You can now buy a 14-inch Clevo N240WU with an Intel i7-8550U

[Redaktion]

Clevo have updated the W240 14-inch laptop to include an i7-8550U, which will greatly improve multi-core performance over the previous Kaby Lake option, while maintaining similar power draw.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/You-can-now-buy-a-14-inch-Clevo-N240WU-with-an-Intel-i7-8550U.251012.0.html

[thatGuy]

Clevo need to try again with their ultrabooks. Btw they also updated their N131WU and a couple other models I think - http://www.clevo.com.tw/clevo_prodetail.asp?id=1054&lang=en Battery is still lacklustre. They need a new 14-inch ultrabook. Hopefully one with a backlit keyboard, way better battery and dGPU (or a Ryzen APU!!!  ;D)

[Ednumero]

I like the laptop and I like that the U-series are quad-cores now with also architectural improvements, but I still think it's confusing branding for Intel to call this chip "Core i7". This chip is not appreciably faster than the corresponding Core i5 branded U-series chips despite carrying the more highly promoted branding. Currently it seems close to an "i5" 7300HQ but still behind it, and I suspect it'll be easily beaten by whatever the 8th generation "i5" HQ-series is.

I honestly think the i-number branding scheme is fundamentally rooted in counter-intuition, but I think it can be salvaged. One step towards doing so might be for Intel to cap the U-series at "i5" and allow the HQ-series to claim the "i7" moniker. That's not even taking into account desktop CPUs, which might throw this off even more.

I don't see Intel taking this initiative on their own, but if we were better at calling this out in articles such as this, perhaps they would be more inclined to. I see a lot of buyers choosing what I see as not the best laptops for their needs due to being drawn in by this branding scheme, and a lot of companies building laptops around that tendency. In many cases those laptops are in place of laptops that I would consider more recommendable, rather than in addition to them. (See: ASUS K501UW with "i7" U-series and low-quality-TN display instead of "i5" U-series and IPS display)

[Craig Ward]

@edit1754 - The thing with the core branding is that Intel can justify the naming scheme.

They aren't claiming that an i7-7500U is as powerful as an i7-7700HQ or an i7-7700K. What they are saying is that within each of the core product lineup, the i7 is the fastest, the i5 is the mid range, and the i3 is the entry level product.

If they tried to spread the three brackets of i3, i5, and i7 over all product lineups then they would run into problems with disparate performance between a dual-core ULV i5 vs quad-core notebook vs quad-core desktop chips.

tl;dr - It's complicated, but as long as a company can logically justify their naming scheme then I'm OK with it.