Intel has introduced their latest series of laptop processor chips, the Intel Core Ultra 200V, previously known as Intel Lunar Lake. This processing chip is seen as the company's first attempt to challenge Apple's M series processing chip that was introduced a few years ago.
We now have the opportunity to test and review laptops powered by these latest processing chips and see for ourselves how this latest offering from Intel will change your perception of thin and light laptops.
What's Up With Lunar Lake?
The Intel Core Ultra 200V chip series is a paradigm shift for Intel for several reasons. First is the completely new chip design even when compared to Meteor Lake. Where Meteor Lake introduces two types of E-core efficiency cores and low-power efficiency cores, Lunar Lake combines these two cores into one type of E-core core.
In the meantime, the Hyperthreading feature introduced by Intel is also no longer present, and all CPU models in this series come with eight total cores consisting of four performance cores (Performance cores) and four efficiency cores (Efficiency cores).
But what is most interesting is that for the first time, Intel processing chips now arrive with built-in LPDDR5X memory modules, with options of 32GB and 16GB depending on the processing chip model.
Even so, the design of the Lunar Lake processing chip is not much different compared to Meteor Lake, where they maintain the use of special processor cores for the use of the display (which does not use the built-in GPU), battery, I/O plugs and light tasks such as play a video.
All this is done to optimize the use of laptop batteries, which can now come in larger sizes due to the shrinking size of laptop motherboards. It would not be surprising to see a 14-inch laptop to use a battery beyond 70-80Whr in the future.
This Intel Core Ultra 200V processing chip also houses the latest graphics processing chip from Intel, the Intel Battlemage, which will only be shown on the Lunar Lake processing chip. Interestingly, this graphics processing chip will not be used on the Arrow Lake-S processing chip which will also be launched soon.
Intel says that with this graphics processing chip, laptop users can run a number of modern computer games at HD or Full HD resolution at medium settings, something I can say is new for a thin and light laptop.
But I will explain more about these things in the next paragraphs so let's see what this laptop has to offer.
Specifications And Design
Model Name ASUS Zenbook S 14 (UX5406)
Display Size 14″, 3K (2880 x 1800) Lumina OLED 16:10, 120Hz,
HDR True Black 600, Non-Touch
Intel Core Ultra 7 258V 3.3GHz processor
(8 cores, 8 Threads)
Intel AI Boost 47 AI TOPS
Graphics Chip Intel Arc Graphics 140V (1.95GHz)
RAM 32GB LPDDR5X
Internal Load 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD
Full HD camera
1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A I/O plug
2x USB 4.0 Thunderbolt 4 Type-C DP/PD
1x HDMI 2.1 TMDS
1x 3.5mm
Windows 11 Home Operating System
Security Face scan with Windows Hello
72WHr battery
65W charger
Price RM6,999
The laptop sent to us by Intel is the latest ASUS Zenbook S 14 equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processing chip. This processing chip comes with a total of eight cores, four of which are P-Core cores and the other four are E-Core cores.
As I said, all Lunar Lake processor chip models have the same number of cores, and the only difference is the CPU speed and RAM offerings. Speaking of RAM, this Intel Core Ultra 7 265V is equipped with 32GB of LPDDR5X memory built directly into the processing chip. In terms of storage, this laptop is equipped with 512GB PCIe 4.0 SSD storage.
This laptop is also equipped with a 14-inch Lumina OLED screen display that comes with a resolution of 2880×1600 with a display ratio of 16:10 with a refresh rate of 120Hz. It is also equipped with a 72Wh battery that can be charged using only 65W charging.
In terms of plug options, ASUS Zenbook S 14 comes with two Thunderbolt 4 Type-C plugs, one USB 3.2 Type-A plug and one HDMI 2.1 TMDS plug. Typically laptops will come with one Thunderbolt 4 plug and one USB 3.2 Type-C plug, but Intel has said that for laptops powered by Lunar Lake processing chips, they will come with two Thunderbolt 4 plugs built-in.
This is seen to allow the user to charge the laptop quickly, and still use another plug for the purpose of fast data transmission from the external storage to the computer and vice versa without problems.
The ASUS Zenbook S 14 laptop design is also very thin and light. For this latest model, they have introduced a new alloy called 'Ceraluminum' which combines aluminum metal and ceramics which allows this laptop to have a light weight of only 1.2KG. The use of this material also allows the design of this laptop to come with a thin design of 1.29cm, making it very easy to carry anywhere, especially if you are someone who always works outside the office.
User Experience
I can honestly say that in terms of productivity purposes, the ASUS Zenbook S 14 laptop is the closest computer to the Apple MacBook Air laptop from several aspects, including design, productivity and battery life.
I can't stress enough how easy this laptop is to take anywhere. I use this laptop daily for several weeks, no matter at office, home or when I go out, I will take this laptop with me no matter where I go.
With the default performance settings, and lowering the brightness value of this screen display to 50%, I don't have to worry about this laptop charging issue for about two days, depending on my usage pattern. For normal productivity purposes such as writing articles, editing photos, watching YouTube or Netflix videos and the like, this laptop can do it without any problems shown on other computers, such as micro-stutter issues and so on using battery power.
And for my usage pattern, I can typically use this laptop with a full charge for two days in a row (with around 6 hours of usage per day) on battery power without needing a charge. And yes, this is with the WiFi network activated and used for internet browsing purposes.
