Intel’s most important launch in recent years has finally arrived, with leading laptop brands announcing Lunar Lake-based laptops. We got our hands on laptops from Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Dell, Samsung, MSI, and LG. The headline feature of these laptops is their incredible battery life. Intel showed benchmarks with over 20 hours of battery life on productivity tasks and claimed best-in-business efficiency and integrated graphics performance compared to AMD and Qualcomm-powered laptops. While these comparisons are nothing new, we’ll believe those claims after our comprehensive review and testing of the Lunar Lake laptops across our suite of synthetic and real-world benchmarks. We’ll then decide if Intel has truly regained its dominance in offering the best laptop SOCs.
However, we did get our hands on some of the big Lunar Lake laptop launches at IFA 2024, and here are our initial impressions. Note that we weren’t allowed to run benchmarks to test Lunar Lake performance at the launch events, so our impressions are based on laptop specifications and features.
Also read: How Intel Lunar Lake is taking the fight to the competition
Asus Zenbook S 14
The Zenbook S 14 is probably our pick of all the Intel Lunar Lake-based premium thin and light laptops revealed at IFA 2024. We like the design innovation that Asus brings to the table with the Zenbook S 14. The “Ceraluminum” treatment (finish) on the Asus Zenbook S 14 is unique in many ways, from the use of materials to the feel and look it adds to the laptop. Asus has attempted much-needed meaningful differentiation in material science, something the category desperately needs, as we start seeing very similar-looking and feeling (to touch) premium thin and light laptops that come across as generic metal slabs with little identity or character.
We tested and reviewed the Asus Zenbook S 15 earlier in July 2024 and liked what we saw; the Zenbook 14 is essentially a 14-inch version of the Zenbook S 15, albeit with Intel Lunar Lake inside. The Asus Zenbook 15 we tested was based on the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series processor. The most interesting bit, though, is that if we take Intel’s word, the Asus Zenbook S 14 should be able to beat the Asus Zenbook S 15 across every benchmark, be it gaming, battery life, AI performance, or even single-core CPU performance. And just for the record, the Asus Zenbook S 15 is the fastest thin and light laptop we’ve tested so far at our test labs, so we can’t wait to see if the Zenbook S 14 can take the crown away.
When it comes to specifications, Asus has listed the Zenbook S 14 (UX5406) with four Intel processor options, starting from the very top-end Intel Core Ultra 9 288V processor with 48 TOPS of performance and the fastest variant of the Intel Arc 140V 8-core iGPU. You can read more about the full specification of the Asus Zenbook S 14 here. The Zenbook S 14 felt light, premium, and very well put together. The 14-inch 3K OLED display is sharp, and we won’t need too much testing to confirm that it is one of the better OLED displays in terms of color accuracy and response time; we’ve thoroughly tested the 15-inch variant with the exact same Asus Lumia OLED tech in the Asus Zenbook S 15. Overall, the Zenbook S 14 is one of our top picks when it comes to the new laptop launches that came our way at IFA 2024. We await the review unit.
Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360
The first laptop from Samsung in the updated Galaxy Book 5 lineup is the Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360, a convertible (2-in-1) laptop with a 360-degree display that allows the laptop to be used in tablet mode for creator-centric workloads. The large 16-inch, 3K Dynamic AMOLED touch display can go up to 120Hz and claims 500 nits of peak brightness. We are fans of Samsung’s latest Dynamic AMOLED 2X touch displays on laptops for their non-reflective treatment of the displays, which surely fix one of the biggest issues we have with AMOLED displays – excessive reflections that impact viewability in brightly lit environments.
On the design front, we appreciate the Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360 for making the most of the 16-inch form factor while keeping the overall size and weight in check. The display has one of the slimmest bezels we’ve seen on a 16-inch laptop. Another area where the Book 5 Pro 360 stands out is the super-large touchpad, which has been optimized to prevent unintended activation during typing by fine-tuning the sensitivity of the touchpad when it comes to the borders. The Book 5 Pro 360 will be offered with Intel Core Ultra 5 and Ultra 7 Series 2 processors; we aren’t sure which model will make it to India. For more details on the Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360, read our launch story here.
Acer Swift 14 AI
Acer announced its new Intel Lunar Lake-powered lineup with two Swift series models – the Swift 14 AI and Swift 16 AI. We checked out the Acer Swift 14 AI, and the first thing that struck us is that the overall chassis and design are pretty much the same as the Swift AI powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite SoC. What is different, though, is that the Intel Core Ultra Series 2-powered laptop promises higher battery life at a staggering 29 hours on a single charge and is lighter at 1.26 kilograms. The Acer Swift 14 AI is the highest when it comes to battery life claims on a thin and light laptop that we’ve got our hands on to date.
Another cool thing about the Acer Swift 14 AI is the NPU activity indicator, which glows whenever the NPU is in use. This is a neat feature, as it kind of alerts you when any applications are making use of the NPU. We see it being very helpful for testers and power users who are interested in knowing exactly when the NPU is called for action during running different types of workloads. You can read more about the Acer Swift 14 AI and the Swift 16 AI in our IFA 2024 Acer launch story.
MSI Claw 8 AI Plus
MSI did launch the Prestige, Summit, and Venture series of Intel Lunar Lake-powered laptops at IFA 2024, but what caught our attention was the MSI Claw 8 AI+. MSI launched the Claw 7 on the Intel Meteor Lake series at CES 2024, and now they have upgraded the Claw to a larger, more beefed-up 8-inch handled Windows 11-powered gaming console with the MSI Claw 8 AI Plus. The Claw 8 is going bigger on every aspect – a larger 8-inch display, a big jump in the battery pack with an 80Whr (compared to the 53Whr in the Claw 7), and it will be powered by the latest Intel Lunar Lake-based Core Ultra 200V series processor and will also run on a faster SSD besides offering an additional Thunderbolt 4 port. Surely, we expect the Claw 8 to offer a much better gaming experience and battery life without any thermal throttling issues, thanks to the much more efficient and graphically advanced Intel Lunar Lake platform.
During our brief encounter with the MSI Claw 8 AI Plus, we found the console to have a similar design and overall in-hand feel as the MSI Claw 7. Sure, the device has got a bit heavier, but the balance is well maintained thanks to the increase in volume. MSI has not launched the device yet; they’ve announced it, and we expect the official launch to be in early 2025.
Dell XPS 13
We got our hands on the latest Lunar Lake-equipped Dell XPS 13 at the demo area, and the first thing to report is that all the changes are on the inside. Dell has upgraded the innards of the XPS 13 with Intel Core Ultra 200V series processors, with configurations going up to Intel Core Ultra 9 288V with 32GB of memory. The fact that Dell has kept the overall design and chassis the same is a very good thing. We love Dell’s seamless XPS 13 design with the invisible touchpad. It does have a unique appeal, and Dell has also done a very good job with the implementation. Dell claims 26 hours of battery life on the Dell XPS 13 with WiFi on and streaming Netflix at 1080p resolution. We’d like to test that claim ourselves to be doubly sure on that number, but we do expect the Intel Lunar Lake-powered XPS 13 to take a substantial jump across performance and battery life compared to the earlier Intel Meteor Lake-powered XPS 13.
There’s no official information on the India launch yet. We do expect Intel Lunar Lake-powered laptops to make it to the Indian market real soon. Let’s hope a few also make it to the shelves before the buying season kicks off. We’d want to test and update our recommendations and laptop buying guides with Intel Lunar Lake-based laptops once we’ve got the Digit Rating out for them.
