It looks like Intel is making more efforts to help systems makers provide well-designed laptops to various segments of the consumer market. Last month we saw the NUC X15 whitebook gaming laptop leak, packing an attractive mix of Intel CPU and Nvidia GPU hardware plus a fast screen and RGB LED keyboard. Official slides now provide a detailed overview of these machines. This week the Intel NUC P14E Laptop Element, with modular compute design, has been revealed.
Intel NUC X15 gaming laptop
Our previous article, based on the leaked details of this gaming laptop, appear to have been accurate. It is good to see confirmation of this product, and a table provides a good reference to the differences between five models that Intel is preparing for customers.
Above you can see all the permutations of (Intel Tiger Lake) CPUs, (Nvidia Ampere) GPUs, screens, and keyboards being made available. Overall they seem pretty attractive offerings for gaming on the go, with CPUs up to 8C/16T at 4.6GHz, up to GeForce RTX 3070, up to 64GB RAM, IPS display panels up to QHD 165Hz, optomechanical RGB backlit keyboards, glass trackpad, and premium magnesium alloy chassis. Buyers or systems resellers just need to add their own memory, storage and OS.
Other specs of note for the NUC X15 are; the inclusion of a 94Whr battery, and an HDMI 2.1 port. We don't have any indicative pricing at this time.
Intel NUC P14E Laptop Element
Fancy a more generalist thin and light laptop, which will be able to be upgraded via a new Compute Element card in a couple of years? Then you might be interested in the new Intel NUC P14E Laptop Element with 13.9-inch, 3000 X 2000 pixels 400nits touch screen.
Again, the package looks like good quality. Intel says it features a MIL-STD-801H CNC anodized aluminium chassis in dark grey, featuring a silent membrane backlit keyboard with pointing stick, glass clickpad with Microsoft Precision Drivers, Wi-Fi 6, Thunderbolt 4, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, one HDMI port and DisplayPort 1.4a, and a headphone jack, plus fingerprint reader. Other frills include an RGB light bar, HD IR camera with support for Windows Hello, and personal assistant support. The laptop should weight under 1.5kg after you have added your own choice of M.2 2280 PCIe x4 Gen 4 storage device. A 77Whr battery, and a 65W USB-C power adapter are provided.
The modular nature allows you to choose from a wide range of Compute Elements; from an Intel Celeron 6305 chip to a Core i7-1185G7 processor. Hopefully you will be able to get 12th Gen upgrades, or 13th or 14th Gen, when they come out, for this kind of modular design to be worthwhile. Whether customers will adopt these modular machines might rely on Intel showing that it will support them over the years, so it should offer some sort of generational upgrade assurance. At the time of writing we don't have any pricing or availability info.
