At CES 2023, now taking place in Las Vegas, Intel took the stage to reveal the processors that will power the next generation of budget laptops, known as the Intel N-series processor.
This comes after Intel scrapped its Pentium and Celeron brands late last year, with the new chips coming to entry-level PCs, including laptops and Chromebooks.
The new series includes the Intel Core i3 chip, which is aimed at people who want a device that is slightly more powerful than the standard N-series, but still affordable – for example, students.
According to Intel, the new N-series offers up to 28% better performance and 64% better graphics performance than the previous generation – while the i3 processor provides an additional 42% performance boost and an additional 56% improvement in graphics performance.
Analysis: This could be good news for cheap laptops
Laptops with Intel N-series processors will apparently have up to 10 hours of battery life, which is impressive on paper, but Chromebooks using the competing ARM architecture have easily exceeded 10 hours of battery life for some time now.
PCs with the new Intel chips will benefit from the latest connectivity features, including Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2, as well as new high-performance “Gracemont” cores and support for LPDDR5, DDR5 and DDR4 memory.
Here are the following N-series processors that Intel has unveiled:
| Processor name | Cores | Threads | Maximum turbo frequency | Power |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intel Core i3-N305 | 8 | 8 | 3.8GHz | 15W |
| Intel Core i3-N300 | 8 | 8 | 3.8GHz | 7W |
| Intel N200 processor | 4 | 4 | 3.7GHz | 6W |
| Intel N100 processor | 4 | 4 | 3.4GHz | 6W |
In the current climate, it’s good to see companies working on new products for the budget market (note, Nvidia).
A lot of people just can’t afford expensive devices right now, but that doesn’t mean they have to put up with poor performance, so we’re eager to try laptops with new Intel processors to see if they live up to their promises. Intel’s previous Pentium and Celeron processors were mostly associated with poor performance and a low price – which is probably why Intel decided to abandon these brands. However, the company will want to make sure that the new N-series processors do not suffer the same fate.
According to Intel, we should have plenty of devices to try, with over 50 Windows or Chrome OS products expected in 2023 from companies like Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Asus.
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