Intel Core Ultra 5 225H

The Core Ultra 5 225H is the entry model in Intel's Core Ultra 200H family, the Arrow Lake based successor to the Meteor Lake H chips. It has 14 cores split into 4 performance cores, 8 efficient cores and 2 low-power efficient cores, with one thread per core, so 14 threads in total. Performance cores run from 1.7 GHz up to 4.9 GHz and share 18 MB of Intel Smart Cache. It supports LPDDR5X-8400 or DDR5-6400 memory in two channels, up to 128 GB, plus Thunderbolt 4 and up to 28 PCIe lanes including PCIe 5.0.

Four performance cores and eight efficient cores give the 225H clearly more headroom than U-series chips for photo editing, large spreadsheets, coding and multitasking. Its 28 W base power and 115 W maximum turbo power leave laptop makers a wide range, so a thin 14 inch model and a thicker 16 inch model with the same chip can feel quite different under long loads. Without Hyper-Threading it has fewer threads than the Core Ultra 5 125H it replaces, but the newer cores and higher clocks make up for that in most tasks.

The integrated Intel Arc 130T GPU has 7 Xe-cores running at up to 2.2 GHz. It handles 4K video, several external displays and creative apps well, and it can run many current games at low to medium settings in dual-channel memory configurations. The NPU is rated at 13 TOPS, and Intel lists 83 TOPS for the whole chip when the CPU, GPU and NPU work together. That covers Windows Studio Effects and local AI tools, but the NPU on its own is below the 40 TOPS needed for Copilot+ PC features.

Against the Core Ultra 5 125H it replaces, the 225H keeps the same core count, drops Hyper-Threading and moves to newer core designs with a higher boost clock. AMD's Ryzen AI 5 340 is a close rival with 6 cores, 12 threads and a Copilot+ class NPU, while the Ryzen 5 240 is a 6-core, 12-thread option in similar laptops. The Core 5 220H is Intel's cheaper H-series part on older Raptor Lake silicon without an NPU. The Core Ultra 5 235H is the step up in the same family, with higher clocks. The comparison pages below show each spec side by side.

Yes, if you want a mainstream laptop with more multi-core power than a U-series model and decent built-in graphics for light gaming and creative work. Look for at least 16 GB of dual-channel memory, since the Arc GPU depends on memory bandwidth. If Copilot+ features matter to you, choose a Ryzen AI 300 or Core Ultra 200V laptop, and if you want to play demanding games, pick a model with a dedicated GPU.