Our first Core i7-10810U benchmarks are in and they are not great

Launched just a few weeks ago, the Core i7-10810U is the vPro-enabled version of last year's Core i7-10710U designed for business laptops. It supports faster Turbo Boost frequencies of up to 4.9 GHz compared to "only" 4.7 GHz on the Core i7-10710U, but both processors are otherwise essentially identical down to their integrated UHD Graphics and cache sizes.

One of the first laptops to ship with the Core i7-10810U was the Dell Latitude 9510 which we were able to test earlier last week. While we found the convertible laptop itself to be impressive for its category, CPU performance was subpar when running high loads for extended periods. This is exemplified by our CineBench R15 xT loop test below where the high initial score would drop by as much as 40 percent by the third loop. Although perfect Turbo Boost sustainability is never expected from Ultrabooks running on ULV CPUs, this drop in particular is much steeper than what we're used to seeing.

The heavy throttling would impact additional benchmarks as well. Performance when running Blender and HWBOT x265, for example, would be far slower than the average Core i7-10710U by about 25 to 40 percent despite the fact that the Core i7-10810U is more expensive and with faster maximum Turbo Boost on paper.

We'll have to test more Core i7-10810U laptops to paint a bigger picture of the processor, but its debut on the Latitude 9510 could have definitely been better. If you're in the market for a Comet Lake-U Ultrabook or business laptop and have no use for vPro, then skip the Core i7-10810U and just go with the cheaper Core i7-10710U instead.