MSI Prestige AI EVO 16 B2HMG “Intel Core Ultra 9 285H” Laptop Review – Arrow Lake Comes To Mobile

The mobility segment has seen some significant updates over the last couple of years. From hybrid architectures to chiplet designs and the inclusion of brand-new Core IPs, laptops today are some of the most versatile PC devices on the market. One of the expanding ecosystems is AI & all vendors are offering brand new hardware changes in the form of NPUs that are required for new AI services such as Microsoft's Copilot+ feature suite.

Intel's first chapter of its AI-infused PC journey came in the form of Meteor Lake with the Core Ultra Series 1 chips. These chips were the first to utilize a tiled architecture and held a lot of potential. They were challenged swiftly by AMD's Phoenix and Hawk Point APUs which also offered NPU functions & alongside the NPU, we also saw some big advancements on the GPU side of things.

Last year, AMD rolled out its biggest upgrade yet for mobiles in the form of Strix Point, leveraging brand new Zen 5 cores, RDNA 3.5 GPU cores, and a 50+ TOPS AI NPU. These chips promise great battery and high performance. Intel also rolled out one of its best laptop chip to date, Lunar Lake (Core Ultra Series 2), which offered superb efficiency along with great performance and a top-notch GPU/NPU package.

With Lunar Lake, Intel gave us a taste of its next-gen Lion Cove P-Cores, Skymont E-Cores, and the new Battlemage GPU IPs. Now, these IPs are rolling out in high-performance PCs with Arrow Lake-S utilizing the same P/E cores for desktop PCs and Arc B-Series graphics cards utilizing the a bigger Battlemage dGPU die and delivering great value to mainstream gamers.

Today, Intel is finally bringing its Arrow Lake CPU architecture to mobile with Core Ultra Series 2 "200H & 200U" families. An enthusiast line is also planned in the form of Arrow Lake-HX or Core Ultra 200HX but for now, we are going to look at what Arrow Lake-H has to offer. To test out the new capabilities of Arrow Lake-H on mobile, we were sent an MSI Prestige AI EVO 16 "B2HMG" laptop and for comparison, we will be using a similarly spec'd MSI Prestige A16 AI+ "A3HM" laptop with AMD's Ryzen AI 9 365.

MSI Prestige AI EVO 16 B2HMG Laptop - Specifications At A Glance

In terms of specifications, the MSI Prestige AI EVO 16 "B2HMG" laptop is equipped with the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H CPU. This is the flagship processor within the Arrow Lake-H mobile lineup and has a lot to talk about so let's get started.

The Intel Core Ultra 9 285H CPU features 16 cores in total with 16 threads. These are a combination of 6 P-Cores, 8 E-Cores, and 2 LPE cores. The CPU has a base frequency of 2.9 GHz and boosts up to 5.4 GHz on the P-Cores while the E-Cores have a base frequency of 2.7 GHz and a boost frequency of 4.5 GHz. The LPE cores clock in at 1 GHz base and 2.5 GHz boost clocks. The chip features a total of 24 MB cache and has a TDP rating of 45W at the base and 115W MTP (Maximum Turbo Power). The chip can also be configured down to 35W as its minimum assured power rating (shouldn't be mistaken with idle power).

For the iGPU, Intel is using an upgraded version of its Alchemist architecture known as Alchemist+. The Intel Core Ultra 9 285H is configured with the Arc 140T GPU which offers 8 Xe cores that clock up to 2.35 GHz and feature a maximum TOPS (INT8) rating of up to 77. The iGPU supports all the latest APIs and AI Framework and since this is an upgraded Alchemist design, you will get newer Ray Tracing Units and even support for XMX which is far better than the DP4a model on the older Alchemist-based iGPUs. This allows games with RT to run a tad bit faster while XMX enables better support for AI-based upscaling methods such as XeSS and also supports XeSS2 Frame-Generation.

On the NPU side, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H is equipped with an updated NPU2.7 which offers a peak TOPS (INT8) of 13 and supports all the latest AI frameworks such as OpenVINO, WindowsML, DirectML, ONNX RT & WebNN. Compared to Meteor Lake which offers 11 TOPS, the 13 TOPS NPU comes in at a slight upgrade but Intel has stated in the past that offering the highest number of TOPS isn't that important, what's more important is to fully utilize the capabilities of the NPU and its available capabilities through software-centric optimizations.

