Almost Lunar Lake levels: Intel keeps its Panther Lake promise of efficiency

At CES 2026, Intel officially unveiled the Intel Panther Lake series. The new Intel Core Ultra 300 series was the first to be made in Intel's own 18A process, and with it, Intel promised mainly one thing: The same power efficiency as the older Lunar Lake series, but with a higher performance.

Many months later, we have tested many systems with the Intel Panther Lake CPU series. A recent example is the HP EliteBook X G2i. We tested this 14-inch premium business laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 7 356H, a sixteen core CPU, as well as a WUXGA (1,920 x 1,200) IPS screen and 68 Wh battery. This serves as an ideal comparison with the older HP EliteBook X G1i, as it featured a similar screen with the same resolution, as well as the same battery capacity, but with the Intel Lunar Lake processor Core Ultra 7 268V, an older eight core processor.

Comparing both directly, the older EliteBook does consume slightly less power than the newer Panther Lake based model when idling. Overall though, the measured battery life is almost the same: The old EliteBook X G1i achieved 18.5 hrs in our Wi-Fi/websurfing test (150 cd/m²), while the new EliteBook X G2i topped out at almost 18 hrs in the same test.

This means that Intel does fulfill its promise: pretty much the same power efficiency, but at a much higher performance: The EliteBook X G2i outperforms is predecessor by around 32 percent.