Intel launched its Wildcat Lake series of CPUs last week, known as “Core Series 3,” with however we’ve not seen any laptop with these chips.. That is, till at the moment. NotebookCheck’s Vaidyanathan Subramaniam simply took to X to showcase the first machine outfitted with Wildcat Lake silicon. It’s a reference design, as denoted by the Intel branding on the laptop, however it’s nonetheless our greatest have a look at a possible MacBook Neo competitor on the Windows aspect.
First have a look at an Intel Wild Cat Lake laptop in the wild. 2 Cougar Cove P + 4 Darkmont E cores 17 W PL1 and 35 W PL2 / 22 W PL1 Max / 11 W fanless17 TOPS NPU2 Xe coresThin and light-weight designLooks like an ideal laptop for the seashore, innit 🌊🏖️ pic.twitter.com/MCsCVbpM4AApril 23, 2026
The laptop in query has 4 energy modes: 17W PL1, 22W PL1 Max, 35W PL2, and an 11W ‘fanless’ mode. That’s a good little bit of grunt for entry-level silicon, and the system additionally features an aluminum chassis, in accordance to a reply on the unique X submit. That positions it as a transparent MacBook Neo rival, however one with a a lot larger energy envelope. The Neo not often ever touches 10W and often operates between 3-5W with regular workloads.
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The cooling system simply is not adequate to tame the A18 Pro inside, however you possibly can add one thing so simple as a thermal pad to cut back thermal throttling and enhance efficiency. Since this Intel reference laptop has a comparatively-ludicrous 35W PL2, it looks as if some Wildcat Lake gadgets can profit from followers and maybe even vapor chambers to extract extra juice out of that silicon.
We can see that this laptop has 16 GB of RAM, as reported in Task Manager, with 8.9 GB shared with the GPU. That’s already greater than the 8 GB the Neo affords, which is an actual bottleneck as quickly as you begin to transcend internet shopping or media consumption. Of course, we’re in a RAM scarcity proper now so this machine looks as if an much more stable bundle total, however preserve in thoughts that it isn’t an actual laptop with a price ticket.
Subramaniam stated he wasn’t allowed to run checks on the machine, however was informed that PL1 Max (22W) may be sustained for up to 2 minutes versus PL2 (33W) which can solely be hit for about 56 ms earlier than throttling. We’re probably taking a look at the “Core 7 360/350” right here, that are two of the highest-end SKUs in the Wildcat Lake lineup. That’s about all the information now we have — a minimum of, the teal gradient design seems to be actually cool.
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