Intel Core Ultra X9 388H review: This chip does everything
Earlier this year we checked out Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, and it only felt right that we also take a look at one of Intel’s latest and greatest chips too so here it is: say hello to the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H.
Of course with this being a laptop processor, we had to get a laptop to match the chip and so in this case, we got our hands on Asus’ ultra premium productivity machine, the Asus Zenbook Duo (UX8407).
This dual-screened laptop may get more eyeballs on it thanks to its two 14″ OLED displays, but this time around we’re only interested in the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H under the hood, mated to 32GB of LPDDR5 9600 MT/s memory and a 1TB SSD, which should be more than enough for us to see what the Core Ultra X9 can do.
Powerful, but not power hungry
Before we get on to how the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H fared, let’s first take a look at what exactly we’re dealing with here. First announced at CES 2026, the Core Ultra X9 388H is part of their Panther Lake lineup, also known as the Core Ultra Series 3. Built on their in-house 18A process node, Panther Lake came with big claims in both performance and power efficiency.
Sitting at the very top then of the Panther Lake family is the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H. It comes with four ‘Cougar Cove’ performance cores and 12 ‘Darkmont’ efficiency cores split between eight regular E-cores and four low power E-cores. In total, there’s 16 cores and 16 threads, running at boosts of up to 5.1GHz, along with 18MB of Intel Smart Cache, an NPU capable of up to 50 TOPS of performance and an Intel Arc B390 integrated graphics with 12 Xe Cores.
As for how it performs, it’s off to a relatively good start, scoring 527pts in our Cinebench 2026 single threaded benchmarks and 4340pts in our multithreaded runs. It makes modest gains in single threaded performance, with roughly a 7% increase over the last gen Intel Core Ultra 9 288V, but sees a big jump in multithreaded scores thanks to its 16 cores, seeing a 122% improvement over the 288V.
Similarly, it does well in the PCMark 10 benchmark, and when it comes to everyday use, the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H is more than capable to handle not just your everyday workloads, but also some content creation such as photo editing as well as multiple Chrome windows when I was doing research on some stories for work.
While CPU performance sees a solid enough rise, it’s the integrated GPU in the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H that stands out. When it comes to iGPUs, Intel has traditionally been on the losing end compared to AMD, though retains a healthy lead over the Snapdragon platforms by the fact that it has more native support.
The X9 388H is perhaps the first time that Team Blue has something close to what AMD can offer, with perhaps only the ridiculously overpowered Radeon 8060S in the Ryzen AI Max+ 395 outdoing it in this segment.
It also ran just about every game we threw at it just fine, ranging from triple A titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and competitive shooters such as Marvel Rivals, to grand strategy games like Total War: 3 Kingdoms and Sid Meier’s Civilization VII. Granted, some of these were at a lower FHD+ resolution, and also mostly at low settings, but if we’re being honest this is still significant gains for gaming without discrete graphics.
| Game | Results | Notes |
| Marvel Rivals | ~90FPS | 1200p, low settings, XeSS Performance |
| Cyberpunk 2077 | ~100FPS | 1200p, medium settings, XeSS 2.0 Performance |
| Total War | ~85FPS | 1800p, low settings |
| Sid Meier’s Civilization VII | ~100FPS | 1800p, low settings, XeSS on |
| Sid Meier’s Civilization VII | ~11 seconds per turn | AI turn benchmark |
That’s because when you don’t have a discrete graphics card, you tend to see better battery life, and the Core Ultra X9 388H does well here too. The 99Whr battery in the Zenbook Duo surely helped its lifespan, but the Core Ultra X9 388H mostly sips power when idle, getting slightly better battery life numbers compared to the likes of the Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, though it still can’t match Snapdragon-powered laptops here. In real world numbers, a full day of work with about half brightness is easily achievable on the Zenbook Duo.
Lastly, because Panther Lake is supposed to be an AI-ready mobile platform, we gave the Intel AI Boost NPU here a spin, with a roughly 20% increase in quantized scores on Geekbench AI OpenVINO.
Jack of all trades
The last time I was this impressed by a mobile processor was probably AMD’s Strix Point lineup, and I’m happy to see Intel come up with a great reply of their own. The Intel Core Ultra X9 388H arguably doesn’t do any one thing the best; it doesn’t top the performance charts, nor will it outlast every other laptop out there, but it will be able to do everything.
From day-to-day tasks to productivity and creator apps to gaming or even if you want to experiment with local machine learning, the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H performed more than adequately, with its improvements on the iGPU side perhaps the most impressive of the bunch. If you are on the lookout for an Intel-powered laptop with similar graphics performance by the way, the Core Ultra X7 358H also comes with the Arc B390 iGPU.
Of course, it won’t come cheap; the Zenbook Duo with the X9 388H currently goes for around RM15,000 from retailers. Even slightly stepped down Panther Lake options (especially those with the Arc B390) will come at a premium, such as the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Ultra, HP EliteBook X G2i and Asus ExpertBook Ultra. It’s also worth mentioning that your performance will vary on different laptops based on their cooling solutions and thermal designs.
Going back to the Intel Core Ultra X9 388H though, I’m happy to report that this chip is excellent across the board, and will hopefully mark Intel’s return to the top in the laptop scene.
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