Core Ultra 9 386H is barely any faster than the Core Ultra 9 285H in first benchmark tests

[Redaktion]

The Core Ultra X7 358H set the bar high for Panther Lake especially in terms of performance-per-watt. The Core Ultra 9 386H, however, is a bit less impressive.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Core-Ultra-9-386H-is-barely-any-faster-than-the-Core-Ultra-9-285H-in-first-benchmark-tests.1284894.0.html

[opckieran]

It's a shame there aren't more Panther Lake X SKUS or laptops for sale.

[The only one]

It's a shame there aren't more Panther Lake X SKUS or laptops for sale.

Yeah, the only reasonably priced one seems to be the ACER Swift 16 AI @ £1499. Seems to have awful palm rejection, judging from initial reviews, unfortunately. The rest are straight up jacking up the prices to unreasonable levels 2200+.

[kosksok]

It's a shame there aren't more Panther Lake X SKUS or laptops for sale.

Yeah, the only reasonably priced one seems to be the ACER Swift 16 AI @ £1499. Seems to have awful palm rejection, judging from initial reviews, unfortunately. The rest are straight up jacking up the prices to unreasonable levels 2200+.

I recently got the Acer Swift Go 16 AI with 285h, 32gb ram, and 3k Oled. It's absolutely wonderful. The newer models with the larger touchpad seem like a worse iteration to me.

[DarkVoid]

Intel keeps shooting their own feet!

[The only one]

The newer models with the larger touchpad seem like a worse iteration to me.

It's not just Acer making worse changes and going downhill. Lenovo too. It's been reported that legion 2026 laptops have a notable step down in build quality from last year's 2025. Then there's poor battery life bug on yoga 2026 models that also didn't occur on previous gen 2025 models.

I guess this is what corporations get when they fire employees and think AI will be a suitable replacement for productivity & quality control..

[TruthTeller]

It's a shame there aren't more Panther Lake X SKUS or laptops for sale.

Yeah, the only reasonably priced one seems to be the ACER Swift 16 AI @ £1499. Seems to have awful palm rejection, judging from initial reviews, unfortunately. The rest are straight up jacking up the prices to unreasonable levels 2200+.

I recently got the Acer Swift Go 16 AI with 285h, 32gb ram, and 3k Oled. It's absolutely wonderful. The newer models with the larger touchpad seem like a worse iteration to me.

You can get a MacBook Pro with longer battery life, better build quality, better trackpad, better screen and magsafe for only a couple hundred dollars more. Intel is toast.

[Anon Person]

An advantage they skip in this article is since it takes less Wattage to get the same CPU perf, this give spare power to the GPU so your overall performance goes up more than expected

Also sustained performance and temps. It's not only about raw CPU performance.