Intel unveils 8th-gen 'Kaby Lake refresh' laptop CPUs - with Coffee Lake launch imminent

Fifteen watt Core i3, i5 and i7 CPUs intended for laptops

Intel has launched its 8th-gen Core processor lineup - but it's not based on the company's 'Coffee Lake' architecture.

Instead, Intel's new 15W Core i3, i5 and i7 CPUs arrive as a "Kaby Lake refresh", according to the company, with Coffee Lake processors - intended for high-end workstation and enthusiast PCs - set to launch later this year.

The company's new 8th-gen chips are the first quad-core 'U-Series' processors, which are intended for notebook and ultrabook devices. The lineup comprises of the of the i7-8650U, with a base clock frequency of 1.9GHz and a boost clock of 4.2GHz; the i7-8550U (1.8GHz to 4GHz), the i5 8450U (1.7GHz to 3.6GHz) and the i5-8250U (1.6GHz to 3.4GHz).

Although they remain on the firm's Kaby Lake architecture, Intel is claiming that its 14nm+ architecture offers a 40 per cent performance improvement compared to its previous-gen Kaby Lake chips, adding that those upgrading from a five-year-old PC will experience "double the performance".

Karen Regis, director of Intel's mobile platform marketing, boasted: "This is a huge leap, and arguably a once in a decade kind of leap," and took aim at AMD's Ryzen lineup with the claim that the new chips will "eclipse everything else in the industry."

According to Regis, users of its new chips will see a 30 per cent performance speed improvement when editing images, 40 per cent when multitasking and a 48 per cent speed improvement when creating a slideshow in PowerPoint.

Battery life remains "uncompromised" despite Intel's aforementioned performance gains, and the company claims that devices powered by its 8th-gen CPUs will offer up to 10 hours of battery life when watching local 4K video, and up to 11 hours if streaming 4K content on YouTube.

Elsewhere, the new 'Kaby Lake refresh' offers support for Windows Mixed Reality, Windows Hello authentication and fingerprint touch-to-pay, along with Thunderbolt 3 support.

The integrated HD 620 graphics built into the last generation of U-Series processors is also getting an upgrade to UHD 620 graphics. The GPUs of Core i5 models run at 1.1Ghz, while those of the Core i7 models run at 1.15GHz.

Intel is promising that more than 145 OEM devices will be launching products, starting in September, with 80 of those to be available in time for Christmas.