Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Intel decimates Apple to take battery life crown

By
The Surface Laptop 7 on a table in front of a window.
Luke Larsen / Digital Trends

It’s no secret that a big reason you’ll find MacBooks among the best laptops is the insane battery life that Apple’s machines are claimed to possess. Intel may have just snatched the battery life crown with its new Lunar Lake mobile CPUs, though. According to a battery test released by Lenovo, its Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition, packed with a Core Ultra 7 258V chip, lasted 23 hours and 54 minutes in a local video playback test, beating both M2 and M3 MacBooks by over five hours.

It’s a bold claim, and one that comes shockingly ahead of schedule. Laptops packing Intel’s latest chips are set to go on sale on September 24, so reviews should go live around that time. But Lenovo seems to have jumped the gun a bit with its battery test. Although Lenovo doesn’t clarify if its test was using a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro, it shows a dominant lead for upcoming Lunar Lake laptops. The M2 MacBook lasted 18 hours and 19 minutes, while the M3 MacBook pushed ahead to 18 hours and 32 minutes. Still, they’re far behind the nearly 24 hours of battery life Lenovo laptop saw.

Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition Lasted All-Day Playing Local Videos

Beyond Apple, this type of performance exceeds Copilot+ PCs we’ve seen with a Snapdragon X Elite chip, such as the Asus ProArt PZ13. In our own local video playback testing, this laptop lasted 18 hours and 39 minutes, while the M3 MacBook Air lasted 19 hours and 39 minutes. The best performer in this test we’ve seen is Dell’s XPS 13 9345, which lasted 22 hours and 9 minutes. Even then, Lenovo claims its upcoming Lunar Lake laptop lasts longer.

Recommended Videos

Battery life is very important to the success of Intel’s upcoming generation. With the release of Copilot+, there was a significant bump in laptop sales, but that didn’t come on the back of new AI features — it was due to longer battery life. Lunar Lake laptops won’t have Copilot+ features at release, but Microsoft says they’ll receive support in November through free Windows updates.

Although it’s always important to wait for third-party reviews, we aren’t dealing with leaked benchmarks here. This is an official test from Lenovo, and one that seemingly had all three laptops operating under identical circumstances. Considering how closely Lenovo’s numbers align with our own, the idea of 24-hour battery life on upcoming Lunar Lake laptops might be a reality.

It’s not exactly surprising that Intel has pushed ahead in battery life. Lunar Lake is a radical redesign of Intel’s approach to CPUs, and it marks the first time the company is outsourcing manufacturing to chipmaker TSMC. The chips ditch Intel’s long-standing Hyper-Threading feature to save battery life, and they prioritize the efficient cores as the main driver of performance. Those two changes have massive implications for battery life.

The lingering question is if Intel can keep up performance while achieving this level of battery life. Lunar Lake chips top out at eight cores total, which means they could struggle in heavily threaded workloads. We’ll just have to wait until September 24 when the laptops launch to know for sure.

Editors’ Recommendations

Topics
Jacob Roach
Jacob Roach
Lead Reporter, PC Hardware
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
Intel is bringing back one of its most frustrating types of CPUs
Intel Core Ultra Series 2 Lunar Lake chipset.

Intel's new Arrow Lake CPUs are a big deal. They utilize an entirely new architecture and come with a new socket, which will help them compete for a spot among the best processors. However, it looks like some upcoming Core 200-series CPUs (the non-Ultra versions) might not use the Arrow Lake/Lunar Lake architecture at all -- they might be rebranded CPUs sporting older CPU tech.

The assumption comes from results in the Crossmark benchmark that were posted to Bapco and first pointed out by Everest on X (formerly Twitter). The result shows the Core 5 210H, but it's not the performance that's interesting. It's the specs. The result shows that the CPU comes with eight cores and 12 threads. That's the rub. Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake don't come with Hyper-Threading, so each core only comes with a single thread.

Read more
I’m worried Intel is making a mistake with Arrow Lake
Someone holding the Core i9-12900KS processor.

For the last several years, every new generation from Intel has felt like a make-or-break moment. Now, with Arrow Lake CPUs, the stakes are even higher. Intel is facing unprecedented financial troubles, and although it still makes some of the best processors, the silicon giant that used to loom over the PC industry isn’t as strong as it once was.

Arrow Lake is yet another major shift. The CPUs kill Intel’s long-standing Hyper-Threading feature. They introduce two new core architectures. And they debut the Core Ultra branding on desktop, along with the new LGA 1851 socket. I’m worried that Intel’s strategy won’t work with Arrow Lake, though.

Read more
Sorry, gamers — Intel’s new CPUs won’t deliver any gains
A render for an Intel Arrow Lake CPU.

Intel is setting expectations for its upcoming Arrow Lake-S desktop CPUs. Although the company is holding strong that the new generation will be competitive with the best processors when they release on October 24, the new range of CPUs won't deliver much, if any, performance gains for gamers -- and that's coming from Intel itself.

To kick off the Arrow Lake generation, now called Intel Core Ultra 200S, Intel is releasing five processors. You can see the standard Core Ultra 9, 7, and 5 models in the table below, along with Core Ultra 7 and 5 models that cut the integrated graphics for a slightly lower price. All five of the processors are unlocked for overclocking with the new LGA 1851 socket. Unlike AMD's new Zen 5 CPUs, Core Ultra 200S chips require a new motherboard as Intel retires its LGA 1700 socket.

Read more