After years of Apple’s dominance, Intel wants its mojo back

Five years ago, Intel announced a plan to get its mojo back, but the intervening years have been rocky for the company that was once the undisputed leader in computer chip design.

Rival AMD has been eating away at Intel’s dominance with chips based on the same x86 architecture, while mobile-focused chips based on ARM architecture – made by Qualcomm and others – have become so efficient that Apple and Microsoft have put them at the heart of their laptops, despite the huge investment required to make existing apps compatible.

Looking at many business-focused or thin-and-light laptops from the past year, you could be forgiven for thinking Intel had been left behind. Microsoft is promoting its Copilot+ PC program for Windows, which certifies machines for power efficiency and AI workflows, most of which use Qualcomm chips. And Apple remains the market leader in efficiency and performance in these categories, with its M-series Apple Silicon chips built on ARM.

Intel’s latest promise is that its 2026 chips will deliver competitive processing, graphics and AI while also sipping power to keep a thin device running for days. Internally, this generation of chips is referred to as Panther Lake, built on the 2-nanometre equivalent 18A process in Arizona, in a facility made possible by investment and legislation by the US government. The jury’s still out on whether any of this will skyrocket Intel back to the top of the heap, but testing a laptop with a brand new Panther Lake chip inside makes it clear the company has delivered on its claims.

Head to head

Panther Lake is formally known as Core Ultra Series 3, and the specific chip I tested is the Ultra X7 358H, inside an MSI Prestige 14 Flip. The first benchmark tests, using Cinebench, Passmark and 3DMark, aren’t a perfect indicator of performance but are handy for comparison.

As expected the new chip smoked the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite from Microsoft’s Surface Laptop, but the comparison with the M5 in Apple’s new 14-inch MacBook Pro was more interesting. In single core tests (focusing on one task at a time), Apple still won handily. But in tests using all CPU cores, and in graphics tests, Intel came out on top.

What does this mean in regular usage? For me, it meant loading heaps of browser tabs without the machine missing a beat, at the same time editing photos and video quickly and easily. MSI claims the laptop’s battery will last for up to 30 hours of continuous video playback, which is extremely impressive. But from my testing, it will take multiple full days of office work without a charge as well.

The significant jump in graphics performance is important here too, considering it’s all coming from the 358H and not a separate GPU. The graphics cores will help AI processing alongside the dedicated neural cores, but they also make visual work a lot faster and enable fairly impressive video game performance.

Older and lower-impact games ran great on the machine, but I also got perfectly playable results in Cyberpunk 2077. If your game supports Intel’s AI upscaling technologies the results are even better. Cyberpunk does, and turning them on took the game from around 30 frames per second to more than 60.

Back in the race

There’s more to a laptop than its chip, of course. Comparing the MSI Prestige 14 Flip directly to the 14-inch MacBook Pro, there are pros and cons. I like the MSI’s 360-degree hinge and touchscreen, and the fact that it’s an OLED panel, but not so much that it’s limited to 1200p and 60Hz. I like the built-in stylus that charges in its little bay and has an integrated microphone for talking to Copilot, but I found the trackpad and keyboard feel clunky and out of date compared to the Mac.

The MSI isn’t a hardcore creative’s laptop – the MacBook is – but it’s a premium business-focused Windows machine. The performance here is a massive improvement over laptops on the last generation Lunar Lake Intel chips, bringing MacBook-level processing, best-in-class battery life and graphics performance you’d generally expect from bulkier, more power-hungry units. It’s an Intel chip, so you don’t have to worry about compatibility issues with apps that are older or hyper-specific to your job, as you might with ARM-based Windows machines.

If you like a side of video games with your business laptop, the Panther Lake chip also delivers in a way you can’t get from Windows on ARM, or most other devices in this form factor, or on Mac.

Is Intel is back on top, years after leaving the door open for Apple and Qualcomm to become the obvious leaders in making powerful, efficient chips? I think it’s too early to say. And features such as size, price and operating system still play major roles in purchasing decisions, alongside power and battery life.

Has Intel successfully articulated a challenge to Apple’s dominance? The answer is yes. Users looking for a long-lasting laptop with plenty of processing and graphical power in a thin package would usually go straight to a MacBook, but Intel’s chips will power compelling alternatives.

Get news and reviews on technology, gadgets and gaming in our Technology newsletter every Friday. Sign up here.