Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 chips, aka “Panther Lake,” have entered the market, backed by dozens of PC makers. “We’ve beeen out there shaping what it means for fundamental computing, said Jim Johnson, senior vice president and general manager of the Intel Client Computing Group, in a launch event at CES 2026. Lip-Bu Tan, Intel’s chief executive, said he was “proud” to highlight that Intel has shipped its first Intel 18A processors, the production technology upon which Panther Lake is built upon. The technology uses RibbonFET gate-all-around to manage current and energy efficiency, while PowerVia is Intel’s name for backside power delivery, enabling 15 percent better performance per watt. What is Intel’s Core Ultra 300 ‘Panther Lake’? Intel showed off what was simply known as “Panther Lake” in October, when Intel announced the Panther Lake technology along with some of its implementations. Intel’s Core Ultra Series 3 chips return to the era of performance cores (P-cores), efficiency cores (E-cores,) and low-power efficiency cores (LP E-cores) of Intel’s Core Ultra 100 chip, aka Meteor Lake. Those are paired with an NPU capable of 50 TOPS worth of AI processing as well as Intel’s Xe3 GPU, which should improve Intel’s 3D capabilities. Foundry / Mark Hachman Intel said then that Panther Lake’s single-threaded performance should be 10 percent higher than Lunar Lake at the same power. Compared to both Lunar Lake and Meteor Lake, Intel’s Panther Lake offers more than 50 percent better multithreaded performance, Intel said in October. But the power should be 10 percent less than Lunar Lake. Anecdotally, Intel representatives have been characterizing Panther Lake as the performance of Arrow Lake — an architecture which struggled on the desktop but performed surprisingly well in Arrow Lake laptops — with the power consumption of Lunar Lake. Panther Lake consists of three different organizations of the P-cores, E-cores, and LP-cores: An 8-core chip, with 4 P-cores, 4 low-power (LP) E-cores; 4 Xe3 GPU cores and 4 ray-tracing units; and memory interfaces to either 6800 MT/s LPDDR5x or 6400 MT/s DDR5. A 16-core chip, with 4 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and 4 LP E-cores; 4 Xe3 GPU cores and 4 ray-tracing units; and memory interfaces to either 8533 MTs/ LPDDR5x or 7200 MT/s DDR5. A 16-core chip, with 4 P-cores, 8 E-cores, and 4 LP E-cores, 12 Xe3 GPU cores and 12 ray-tracing units; and memory interfaces to 9600MT/s LPDDR5x, period. At CES 2026, Johnson said that the Panther Lake delivers about 60 percent more power than the Core Ultra 200 series, or Lunar Lake, using the Cinebench 2024 mujlticore benchmark. Depending upon the banchmark, Intel cut the power by about 2.8X. Foundry / Mark Hachman Somewhat like AMD’s Ryzen AI Max (“Strix Halo”) or the Ryzen 9000X3D family, both of which concentrate large amounts of cache memory to improve performance, it’s the final “12Xe” configuration that will form the premium lineup on many laptops. The GPU will be called the Intel Arc B390 graphics, said Intel’s Dan Rogers, the vice president in charge of PC products at Intel. On average, gaming performance will be about 73 percent more than Lunar Lake, Rogers said. The B390 GPU can also take advantage of frame generation to improve frame rates further, he said. XeSS3 can render three AI-generated frames for every GPU-rendered frame, Rogers said. How good does Intel think Panther Lake is? Intel will launchn an entire handheld platform, based on Panther Lake, later this year, Rogers said, taking on AMD’s leadership in the space, Rogers said. Read...