Intel Core Ultra 200 "Arrow Lake" Laptop Lineup:

CPU Name	Family	Cores / Threads	Boost Clock	Cache	TDP (Base/MTP)
Core Ultra 9 285HX	Arrow Lake-HX	24/24	5.5 GHz	36 MB	55/160W
Core Ultra 9 275HX	Arrow Lake-HX	24/24	5.4 GHz	36 MB	55/160W
Core Ultra 7 265HX	Arrow Lake-HX	20/20	5.3 GHz	30 MB	55/160W
Core Ultra 7 255HX	Arrow Lake-HX	20/20	5.2 GHz	30 MB	55/160W
Core Ultra 5 245HX	Arrow Lake-HX	14/14	5.1 GHz	24 MB	55/160W
Core Ultra 5 235HX	Arrow Lake-HX	14/14	5.1 GHz	24 MB	55/160W
Core Ultra 9 285H	Arrow Lake-H	16/16	5.4 GHz	24 MB	28/115W
Core Ultra 7 265H	Arrow Lake-H	16/16	5.3 GHz	24 MB	45/115W
Core Ultra 7 255H	Arrow Lake-H	16/16	5.1 GHz	24 MB	28/115W
Core Ultra 5 235H	Arrow Lake-H	14/14	5.0 GHz	18 MB	28/115W
Core Ultra 5 225H	Arrow Lake-H	14/14	4.9 GHz	18 MB	28/115W
Core Ultra 7 265U	Arrow Lake-U	12/14	5.3 GHz	12 MB	15/57W
Core Ultra 7 255U	Arrow Lake-U	12/14	5.2 GHz	12 MB	15/57W
Core Ultra 5 235U	Arrow Lake-U	12/14	4.9 GHz	12 MB	15/57W
Core Ultra 5 225U	Arrow Lake-U	12/14	4.8 GHz	12 MB	15/57W

With the internals of the CPU covered, let's talk about the rest of the specifications. First, we have the memory which comes in the form of 32 GB of LPDDR5X from SK Hynix. These are 64-bit DRAM modules that are rated at 7500 MT/s speeds and this is soldered memory so you better keep in mind the configuration you are purchasing based on your demands. MSI only lists up to 32 GB of LPDDR5X for this specific laptop. Storage includes a 1 TB Micron 2500 SSD which is rated at up to 4 GB/s speeds. There are two M.2 slots on the laptop which you are free to configure based on your needs.

For display, you are getting a 16" AU Optronics B160QAN03.R panel which is an IPS "16:10" screen with a maximum resolution of 2560x1600 and a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz configured on this PC. It also comes with a front-facing IR FHD (HDR) camera with 30fps@1080p capabilities and there's also 3D Noise Reduction+ technology on the laptop. Audio comes in the form of dual 2W speakers. The keyboard is a single backlit design with a dedicated Copilot key and the mousepad has a very large surface.

IO includes 1x SD Card Reader, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x RJ45 (1GbE), 1 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, and dual USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports which are capable of DisplayPort and PD 3.0 functionality along with a single Mic-in-Headphone-out combo jack. Wireless connectivity includes Killer BE Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 functionality. The laptop is equipped with a 99.9Whr (4-Cell) battery and has a 100W PD adapter supplied with it. The variant we got weighs 1.5kg and comes in the Stellar Gray color theme.

MSI Prestige AI EVO 16 B2HMG Laptop - CPU Performance

We start by comparing the 3DMark CPU Profile tests where the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H offers better performance than the 20 thread Ryzen AI 9 365 versus its 16 threads. The single and dual-thread scores are a win on the Ryzen side but only by a small margin.

In AIDA64's Cache and memory benchmark, we see that the latency provided by the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H CPU is 15% higher than the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 design. This is probably due to the tiled nature of the new chip versus the monolithic design that AMD uses. Also, the AMD Ryzen AI chip leads across all tests while the L0 cache, which is only available on the 285H, offers decent results.

