A quartet of Intel Lunar Lake laptops has been listed by a major tech retailer in France. Twitter/X-based Momomo_us noticed the four Intel Core Ultra 200V family portables on PC21.fr and a little digging revealed further specs with prices, before and after French VAT. Converting the cheapest and most expensive of the listing prices (before VAT) to USD, gives us a range of $930 to $1,272 for this first batch of machines.
Here are the newly unearthed laptops from Acer and Asus:
- Asus P5405CSA-NZ0038X Ultra 7 258V 1TB SSD 32GB 14IN NOOD W11P (€1,133 ~ US$1,270)
- Asus P5405CSA-NZ0039X Ultra 5 226V 512GB 16GB 14IN NOOD W11P (€830 ~ US$930)
- Acer Swift Swift SF14-51-7943 Intel Core Ultra 7 258V NPU : 42 TOPS 32G (€1,135 ~ US$1,272)
- Acer Swift SF14-51-56Y2 Intel Core Ultra 5 226V 42 TOPS 16Go DDR5 1ToSS (€907 ~ US$1,017)
The above Asus ExpertBook and Acer Swift machines make use of one of two processors, according to these early retail listings: the Intel Core Ultra 7 258V CPU, or the Intel Core Ultra 5 226V CPU. The former chip is the more powerful, with eight cores, 12MB cache, up to 4.8 GHz boost clock, Arc 140V graphics, and 32GB of on-package LPDDR5X. Meanwhile, the Ultra 5 226V will also deliver eight cores but with a smaller 8MB cache, slower 4.5 GHz boost clock, Arc 130V graphics, and just 16GB of on-package LDDR5X. The on-package RAM makes it all the more important to make sure you spec enough when you make your purchase decision, but at least there are no 8GB SKUs.
Asus showcased the above-mentioned ExpertBook P5 machines last month, after a very brief reveal at the Computex show. The current product pages boast of lots of compelling features but the firm avoids any explicit mention of the Lunar Lake architecture, as it is very likely waiting for Intel to officially uncork these chips.
The Asus listings on PC21.fr confirm specs like cache sizes, RAM and SSD capacities, and other features. However, the Acer listings don’t include even a threadbare specs list, so you have to check the lengthy product titles for spec clues. In both cases, the listing title appears to suggest the on-board Intel NPU is capable of 42 TOPS for AI acceleration. That doesn’t tally with previous Lunar Lake SKU specs we have seen, but may be a simple listing error.
In summary, retailers seem to be getting ready for Intel Lunar Lake going official. We should see that happen in early September, just ahead of the IFA 2024 conference in Berlin, where there should be new laptops galore. The good news seems to be that the Intel Core Ultra 200V family portables won’t have any big price premiums. In a best-case scenario, Intel could also snatch the efficiency torch from Qualcomm's hands.
