Intel’s newest laptop chips power a fresh generation of affordable notebooks

If history is any guide, your next notebook’s new processor has now launched, as Intel recently unveiled a fresh lineup of 12th-gen Core CPUs for laptops—specifically speaking, the chips codenamed Alder Lake-P for mainstream notebooks, and Alder Lake-U for ultraportable PCs and tablets.

Intel ships about 80 percent of all notebook PC processors each year, meaning that you’ll probably end up buying a notebook PC with one of these new chips inside. In January, Intel announced the Alder Lake-H, Alder Lake-P, and Alder Lake-U series as part of Intel’s notebook processor plans for 2022. Because of the way in which Intel rolls out its new chips, we already have our first review of the 12th-gen Core, a fire-breathing, gaming-class processor that crushed the (older) laptop competition.