Intel just dropped some serious hardware news at CES 2025, and it’s all about the new Arrow Lake family of CPUs, with a special focus on the powerhouse Core Ultra 200HX series.

Firstly, let’s talk about the broader picture: Intel is expanding its Arrow Lake lineup with chips tailored for everything from sleek, thin-and-light laptops to robust gaming behemoths. This CES, we’re seeing a diverse range of new processors, but all eyes are on the 200HX series, designed with high-performance gaming in mind. These chips are set to pair beautifully with the next-gen GPUs, most likely NVIDIA‘s hotly anticipated RTX 50 series.

Now, for those who’ve been following Intel’s moves, you might remember the Lunar Lake CPUs, which were a bit of a departure with their focus on efficiency and AI capabilities for Copilot Plus laptops. However, Intel has clarified that Lunar Lake was a unique experiment, and they’re not throwing away the conventional memory stick design with Arrow Lake.

Diving into the specifics of the Core Ultra 200HX, these chips are the muscle behind what could be some of the best gaming laptops of 2025. Intel boasts an impressive 5% uptick in single-thread performance and a hefty 20% improvement in multithread performance over the last generation’s Raptor Lake-H Refresh processors. That’s a big deal for gamers where every frame and second counts.

The flagship of this series, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285HX, is nothing short of a beast. It’s armed with 24 cores split into 8 performance cores and 16 efficiency cores, can boost up to an exhilarating 5.5GHz, and even includes 4 GPU cores with a 13 TOPS NPU. This setup qualifies it as an “AI PC” by Intel’s standards, though it falls short of Microsoft‘s specifications for Copilot Plus features.

For those not entirely focused on gaming, Intel has also rolled out the Core Ultra 200H and 200U series. The H-series, aimed at high-performance thin-and-light laptops, starts at a base power of 28 watts, with the top dog, Core Ultra 9 285H, needing up to 45 watts. These chips come equipped with an upgraded Intel Arc GPU, promising around a 15% boost in graphics performance over the previous Meteor Lake chips. On the CPU side, expect similar improvements in single-thread performance.

The U-series chips are all about efficiency, targeting users who prioritize battery life and portability in their laptops. They start with a base power of just 15 watts, peaking at 57 watts when turbocharged. The leading chip here, the Intel Core Ultra 7 265U, has 12 cores and can boost to 5.3GHz, making it a solid choice for everyday productivity without the heft of a gaming laptop.

While we won’t see the 200HX chips in laptops until late Q1, the 200H and 200U series are expected to start shipping into the market in the coming weeks, bringing Intel’s latest tech to a broader audience.