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AMD is launching the Ryzen AI 400 at CES 2026 as the next chip in the company’s CPU roadmap, with what appears to be a similar goal as the current Ryzen AI 300: Aim high on CPU performance, but with sufficient AI TOPS and battery life to attract mainstream laptop buyers, too. AMD said that the Ryzen AI 400 chips will power both Copilot+ laptops as well as “socketed desktops,” bringing their AI capabilities to desktop PCs as well. AMD also announced “Pro” configurations of most of the chips, designed to power enterprise PCs. AMD executives didn’t refer to the AI 400 by its expected codename, Gorgon Point, but the chip’s specs matched up with a leak inadvertently published last year: up to 12 cores and 24 threads using the Zen 5 architecture, with a boost clock that can hit 5.2GHz. The Ryzen AI 400 will achieve 60 AI TOPS, AMD promises, with 16 RDNA 3.5 GPU cores. On paper, that’s very similar to the current Ryzen AI 300 chip, which in PCWorld testing of the Ryzen AI 300 emerged as a surprisingly powerful competitor to the Intel Core Ultra 200 “Lunar Lake” as well as the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite: somewhat comparable in battery life, but at the top of the heap in CPU benchmarks. Rahul Tikoo, senior vice president and general manager of AMD’s client business, said in a call with reporters that AMD aimed for “leadership performance across the CPU, the GPU, and the NPU,” plus “multi-day mobility” as well as “AI performance to enable the next wave of experiences.” The new Ryzen AI 400 series has higher CPU and GPU boost clocks, a higher supported memory speed, and extra TOPS. Still, it’s close enough to the Ryzen AI 300 that reporters asked if it was just “rebadged” silicon. It’s not, according to Rakesh Anigundi, director of product management at AMD, though improved performance arrives via improved firmware as well as manufacturing changes. The process technology used in the AI 400 is 4nm, or basically the same process technology used in the Ryzen AI 300. AMD is launching a total of seven Ryzen AI 400-series chips, ranging from a specialized Ryzen AI 9 HX 475 processor at the top of the stack, designed for gaming, down to the Ryzen AI 5 430 at the low end. The cores will be a mix of the full-fledged Zen 5 cores as well as the more efficient Zen 5c cores, in various configurations differentiated by core count, clock speed, and the number of graphics CUs as well as their speed. All of the Ryzen AI 400 chips tolerate anywhere from 15 to 54 watts of thermal design power, or TDP. AMD’s new Ryzen AI 400 chips include substantially more offerings than the original AI 300 series, which didn’t reveal the base clock speed at launch. It’s also interesting that all of the processors run at 2.0 GHz, but boost to different speeds. And yes, the Ryzen AI 9 HX 475 and 470 are nearly identical, save for the difference in NPU TOPS: 60 versus 55 TOPS. Ryzen AI 9 HX 475: 12 cores/ 24 threads, 2.0GHZ base clock/5.2GHz boost clock; Radeon 890M/16 CUs/3.1GHz Ryzen AI 9 HX 470: 12 cores/ 24 threads, 2.0GHZ base clock/5.2GHz boost clock; Radeon 890M/16 CUs/3.1GHz Ryzen AI 9 465: 10 cores/ 20 threads, 2.0GHZ base clock/5.0GHz boost clock; Radeon 880M/12 CUs/2.9GHz Ryzen AI 7 450: 8 cores/ 16 threads, 2.0GHZ base clock/5.1GHz boost clock; Radeon 860M/8 CUs/3.1GHz Ryzen AI 7 445: 6 cores/ 12 threads, 2.0GHZ base clock/4.6GHz boost clock; Radeon 840M/4 CUs/2.9GHz Ryzen AI 5 435: 6 cores/ 12 threads, 2.0GHZ base clock/4.5GHz boost clock; Radeon 840M/4 CUs/2.8GHz Ryzen AI 5 430: 4 cores/ 8 threads, 2.0GHZ base clock/4.5GHz boost clock; Radeon 840M/4 CUs/2.8GHz The question is whether the Ryzen AI 400 will remain at the top of the heap in terms of performance. In this, AMD was somewhat vague, claiming that in “responsive multitasking,” such as running a Microsoft Teams call with background blur enabled, the Ryzen AI 400 was 1.3X faster than the competition, or 1.7X faster in content creation. In this, AMD can only compare to the silicon its competitors have shipped; in this case, it refers to Intel’s Lunar Lake or Core Ultra 200 silicon. Head-to-head comparisons will have to wait until both companies