Intel's flagship Arrow Lake-HX Plus CPU, the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus, has been spotted in Acer's Predator Helios 18 laptop.
Acer Power Its Next-Gen Predator Helios 18 Neo Laptop With Intel's Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus "Arrow Lake-HX Refresh" CPU
At CES 2026, several motherboard, laptop, and Mini PC vendors listed the upcoming Intel Arrow Lake-S and Arrow Lake-HX refresh CPUs. Despite that, Intel didn't announce any new refresh part, focusing its CES presentation entirely on the Panther Lake "Core Ultra Series 3" launch. When we approached Intel about why the Arrow Lake refresh was missing from CES, they simply replied by saying, "Stay Tuned.
So it looks like Intel has decided to unveil its Arrow Lake-S and Arrow Lake-HX Refresh or Core Ultra 200S/HX Plus families on a separate date. We have already seen the flagship desktop CPU, the Core Ultra 9 290K Plus, leak out, and now, we also have the first leak of the Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus, the fastest Arrow Lake-HX Refresh chip for laptops.
In terms of specifications, the Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus CPU will feature 8 P-Cores and 16 E-Cores for a total of 24 cores and 24 threads. The chip will feature a base clock of around 3.10 GHz and a boost clock slightly higher than the 5.5 GHz of the existing flagship, the Core Ultra 9 285HX. The core configuration is the same as the 285HX, so we can expect a nominal increase in performance. Other than that, you will see 36 MB of L3 cache, 12 MB of L2 cache, and an integrated 4 Xe iGPU. The chip should retain the same TDP ratings of 55W at base and 160W MTP.
The Intel Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus CPU was tested on an ACER Predator Helios 18 Neo laptop with 64 GB of memory. The chip is listed with an LGA 1851 package, which is incorrect as the mobile HX lineup uses the "FCBGA2114" package. Besides that, the performance is really low since the CPU was running at sub-1 GHz clock speeds. This could be an early prototype, but the performance is nowhere close to the actual numbers, which should be better than the 285HX.
We expect to see Intel's Arrow Lake-HX and Arrow Lake-S "Core Ultra 200S/HX Plus" refresh CPUs in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for more information.
News Source: Benchleaks
About the author: A Software Engineer by training and a PC enthusiast by passion, Hassan Mujtaba serves as Wccftech's Senior Editor for hardware section. With years of experience in the industry, he specializes in deep-dive technical analysis of next-generation CPU and GPU architectures, motherboards, and cooling solutions. His work involves not only breaking news on upcoming technologies but also extensive hands-on reviews and benchmarking.
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