Core Ultra 7 265U vs. Core Ultra 7 165U: Almost no performance differences between them

Arrow Lake-U CPUs are now hitting the market for thin-and-light or low-power consumer laptops. These options directly replace last year's Meteor Lake-U series and the older 2023 Raptor Lake-U series. We recently finished up testing the EliteBook 8 Flip G1i 13 powered by the Arrow Lake-U Core Ultra 7 265U to see how the processor compares against its immediate predecessors.

As shown by our charts below, the Core Ultra 7 265U in our HP is roughly 20 to 25 percent faster than the Meteor Lake-U Core Ultra 7 165U in the ThinkPad X13 2-in-1. When compared to the same CPU in the slightly larger Dell Latitude 7450 2-in-1, however, results are essentially neck-to-neck with any differences in the single-digit percentage range.

When comparing graphics performance, both CPUs utilize the same integrated Arc 4 GPU to represent no major gains in graphical horsepower.

The jump from the Core Ultra 7 165U to the Core Ultra 265U is instead more about efficiency as the newer CPU is manufactured at 5 nm versus 7 nm for slightly better performance-per-watt if all else is equal. For the vast majority of users, however, opting for the less expensive Core Ultra 7 165U will still provide virtually the same user experience.