ship their silicon in early 2026; AMD is claiming that Asus, Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo, among others, have signed up. AMD said laptops from its customers would be available beginning in the first quarter, from thin-and-light laptops to gaming and content-creation PCs to, yes, desktops. Still, AMD’s benchmarks are impressive, both in content creation and in gaming. In gaming, however, AMD isn’t saying whether the games listed are technically “playable” (over 60 frames per second, generally) or whether any frame enhancement technologies were used. In a sense, however, its a win for gamers just to be able play some of these games on integrated graphics. (AMD’s configuration notes say that the Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 was used, with its integrated Radeon 890M GPU.) Clearly, the increased clock speed and NPU TOPS will be of benefit to consumers. However, the support for faster DRAM — 8533 MT/s — will be dependent on PC makers actually finding and buying that high-speed DRAM to add to customer devices. What’s not clear is whether AMD will be able to increase its market share in mobile, as it has done in desktops with its superb Ryzen X3D parts. Traditionally, AMD has held on to about 20 percent of the mobile market, according to analysts. “With this range of processors, OEMs can deliver AI PCs that are tailored to your specific need, while offering the best performance and robust on-device AI,” AMD’s Tikoo said. Read...

Google thinks AI can solve the problem of needing to wade through complicated TV settings menus. With a forthcoming update to its Gemini AI assistant on Google TV, you’ll be able to adjust TV settings with voice commands. For instance, you can say things like “the screen is too dim” to increase brightness, or “the dialog is lost” to turn on subtitles. That’s one of several new AI features that Google plans to roll out to its TV platform in the months ahead. The company also announced more image-driven responses to basic queries, a “Deep Dives” feature that provides a narrated summary of complex topics, and some new ways to look up and interact with Google Photos libraries. Google says these features will arrive on “select TCL devices” first, followed by other Google TV devices in the coming months. Tweaking TV settings The big question with Gemini’s settings controls will be how deep they’ll go. If all you can do is control basic things like brightness or volume, that’ll only be of marginal use. On the other hand, imagine asking to turn off motion smoothing on your TV (or your parents’ TV), or to turn off the ACR features that monitor what you watch and then sell the data to marketers. I’ll be asking Google about these possibilities and others in an upcoming interview. Other AI features Google The other Gemini TV features that Google is announcing at CES 2026 range from useful to gimmicky. If you ask what to watch next based on a show you liked, for instance, Google will now show cover art for its recommendations instead of just answering with text. (It’s unclear, however, if you’ll be able to click on the art to load the recommendations directly.) Google Gemini will also provide visual responses for more general queries, so you can ask about things like Van Gogh paintings or the Northern Lights and get images in return. For more complex queries, Gemini will also show example follow-up questions to dive deeper into the topic. Google Gemini will be able look up pictures from Google Photos in response to voice commands (something the previous Google Assistant was already able to do) and turn images into slideshows on the fly. Google seems to think you’ll want to create content on your TV as well, as it’s adding a way to make AI-generated images and videos with its Nano Banana and Veo AI models. Some of this stuff feels a bit forced, as if there’s a mandate to stuff AI features onto TVs regardless of whether users are asking for it. But Google does believe that the TV will evolve from just a place to watch videos into an AI-driven hub for information. I still have my doubts about that, but at least it’ll make controlling your TV settings a little easier in the meantime. Read...