For Blender, Intel scores a lead in the monster test and performs on par with the Ryzen AI 9 365 CPU in the junkshop and classroom benchmarks.

In CPU-z, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H CPU offers a 3.6% higher performance in single-thread tests while the multi-threaded tests see a bigger gain of up to 48.1% which is a noticeable bump.

For Cinebench 2024, we are looking at an 8.8% win in single and 11.5% win in multi-core tests for the Intel Arrow Lake chip versus the Strix Point offering.

Geekbench 6 also comes out as a win for the Intel side with the Core Ultra 9 285H leading the Ryzen AI 9 365 by 4.5% in single-core and 26.3% in multi-core tests.

The same is the case within UL Procyon's Office suite benchmark which sees a decent performance win for the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H versus the Ryzen AI 9 365.

Lastly, we have the Winrar benchmark test which sees the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 leading over the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H by 10%.

MSI Prestige AI EVO 16 B2HMG Laptop - AI Synthetic Performance

Next up, we have our first AI benchmarks for the latest Intel and AMD CPUs. First up, we have the Geekbench AI benchmarks where the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H offers better results across a wide array of AI tests. The CPU also offers INT8 processing capabilities which weren't available on the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 when running the same tests so the numbers are as follows:

For UL Procyon, we again see Intel's Core Ultra 9 285H and its various AI accelerators such as the NPU and the GPU, offering better performance capabilities than the Ryzen AI offerings. AMD's Ryzen AI does come out faster in the Integer Precision test but the rest of the wins go to the blue team.

MSI Prestige AI EVO 16 B2HMG Laptop - GPU Synthetic Performance

Now we are going to look at the GPU performance and before we present to you the gaming numbers, we first have to see how the performance fares in synthetic benchmarks. For this purpose, we first want to outline the single precision FLOPs each iGPU offers. Intel's Alchemist+ and AMD's RDNA 3.5 are entirely different architectures and despite the FLOPS of the Radeon iGPU being higher, it doesn't necessarily mean that the Radeon iGPU will be faster. But with that said, the following is how the two chips compare:

In 3DMark Speed Way, we see the Radeon iGPU narrowly beating the Alchemist+ iGPU. Speed Way is a very intensive benchmark that uses ray tracing so Intel at least needs to work on some GPU-centric optimizations here.

For 3DMark Steel Nomad, we get to see our first non-RT performance of the Intel iGPU and here the blue team leads by a massive 57.8%.

In 3DMark Port Royal, the Intel Alchemist+ iGPU offers a 21.6% lead over the Radeon iGPU. This is a ray tracing-heavy benchmark and goes off to show that the results we saw in the Speed Way test are an anomaly, something that you will also notice in the gaming tests.

In 3DMark Time Spy, Intel's Arc 140T iGPU once again leads with a 36.4% higher graphics score than its competitor.

For Fire Strike, Intel offers great performance even on DX11 APIs, which is a good showcase as many games still run DX11.

Lastly, we have 3DMark Night Raid where Intel scores another comfortable lead with its new Arc 140T iGPU.

MSI Prestige AI EVO 16 B2HMG Laptop - HD Gaming Performance

With the synthetic performance out of the way, we can start taking a look at pure gaming numbers and we start off our testing spree with Cyberpunk 2077 running at Medium Preset at 1200P. With Balanced XeSS/FSR upscaling, Intel offers 10% better performance while Frame Gen delivers a 43.8% boost for the Arc 140T, leading to over 60 FPS which is a very playable experience on an iGPU.

In Forza Horizon 5, we only ran the game using Quality Upscaling at the Medium Preset at 1200P, and the 140T offers a good 62 FPS versus the 56 FPS of its counterpart.

F1 24 is one of the titles that support XeSS2 Frame Gen and the Alchemist+ takes full advantage of it, offering up to 69 FPS, 13.1% higher than the Radeon 880M.

In Horizon Zero Dawn at the "Favor Quality" preset, we used the FSR 2 upscaling set to Balanced. Here, the Radeon 880M leads by 10% but both iGPUs offer a good playing experience with over 50 FPS that can be further tuned to offer 60 FPS by lowering the quality settings.