With the Lunar Lake CPU, Intel also showed off their latest graphics processing chip, the Intel Arc Battlemage. With this graphics chip, gaming on a thin and light laptop is no longer impossible.
Yes, it might still be difficult to run games at high resolutions and refresh rates, but if you're like me, want to play games that aren't that heavy, like Genshin Impact, Honkai Star Rail, Diablo IV, DoTA, League of Legends or Wuthering Waves, this Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processing chip is able to do it depending on the graphics settings of your game.
For games like Genshin Impact and Honkai Star Rail in particular, this laptop can run them at 60FPS refresh rate without any issues. As for Diablo IV, I found that at Full HD resolution and medium graphics settings, it can be played at Full HD resolution with a refresh rate of around 40-50FPS without too many problems.
However, just like all other laptops, our recommendation is that you make sure that this laptop needs to be connected to a USB charging cable, because of course the battery power will not be able to sustain such a long gaming session.
Interesting and useful gimmick
Along with this laptop are some brand new features that are interesting and in my opinion, even though I feel that it is like a gimmick, it has its uses. First is the Full HD camera on this laptop.
Although this laptop comes with support for Windows Hello, unfortunately it can only use the webcam as a way to log into the laptop. What's interesting here is that it comes with a security feature where if the camera can't scan your face when you don't lock or log out of your account, this laptop will lock itself after about 1 minute.
This to some extent can help you reduce or avoid the probability of information being stolen from your laptop, or prevent the data in your laptop from being sabotaged.
Second is the touchpad on this ASUS Zenbook S 14 which is not only large, but can also be used as a laptop control pad. Among the functions that can be controlled are display brightness values, audio volume and scrolling the video timeline, which can be done regardless of whether you are watching videos using the built-in video application, or streaming services such as YouTube and Netflix.
Updating your laptop software as well, specifically BIOS files and various other security updates can now be done directly through the MyASUS software. Previously, if you wanted to update software such as BIOS or update any laptop components, it had to be done manually.
With MyASUS, all of these tasks can be identified much more easily, and downloaded quickly, without you having to go to the ASUS website to find the latest software updates.
Another new feature introduced by Intel with the launch of this Lunar Lake laptop is Thunderbolt Share technology. In a nutshell, this technology allows two laptops that have a Thunderbolt connection to share data and storage with each other using only one cable.
We had the opportunity to try this technology during the IFA event, and by using a USB4 cable that supports Thunderbolt 4 connection, users can share displays and send files between these two computers quickly and easily.
Intel confirmed to us that with the launch of Intel Lunar Lake laptops, the Thunderbolt Sharing feature will be marketed more widely as more laptops are released.
Benchmark Test
These are the benchmark tests we used to test the capabilities of the Intel Core Ultra 258V processing chip on the ASUS Zenbook S 14 laptop.
CineBench R23 (Single Core)
CineBench R23 (Multi Core)
PCMark 10
GeekBench
3DMark (Steel Nomad Light)
3DMark (Wild Life Extreme)
CrystalDiskMark
Battery
The biggest issue for most X86-class laptops, even those with thin and light designs in my opinion, is battery life. With the ASUS Zenbook S 14, specifically powered by the Intel Core Ultra 258V processing chip, I can finally say that laptops like the Apple MacBook Air now have a challenger in the battery arena.
During my time using this laptop, I can say that this is the first time that a combined Intel and Microsoft Windows laptop comes with a battery life that can last for 12-13 hours of consistent use.
I will also say that this long battery life requires you to make some small changes to your laptop usage patterns. For me, since this Zenbook S 14 laptop comes with an OLED screen display that has a brightness value as high as 400 nits, I only need to set the screen brightness at 40-50 percent to get the best balance of display brightness and also long battery life .
My usage patterns are mixed. I'll be using this laptop as my daily task completion machine, and will also use it to watch videos during lunch for a while, and even then, from 10am to 7pm, I'll still have around 30-40 percent battery, about an extra four to five hours when I'm ready to go home.
As I also said before, for gaming, the battery life of this laptop drops dramatically when I use it without attaching the charging cable to this laptop, and in my experience, does not exceed an hour even with a full charge.
I expect that if you are using this laptop for video editing and processing purposes, the battery drop may not be that bad and you can use the battery power without problems, but you will probably need to check it from time to time to make sure that the laptop does not die automatically surprise
Cover
After several years of trying new ways to develop a laptop processing chip that can combine both good computing performance in terms of productivity and leisure, in addition to combining long battery life, Intel seems to have succeeded in introducing a product that could be a competitor to the laptop monopoly held by Apple.
You may have noticed that I haven't said much about the artificial intelligence capabilities of this laptop. This isn't an Intel issue, but if you ask me, the need to use artificial intelligence technology isn't something to ignore right now.
Perhaps one thing I hope that Intel will correct in the future when introducing new CPU models is to choose a model name that is easier to remember than what is used for the Meteor Lake and Lunar Lake series chips.
This ASUS Zenbook S 14 has already started to be sold in the Malaysian market at a price of RM6999. I won't deny that the price of this computer is quite expensive, but for those of you who want a laptop that combines performance and good battery life, this is the best choice of Microsoft Windows version X86 (as opposed to Arm) laptops on the market right now.
Pros:
Uncompromising performance for productivity and leisure
Long battery life
Various interesting new features
Elegant design
Cons:
Premium price tag
No fingerprint scanner
Very confusing CPU model name