An Asus Zenbook UX5406S with a Lunar Lake-based Core Ultra 7 258V inside.
Credit:
Andrew Cunningham
These high-end Zenbooks usually offer pretty good keyboards and trackpads, and the ones here are comfortable and reliable.
Credit:
Andrew Cunningham
An HDMI port, a pair of Thunderbolt ports, and a headphone jack.
Credit:
Andrew Cunningham
A single USB-A port on the other side of the laptop. Dongles are fine, but we still appreciate when thin-and-light laptops can fit one of these in.
Credit:
Andrew Cunningham
Two things can be true for Intel's new Core Ultra 200-series processors, codenamed Lunar Lake: They can be both impressive and embarrassing.
Impressive because they perform reasonably well, despite some regressions and inconsistencies, and because they give Intel's battery life a much-needed boost as the company competes with new Snapdragon X Elite processors from Qualcomm and Ryzen AI chips from AMD. It will also be Intel's first chip to meet Microsoft's performance requirements for the Copilot+ features in Windows 11.
Embarrassing because, to get here, Intel had to use another company's manufacturing facilities to produce a competitive chip.