Ahead of next month’s CES, Lenovo has unveiled new ThinkPad and IdeaPad laptops powered by Intel’s latest Core Ultra chipsets. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, ThinkPad X1 2-in-1, and IdeaPad Pro 5i are Intel Evo model laptops, each leveraging the Core Ultra’s three compute engines — a CPU, a GPU and, for good measure, a neural processing unit. Lenovo says that while the three generally work together for optimal efficiency, some tasks wind up offloaded to the GPU or NPU to achieve greater performance and power management. Since both form factors use the Windows 11 OS, the new models support Microsoft’s AI Copilot features.

The IdeaPad Pro 5i is Lenovo’s “first consumer Intel Evo Edition laptop that runs on an Intel Core Ultra chipset,” Engadget writes, adding the claim is this “will power faster AI-driven features, such as image and text generation, as well as photo editing” in addition to general performance improvement for things like “video editing and exporting, along with multitasking.”

The IdeaPad Pro 5i will accommodate “up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU, up to 32GB of LPDDR5X RAM and up to a 1TB SSD,” Engadget says, noting “an expandable SSD slot and SD card reader can help bump up the storage as well.”

Available in 14-inch and 16-inch formats, the IdeaPad Pro 5i offers multiple display options, among them an eye-catching 16:10 OLED panel with 100 percent DCI-P3 color gamut and 120Hz refresh rate. “The IR Full HD camera has a time-of-flight sensor and privacy shutter along with Windows Hello support,” Engadget adds.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (pictured above) comes with a 14-inch display featuring 2.8K OLED touch panel with a 120Hz refresh rate. The model features up to 64GB of DDR5 RAM and as much as 2TB of SSD storage. Mashable writes that the Carbon “hints at new 2024 trend: AI laptops,” detailing various features (including transcription, background blur and “digital content tools”) that benefit from the AI boost.

While some X1 Carbon Gen 12 configurations are expected to ship by the end of the month (starting at $2,989) the full product line won’t be out until March, the scheduled release date for the ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 Gen 9, which is expected to start at $2,639.

Lenovo details the AI acceleration and other features in its new product release, and also discusses new hybrid cloud platforms it is launching to accelerate AI.

Be sure to check back with us in the new year. The ETCentric team will be reporting live from the CES show floor January 8-12.