Intel 14th gen laptop guide (Meteor Lake), everything we’ve heard so far
All the latest info on the Meteor Lake laptops
Intel have officially announced that their new 14th gen CPUs are expected to be launched at some point in H2 2023, i.e. by the end of the year, and although the company hasn’t official stated this, rumors, leaks, and a bit of circumstantial evidence thrown in suggest that Intel 14th gen laptops / Meteor Lake laptops could be the first devices we see with these in. A launch doesn’t necessarily constitute a release date of the products of course, but there are other bits of information we’ve pieced together that indicate a 14th gen laptop release window could come at some point in H2.
Read below for this, plus all other rumors, leaks, and confirmed info on the potential Meteor Lake laptop specs, and predicted performance. As soon as the first models start to hit the shelves, we’ll be converting this page into a guide to the best Intel 14th gen laptops available, from gaming and creative use to every day models suitable for the office.
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Predicted Intel 14th gen laptop release window (Meteor Lake laptop)
First of all, we know for sure that during the Intel Q1 2023 earnings call, CEO Pat Gelsinger stated that “Meteor Lake on Intel 4 is ramping production wafer starts today for a second-half product launch” so unless there are delays, we should see the first 14th gen chips revealed before the end of 2023 (you can read all the info from the earnings call at Inct.com or on SeekingAlpha). This does not equate to a ‘release’ of course, as there can often be a delay between products being shown off and hitting the shelves, but based on this info alone we would expect to see them in Q1 2024 at the latest.
Last year Raptor Lake CPUs were revealed at Intel’s Innovation event on the 27th of September 2022 (the event typically occurs in September or October), with the desktop CPUs actually hitting the shelves just under a month after on the 20th October and the laptop CPUs arriving later in January of the following year. This year though, it could be the laptops that land first.
In terms of the likely Intel 14th gen laptop release date window specifically we got a sneaky insight courtesy of Tom’s Hardware at Computex 2023, where they spotted an MSI Prestige Studio / Evo laptop that they deduced must be a Meteor Lake laptop (it was only labelled as having the ‘Latest Intel Core i7 processor’) based on its core count, and the fact that it has a Movidius VPU. MSI confirmed that the laptop is scheduled to ‘arrive’ in Q4 2023 (i.e. October-December) – which could mean an actual release date or just when it will first be shown off.
Additionally, the latest rumors from @SquashBionic via Tomshardware, support the above, who say that Meteor Lake desktop PC CPUs could be restricted to lower-powered variants (e.g. 35W-65W), with newer, more powerful CPUs either being part of the apparent Raptor Lake refresh, or the following Arrow Lake generation. This would all indicate a Meteor Lake released focused heavily around laptop CPUs.
Rumored Intel 14th gen laptop features (Meteor Lake laptop)
There have been a lot of vague rumors swirling around the place around the Meteor Lake architecture, but from what we know it will be a more advanced version of the P-core and E-core (i.e. Performance and Efficiency) setup introduced in previous architectures, based on a 7nm process. According to WCCFTech the two core types will be known as Redwood Cove P-Cores and Crestmont E-Cores, with the majority of upgrades coming to the E-cores.
The structure of the new architecture will be reportedly based around a more tiled structure for improved efficiency, similar to AMD’s chiplet design, that will separate the process nodes between an IOE Tile, SOC Tile, GPU Tile, and the Compute Tile.
In terms of the naming convention for the different SKUs, Intel has confirmed that the range will be having a slight name change: the ‘i’ will be dropped from the front of the Intel Core i3 / i5 / i7 monikers (so we assume it could read something like: Intel Core 7 14700H?).
Finally, we’ve got what we think is a first look at the specification breakdown of an Intel 14th gen laptop CPU from WCCFTech (who are usually right about these things), sourced heavily from a UserBenchmark leak of a supposed Meteor Lake laptop CPU.
Rumored Meteor Lake vs Raptor Lake laptop specs (based on leaks & speculation)
| 14th gen Meteor Lake | 13th gen Raptor Lake | |
| CPU Tile process node | 7nm EUV (Intel 4) | 10nm EUV (Intel 7) |
| GPU Tile process node | 5nm (TSMC) | 10nm ESF (Intel 7) |
| CPU Architecture | Hybrid (Triple-core) | Hybrid (Dual-core) |
| P-Core architecture | Redwood Cove | Raptor Cove |
| E-Core architecture | Crestmont | Gracemont |
| Max Cores / Threads | 14/20 | 14/20 |
| GPU Architecture | Arc Alchemist Xe-LPG (Xe-MTL) | Intel Iris Xe (Gen 12) |
| GPU Execution Units | 128 EUs (1024 Cores) | 96 EUs (768 Cores) |
| Top Configuration | 6+8 (H-Series) | 6+8 (H-Series) 8+16 (HX-Series) |
| Ranges / Lines | H/P/U Series | H/P/U Series |
| Memory Support | DDR5-5600 LPDDR5-7400 LPDDR5X-7400+ | DDR5-5200 LPDDR5-5200 LPDDR5X-6400 |
| Memory Capacity (Max) | 96GB | 64GB |
| Thunderbolt 4 Ports | 4 | 4 |
| Wi-Fi | WiFi 6E | WiFi 6E |
| TDP | 15-45W | 15-55W |
What Intel 14th gen laptop performance improvements could we expect?
Virtually all information on the Intel 14th gen laptop CPU performance is pure speculation at this point, but we can make some educated guesses based upon what we do know, plus some leaked info from (usually) reliable sources.
Battery life
People like PCGamesN have suggested in the past that Intel’s improvements to the E-Core architecture could make them more energy-efficient, lower-powered variants. This would tally with what MSI claimed (according to Tomshardware) about their aforementioned new MSI Prestige 16 laptop, which is thought to come with a Meteor Lake laptop CPU: they contended that it would have a battery life of nearly 24 hours, which is an unbelievably high duration if true (we assume it wouldn’t get this in real world testing, but even 20 hours would be hugely impressive).
Integrated graphics
Although we obviously don’t have any actual performance data yet, it’s a pretty safe bet that the Arc Alchemist Xe-LPG iGPU will be a substantial improvement over the existing Iris Xe integrated GPU. Known tech leaker @OneRaichu has claimed it could reach almost double the current performance. It makes sense that Intel would target this area, as it’s one that AMD continue to dominate in, so it will be interesting to see if they can beat the Ryzen 7000 series laptop APUs.
CPU power
At the current time we have very little to go on for projections of the CPU power of the Intel 14th gen laptop line. All we can do is look at previous generational improvements from Intel, to get an idea of the range.
The Intel 12th gen laptop CPU line brought about the biggest uplift in years, with an average FPS increase (in games) of around 20% in single-thread focused tasks (like gaming), and even more of an uplift in multi-threaded scenarios. In contrast the Intel 13th gen laptop release was a lot more modest, and we got an average uplift of around 6-12% over the previous generation, depending on the SKU.
Two disappointing generational uplifts in a row probably wouldn’t be good for Intel’s prospects as a business, plus the bigger architectural changes should (you’d hope) bring greater performance improvements as well as improvements in power efficiency. A conservative estimate would therefore probably be somewhere in the middle of the the last two releases. Ultimately though we currently have no idea, though watch this space for the latest news and reveals.
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