N250 and N150.

That’s about it for now, but we’ll update this article once new hardware is released later in the year. Intel’s roadmap suggests Panther Lake around late-2025, as a high-efficiency platform succeeding Lunar Lake built on Intel’s new 18A node, with the mainstream Nova Lake platform expected in 2026, potentially using Intel’s 14A node (equivalent to TSMC’s 2nm). We’ll keep you posted, and in the meantime, I’d appreciate discussing this Intel hardware in the comments section.