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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Attractive and sturdy design Bundled display hood and remote Built-in automatic hardware image calibration, brightness adjustments USB-C hub includes Ethernet Great color gamut and accuracy Cons Limited contrast ratio HDR is supported, but only barely No Adaptive Sync Our Verdict The BenQ PD2770U is a monitor built for professional content creation. Its specific feature set will limit its appeal, but makes it a good choice for its intended demographic. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: BenQ PD2770U Retailer Price BenQ $1699.99 View Deal Check Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Check today’s prices Most monitors sold today are chasing the same trends. OLED panels are common, bringing with them excellent contrast, and refresh rates have surged into the hundreds. These upgrades have led to excellent displays, but the BenQ PD2770U marches to a different tune. It is focused on professional content creation and has several unusual features—such as a built-in display calibration tool—that will appeal to the monitor’s audience. Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best monitors for comparison. BenQ PD2770U specs and features The basics of the BenQ PD2770U’s display panel are nothing to write home about. It has a 27-inch 4K IPS-LCD panel with a refresh rate of 60Hz. The backlight is edge-lit LED, so no fancy Mini-LED backlighting here. Adaptive sync isn’t present, either. Display size: 27-inch 16:9 aspect ratio Native resolution: 3840×2160 Panel type: IPS-LCD with LED edge lit backlight Refresh rate: 60Hz Adaptive sync: No HDR: HDR 10/HLG Ports: 2x HDMI 2.0, 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 1x Thunderbolt / USB-C with 96 watts of Power Delivery and DisplayPort Alternate Mode, 1x USB-C upstream with 5Gbps data, 2x USB-A downstream with 5Gbps data Audio: None Extra features: Light sensor, remote control, built-in automatic calibration, uniformity mode, display hood Price: $1,699.99 MSRP However, the BenQ PD2770U includes several uncommon features. It has built-in image calibration hardware tucked into the top bezel, plus ambient light sensors and a USB-C / Thunderbolt hub that includes Ethernet connectivity. It also ships with a display hood and wireless remote for controlling the monitor’s features. These features don’t come cheap, though, as the PD2770U carries a high MSRP of $1,699.99. Speciality monitors meant for professionals tend to carry a hefty price premium. BenQ PD2770U design The BenQ PD2770U is a monitor meant for professional settings, so it offers a reserved and low-key look. That’s not to say it’s unattractive, though. I rather like the charcoal-and-gray colorway, which remains a professional tone and is distinct from the matte black look typical of less expensive professional monitors, as well as the metallic silver used by most similarly priced competitors. Build quality is high. As with most displays, plastic is the material of choice, but the stand base is metal and the plastics that make up the body of the display are robust. It’s a hefty monitor, as well, at nearly 20 pounds with stand. That’s heavier than many 32-inch monitors. Matthew Smith / Foundry A monitor hood is provided with the monitor. The hood is used to shade the display and reduce the impact of ambient light on its surface. It attaches magnetically, too, so it’s not too difficult to install or remove. Most home users are unlikely to use the hood, but it’s handy if you work in a space where you can’t control ambient light as much as you’d like. The included stand has a flat, sturdy base that minimizes its footprint on your desk. Ergonomic adjustment includes up to 115mm of height, 25 degrees of tilt, 30 degrees of swivel, and up to 90 degrees of pivot (for use in portrait orientation). None of these adjustments are remarkable for a premium monitor, but they’re competitive. A 100x100mm VESA mount is also available for use with a third-party monitor stand, arm, or wall mount. BenQ PD2770U connectivity Connectivity is a headline feature for the BenQ PD2770U. The company seems to expect that the monitor will be used with a high-end laptop, like a MacBook Pro or Asus ProArt, and so it provides a Thunderbolt 4 / USB-C port with up to 96 watts of Power Delivery and DisplayPort video. That makes for easy single-cable connections to any laptop that has USB-C with the same features (which includes most modern laptops). The monitor also provides a second USB-C upstream port, though it supports just 5Gbps of data. It’s useful if you want to connect a desktop alongside a laptop. Both USB-C ports expand a connected device’s connectivity to a pair of wired USB-A ports, each with 5Gbps