Metro Exodus also runs great on the Arc 140T, offering the bare minimum 30 FPS with RT enabled at 1080P at the high preset while the Radeon 880M struggles to reach the 30 FPS mark.

Lastly, we have The Callisto Protocol where both iGPUs are very similar in performance but offer FPS in the mid-30s range even with FSR 2 enabled. It would be better to lower the resolution to get a better playing experience but still, over 30 FPS is decent for these iGPUs.

MSI Prestige AI EVO 16 B2HMG Laptop - Thermals, Power & Battery

A major factor of today's laptops is their power consumption and in that regard, the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H CPU has a higher out-of-the-box power profile set at 35W versus the 28W of AMD's Ryzen AI 9 365. Both laptops are set to their "Balanced" preset by default but you can opt into the "Performance" mode through the BIOS which lets you access the "Best Performance" profiles in Windows. At idle, Intel has a slightly lower power draw versus the Ryzen system but the average media playback and gaming power on Intel is much higher. Plus, the peak power goes up to 73W and it usually stays close to that in demanding workloads versus the 35-40W power figure that the AMD system ends up with.

The higher power consumption on the Intel Arrow Lake laptop also leads to higher temperatures. We saw the Intel Core Ultra 9 285H reach a peak of 97C and run at a warm 60-70C during most of the workloads. The idle temperatures were lower on the Core Ultra 9 285H but that's about it.

The Intel Arrow Lake CPUs do deliver some amazing battery timings with the Office Productivity Suite test in UL Procyon offering up to 20.4 hours worth of time versus AMD's 12-13 hours. For gaming tests, you can get up to 4 hours of battery time with the Arc 140T with the brightness set to 60% while the Radeon 880M ends up closer to 3 hours.

Conclusion - A Performant "AI PC" Platform From Intel

With the launch of Arrow Lake-H, Intel is offering a few surprises. The top SKU in the lineup, the Core Ultra 9 285H, offers great performance across the board. With just 16 threads, it was able to comfortably stay ahead of the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 (20 thread) chip in various synthetic and even application workloads. Arrow Lake's CPU single and multi-threaded capabilities were never the issue for desktops even, it was just their lackluster game performance scaling which has yet to be tuned.

AI is also surprising as we see that the 13 TOPS NPU beats or closes in on the 50 TOPS NPU offered by AMD. Once again, this shows that optimization and software-level work matter more than a top-tier hardware solution for these still-infant workloads. The GPU also offers a peak of 77 TOPS for a total of 99 platform TOPS, making these chips a solid solution for AI workloads without any discrete hardware.

On the iGPU side, the Arc 140T is an excellent little chip for handling your media, display & gaming needs. The 140T iGPU led well in synthetic benchmarks and also offered a nice gaming experience. With support for XeSS 2 and Frame-Gen, the 140T is a win-win for integrated laptop users, offering a playable framerate in most of the AAA titles that we ran on it.

In terms of power consumption, AMD still leads over Intel with lower power draw and much cooler operation. The Intel Arrow Lake-H "Core Ultra 9 285H" can sip up to 73W of power using a standard profile and temps can hover close to 100C which can make things a little toasty, especially when you will be running the PC on your lap. But battery timing-wise, the Arrow Lake-H laptop performed well and offered great timings, with over 18-20 hours of office and standard usage, 10 hours worth of media playback times, and 4 hours worth of gaming time.

The Prestige AI EVO 16 laptop does feature a 60 Hz panel which is capable of up to 2560x1600 resolution. It is a glossy IPS display which can attract a lot of fingerprints. The AMD option does come with a higher 165Hz refresh rate at the same resolution so I kinda hoped to get that same high refresh rate on this laptop too.

The MSI Prestige AI EVO 16 laptop with Arrow Lake-H is a compelling solution without a doubt and holds a lot of performance. You will see configurations of this chip with discrete GPUs from NVIDIA soon but if you want a performant machine that can handle your daily office, AI, and media tasks while offering a great iGPU capability, then Arrow Lake-H is a strong lineup for those looking to buy a new laptop.

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