Laptops with Intel Panther Lake at 30W can match the performance of the PS6 “Canis” laptop at 15W

The dispute for the dominance of portable games gained new chapters during CES 2026. According to recent information, the Panther Lake PS6 Laptops they must fight an interesting battle of specifications, although with very different energy approaches.

Rumors suggest that Intel’s new architecture will require twice as much energy to achieve the same performance as Sony’s future device.

The challenge of energy efficiency

According to tipster Kepler_L2, known for accurate hardware leaks, Intel’s new Panther Lake chips will need operate at 30W to match the performance of the PlayStation 6 portable, codenamed “Canis“, will deliver with just 15W.

The significant difference in energy consumption highlights the distinct engineering strategies between a generalist PC device and a dedicated console.

While Intel’s chips have to deal with the natural overhead of the Windows environment and compatibility with a wide range of software, Sony benefits from a closed system.

A software optimization Ownership and the exclusive focus on first-party games allow the “Canis” hardware to extract many more frames per second from each Watt consumed, a historical advantage of consoles over computers.

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Intel Panther Lake fills gap left by AMD

Intel confirmed at CES that it is investing heavily in the handheld segment with the line Panther Lake (Core Ultra Series 3).

The company seeks to occupy a space that AMD apparently left vacant this year, as the “Ryzen AI 400” (Gorgon Point) line brought few new features to this specific format.

The expectation is that Intel will remove unnecessary components, such as the NPU, to focus all the silicon on the graphics cores Xe3.

The path adopted by Intel places it as the main competitor in raw performance for the next generation of notebooks, surpassing AMD’s current Z series options.

However, thermal efficiency and battery life will remain the biggest challenges for open x86 architecture-based hardware when compared to Sony’s custom solutions.

The first Panther Lake-powered devices are expected to hit the market in mid-2026. Until then, the industry will be closely watching whether driver optimizations and collaboration with Microsoft can reduce this efficiency gap before the launch of Sony’s supposed portable.

Fonte(s): Kepler_L2 (X)