data rates, and a single RJ45 Ethernet port. This isn’t the most connectivity you’ll find from a monitor—the Dell U3225QE, for instance, offers over twice as much USB connectivity—but it’s still a respectable range, and the inclusion of an Ethernet port is always good to see. As you might expect, the PD2770U provides KVM switch functionality. That means you can connect two computers to the USB-C upstream ports, then connect wired devices to the USB-A downstream ports, and use the monitor to switch which computer is connected to the USB-A devices. BenQ PD2770U menus and features The BenQ PD2770U’s on-screen menu system can be accessed either with a joystick control on the monitor, or a convenient puck-style remote. The puck-style remote is a small, wireless dial that’s great for making quick adjustments. Alternatively, most monitor features can be accessed through BenQ’s attractive DisplayPilot software, which is available for both Windows and MacOS. A long list of image quality adjustments are available. These include many preset modes that target specific color gamuts, such as AdobeRGB, Rec.709, DCI-P3, DICOM, and more. The monitor also provides precise gamma and color temperature adjustments with additional color customization, if desired. Matthew Smith / Foundry Ambient light sensors are included and can be used to automatically adjust brightness throughout the day. This can reduce eye strain and will help the monitor appear accurate in a wide range of lighting conditions. The jewel in the PD2770U’s crown, however, is the automatic hardware calibration tool permanently tucked inside the thick top bezel. It can deploy automatically on a set schedule and runs a hardware-defined display calibration process (meaning no additional software is required to use it). Aside from convenience, this feature adds value, as color calibration tools typically sell for $150 to $300 or more, depending on the model. On top of that, the BenQ provides a remote calibration management tool called DMS Local, which can be used to sync color profiles across a fleet of monitors and enforce mandatory calibration. Of course, I can’t comment on the specifics of how well DMS Local works in a professional studio, but I thought it worth a mention. Matthew Smith / Foundry Overall, I like the built-in calibration. Calibration normally requires additional hardware, which you must connect and put into place before calibration can take place. That extra hassle can make it easy to justify putting it off until tomorrow—for weeks on end. BenQ’s built-in calibration gives you less reason to put it off. Calibration does require roughly 10 minutes, though, so you’ll have to take a break (or use a second display). You also need to warm up the display for 30 minutes before it can be calibrated, though the hardware takes this into account and will automatically engage after the warm-up period has ended. The BenQ PD2770U goes the extra mile with an automatic color calibration tool that can operate on a schedule and requires no additional hardware or software to operate. BenQ PD2770U audio The BenQ PD2770U doesn’t include built-in speakers and instead provides only a 3.5mm audio pass-through for connecting a headset or speakers. It is a bit disappointing to see speakers are excluded, though it’s not uncommon for high-end monitors to lack speakers. BenQ PD2770U SDR image quality The BenQ PD2770U is a monitor tightly focused on creative work including photography, videography, and digital art. That might lead you to expect excellent image quality across the board, but the PD2770U instead makes some trade-offs to provide a presentation focused on accuracy and realism. Matthew Smith / Foundry First up is brightness, where the BenQ PD2770U achieved an acceptable maximum SDR brightness of 351 nits. As the graph shows, it’s definitely not the brightest image available, but also not dim. This level of brightness is sufficient to cover SDR workflows, as well, which typically see brightness calibrated to somewhere in the 100 to 200 nits range. Though not the brightest monitor around, the BenQ PD2770U benefits from an effective Nano Matte finish and the included display hood. These features together make glare a non-issue in most situations, even in rooms with unusually bright and uneven lighting. You’ll only see glare if a bright light source is directly over your shoulder. Matthew Smith / Foundry Contrast is a weakness of the BenQ PD2770U. Though it aims to provide great image quality, it’s also a IPS-LCD display, and doesn’t have a dynamic Mini-LED backlight. The result is a contrast ratio that’s behind even most LCD monitors. It should be noted, though, that enhanced contrast isn’t the objective of the display. Rather, the Nano Matte display is meant to diffuse light in a way