Intel has officially pulled the curtain back on its new Arrow Lake HX Plus laptop processors, and the first wave is already showing up in high-end gaming machines. Right now, the flagship Core Ultra 9 290HX Plus is only appearing in a small handful of Alienware gaming laptops, but wider adoption is clearly underway, with major manufacturers like Acer and Asus also confirmed to be using the new 24-core chip in upcoming models.
The bigger story for most gamers, though, is what’s coming next: a broader lineup of more attainable gaming laptops powered by the Core Ultra 7 251HX. Signs of these models are already surfacing. Lenovo is currently selling a Legion 5i configuration with the Core Ultra 7 251HX through Amazon, and new retailer information also points to an updated Raider 16 HX B2WH arriving with the same processor.
Even more attention-grabbing is the GPU pairing that’s being mentioned alongside these new CPU-based refreshes. Listings indicate that the updated Raider 16 HX B2WH is set to include Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5070 with 12GB of VRAM. Some product pages still label it as the GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, but the consistent detail across the information is the 12GB RTX 5070-class graphics, which suggests a new generation of upper-midrange gaming performance is about to land in mainstream laptop lines.
On Lenovo’s side, the plan appears to be bigger than a single model. New details suggest Lenovo intends to launch at least four additional gaming laptops featuring this new GeForce RTX 5070 12GB GPU. Rather than introducing completely new families, these machines are described as refreshed versions of existing designs. The list includes updated variants of the Legion Pro 5 16ADR10, Legion Pro 5 16IRX10, LOQ 15IRX10, and LOQ 17IRX10.
These refreshes also highlight an important platform split for buyers to watch. Most of the models mentioned are expected to use Intel Arrow Lake HX processors, while the Legion Pro 5 16ADR10 is positioned differently, continuing with AMD’s Dragon Range platform instead. That could give shoppers more choice depending on whether they prefer Intel’s newest Arrow Lake laptop chips or AMD’s proven high-performance approach.
As for when you can actually buy these RTX 5070 gaming laptops, timing clues point to late April and early May. A reported manufacturer embargo tied to Nvidia is said to lift around the end of April, lining up with an Amazon hint that Lenovo’s refreshed Legion 5i could arrive on May 1. If that window holds, gamers shopping for a new laptop with next-gen Nvidia graphics and Intel’s latest Core Ultra HX performance won’t have to wait much longer.
