Intel’s Wildcat Lake Core 3 Series chip family is all about low-cost laptops. The first numbers show just where it shines and struggles versus the field: Apple’s A18 Pro in the MacBook Neo, Intel’s own Panther Lake, and more.
Back in April, to only modest fanfare, Intel teased a new processor line, dubbed “Wildcat Lake,” designed to beef up its CPU offerings for budget laptops. Think of it as a little brother to Intel’s well-received Core Ultra 3 Series “Panther Lake” CPUs, which themselves are only a few months on the market. The Panther Lake family has served up impressive test results on multiple fronts. But you won’t find them in cheap laptops.
Pivot now to a Lenovo laptop I have in hand today. The laptop giant loaned PCMag the first Wildcat Lake system we’ve landed for bench testing. It won’t be the last, not by a long shot: A mix of prominent laptops in recent months—notably, Dell’s 2026 relaunch of its iconic XPS 13—have plans to feature Wildcat Lake chips, at least in certain base-price configurations. We could only speculate on Wildcat Lake performance, especially versus also-new competitors like the Apple MacBook Neo and its A18 Pro processor, derived from late-model iPhones. Now, I have a much better idea of it. But which chips come out on top is far from cut-and-dry.
