is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021.
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I’ve been testing the flagship Intel Core Ultra X9 388H Panther Lake chip in the 2026 Asus Zenbook Duo dual-screen laptop, and it’s been a treat. It’s fast enough for intensive work and multitasking, powerful enough for 1080p gaming at high settings, and lasts well over a full workday using productivity apps on battery power. With Panther Lake, Intel is walking the walk.
We tested Panther Lake in the $2,300 Asus Zenbook Duo laptop. Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge
Panther Lake CPUs come in 8- and 16-core versions, made up of Cougar Cove performance cores (P-cores) and Darkmont efficiency cores (E-cores). The Core Ultra X9 388H in the Zenbook Duo is the top-tier 16-core model with an Intel Arc B390 GPU (consisting of 12 Xe graphics cores), a base power of 25W and a maximum turbo power up to 80W. Intel hyped it as more efficient than Lunar Lake while simultaneously more powerful than the Arrow Lake chips that are typically found in higher-power workstation and desktop replacement laptops.
Against its closest competition, Panther Lake isn’t an outright winner. Most benchmark scores in our table below are dominated by Apple’s M5 and AMD’s top-tier Strix Halo. But the Intel 388H Panther Lake chip handily beats AMD’s highest-end Strix Point chip in all but one of the tests we ran. That’s a solid leapfrogging by Intel, considering Strix Point handily beat Lunar Lake just a year ago. Now, Panther Lake also trounces our examples of both Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake-H.
While Apple is still the speed champ in most of these categories, I was pleasantly surprised to see Panther Lake slightly edge out the MacBook Pro in our 4K video export in Adobe Premiere Pro. That’s those 12 graphics cores at work.
Intel Core Ultra X9 388H (Panther Lake) / Asus Zenbook Duo / 32GB / 1TB Apple M5 / MacBook Pro 14 / 16GB / 1TB AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 (Strix Point) / Asus Zenbook S16 / 32GB / 1TB AMD Ryzen AI Max Plus 395 (Strix Halo) / Asus ROG Flow Z13 / 32GB / 1TB Intel Core Ultra 7 258V (Lunar Lake) / Acer Swift 14 AI / 32GB / 1TB Intel Core Ultra 7 255H (Arrow Lake) / Lenovo Yoga Book 9i / 16GB / 1TB CPU cores 16 10 12 16 8 16 Graphics cores 12 10 16 40 8 8 Geekbench 6 CPU Single 3009 4208 2828 2986 2609 2802 Geekbench 6 CPU Multi 17268 17948 13565 19845 10690 11976 Geekbench 6 GPU (OpenCL) 56839 49059 35991 80819 28984 39643 Cinebench 2024 Single 129 200 113 116 118 123 Cinebench 2024 Multi 983 1085 998 1450 596 722 PugetBench for Photoshop 8773 12354 7348 10515 6598 Not tested PugetBench for Premiere Pro (version 2.0.0+) 54920 71122 Not tested Not tested Not tested Not tested Premiere 4K Export (shorter time is better) 3 minutes, 3 seconds 3 minutes, 14 seconds Not tested Not tested Not tested Not tested Blender Classroom test (seconds, lower is better) 61 44 308 Not tested Not tested Not tested 3DMark Time Spy (1080p) 9847 Not tested Not tested 12043 5955 5746
In real-world use, Panther Lake’s speed is palpable. When I fired up my Adobe Lightroom Classic catalog and started editing some of my 50-megapixel RAW files, it felt as quick — or nearly as quick — as a MacBook Pro. I could make heavy-handed changes in the Develop module, and bounce around between images, without everything bogging down as it often does on other Windows laptops. Even subject detection and healing brush removal were snappy.
And I did my photo editing on battery power. Unlike most Windows laptops I’ve used up till now, the Zenbook Duo is just about as fast on battery power as it is connected to the wall. This is often something that Windows laptop makers restrict in their hardware designs, but I’m relieved it’s not the case with Panther Lake on the Zenbook Duo. It’s a big win for editing and content creation on Windows, as it lets the platform match one of the major strengths of modern MacBooks. I just hope all Windows laptop manufacturers follow suit.
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