Intel’s Panther Lake Chips Aren’t Just Good—They Beat Apple's M5
Luke Larsen
created: Jan. 27, 2026, 8 a.m. | updated: Jan. 29, 2026, 5:56 p.m.
Note: This story has been updated with additional testing on the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H in the MSI Prestige 14 Flip.
For years, most updates to Intel's laptop chips have been nothing more than modest performance increases over the previous year.
The 2025 MSI Prestige 14 Flip, for example, used the Core Ultra 7 258V Lunar Lake rather than an H-series Arrow Lake chip.
The graphics really stand out, though, especially when you get to the X9 chip.
Both the X7 and X9 chips use a B390 GPU, representing the top of the line in Intel's architecture (outside of discrete desktop graphics cards).
6 days, 22 hours ago: WIRED