In case you didn’t know, Intel has been having a rough time. But they’re taking steps in the right direction. Most recently, they made a major announcement at CES 2026, revealing their new Panther Lake chip for laptops.
Our sister publication, PCWorld, got its hands on an Asus ZenBook Duo laptop outfitted with a Core Ultra X9 388H Panther Lake chip and ran several benchmarks. The results are encouraging for Windows users. But this is Macworld, and we’re interested in how the chip compares to Apple’s M-series. Below is a chart of PCWorld’s results pitted against Apple’s family of entry-level M-series chips. Take your time and click through the charts.
Intel Core Ultra X9 388H Panther Lake vs. Apple M-series
Results are scores. Higher scores/longer bars are better.
While the 388H is faster than the M4 that’s currently in the MacBook Air, it’s outpaced by the base M5 in the MacBook Pro–and that M5 is going to make its way to the MacBook Air any week now. The 388H’s multi-core performance is only slightly behind the M5, but the difference is more remarkable when you look at single-core performance, where the M5 has a noticeable edge.
The 388H does beat the M5 in the Geekbench Compute test, which gauges the performance of the GPU. However, this test is done using OpenCL, a standard framework favored by Windows PCs, though it is an open standard and can run on macOS. For optimal Mac performance, Apple recommends using its Metal framework, and the M4 and M5 Geekbench Compute Metal scores are 57082 and 76963, respectively. Take that for what it’s worth.
Besides performance, there’s power consumption to consider, and it’s a little more difficult to compare the 388H to the M5. Intel’s chip is rated at 25W, while the M5 is rated at 15W. The Asus ZenBook Duo that PCWorld tested has a 99-watt-hour battery, while the M5 MacBook Pro’s battery is rated at 72.4 watt-hours. PCWorld’s testing netted about 22 hours on the ZenBook Duo running on a single screen, a good deal better than the MacBook Air, which lasted around 18 hours, but within the expected range for a larger battery. Plus, PCWorld notes that performance dropped by about 20 percent when running on the battery.
If you’re interested in learning more about Panther Lake, give PCWorld’s article a read. But one thing is certain from the results: Apple’s decision to go with its own silicon was the correct one. There’s no more looking back.