that provides good color accuracy and a comfortable viewing experience. I like it, though I should mention I am generally biased towards matte over glossy panels. Those who want more contrast should consider the Asus ProArt PA32UCDM, a beautiful professional monitor with an OLED panel. Matthew Smith / Foundry Color performance is something the BenQ PD2770U needs to nail and, fortunately for BenQ, it scores extremely well. The BenQ PD2770U achieved a maximum color gamut that spanned 100 percent of sRGB, 98 percent of DCI-P3, and 99 percent of AdobeRGB. That’s among the best result we’ve ever recorded. There is one detail to note, though, which is that the monitor can’t display this range of all gamuts simultaneously. For example, when the monitor is set to AdobeRGB the DCI-P3 color gamut drops to about 87 percent (and vice versa). This isn’t of much practical concern because I have a hard time fathoming a situation where you would need to work in both color spaces at once on the same display, but I thought I’d mention it. BenQ also provides modes for color gamut standards I don’t normally test, like DICOM and Rec.709. The range of supported color gamuts is wider than what you’ll find on a typical gaming or general-use monitor—even those sold above $1,000. Matthew Smith / Foundry The BenQ PD2770U delivered a solid color accuracy result that dipped below an average color error value of one. While not the very best I’ve tested, any result around one (or below) is excellent, and means the image will generally look accurate and true to the content being displayed. Color temperature and gamma are also important aspects of accuracy, and here the BenQ PD2770U scored extremely well. It presented a tight gamma curve of 2.2 and a color temperature value of 6500K. Both are the values we expect to see at default settings, and the values most monitors target out of the box. These numbers mean the image looks neither too dark or too bright, nor too warm or too cool. The monitor provides a wide range of gamma and color temperature settings, so you can tune these figures to your needs or preference. Sharpness is excellent, as the 27-inch monitor packs a resolution of 3840×2160. That works out to about 163 pixels per inch, which is as high as you’ll find without upgrading to something more exotic, such as a 5K or 6K monitor. 4K images and videos reveal a ton of fine detail, and small text remains easy to read. On the whole, the BenQ PD2770U’s SDR image quality is great with the exception of contrast, which is modest at best—and this rather bluntly defines the PD2770U’s appeal. This is not a monitor for enjoying entertainment or playing games, but rather a monitor for professional work. As such, the accuracy of the image, and the ability to calibrate it, becomes more important than the wow-factor a better contrast ratio would provide. Of course, the dream would be to have a monitor with both a high-contrast OLED panel and the high degree of accuracy and calibration that the BenQ PD2770U provides. Monitors like that do exist, but they’re often at least twice the PD2770U’s price (and yet may still lack useful features found on the PD2770U, such as automatic hardware calibration). BenQ PD2770U HDR image quality and motion performance The BenQ PD2770U supports HDR10 / HLG, but HDR is not the focus of the monitor, and it lacks any version of VESA DisplayHDR certification. You should consider HDR to be something the PD2770U can provide in a pinch, but not something that will be accurate. This is largely due to the lack of brightness and contrast, both of which are required to do HDR justice. Motion clarity also takes a back seat, as the PD2770U only provides a 60Hz refresh rate and does not support adaptive sync. While slower-paced games look fine on the PD2770U, it’s definitely not a good choice for highly competitive games. Should you buy the BenQ PD2770U? The BenQ PD2770U is a professional content creation monitor aimed at creatives who primarily produce SDR content and need excellent, accurate color performance. It goes the extra mile with an automatic color calibration tool that can operate on a schedule and requires no additional hardware or software to operate.While many professional monitors include calibration hardware, it’s unusual for that hardware to be built physically into the monitor itself. It should prove useful if you mean to calibrate your monitor but often find it a hassle, or forget to do it on a regular schedule. This perk is balanced by the monitor’s barely-there HDR support and missing adaptive sync, which mean the PD2770U is not great for entertainment and gaming. However, the PD2770U is a great choice if you need a color accurate monitor for professional work. Read...

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