11th Gen Intel Core Processors: How good are they?

With the emergence of more advanced processors from its competitors, a lot was riding on the 11th Gen Intel Core processors of this year. To give us an idea of what they are capable of, Intel has sent out the Asus ZenBook Flip 13, equipped with the i7-1165G7 Intel Evo processor clocked at 2.80GHz. But how well can it handle your workflow?

Daily tasks

As you would expect, Intel’s new processors are not deterred by daily usage. The i7-1165G7 remains snappy whether you are processing data or copywriting. One aspect of this setup we like is how great multitasking remains. Obviously, this is helped with 16GB on our machine but a lot of demanding programs manage to remain open and functional when required. For those interested in benchmark scores, we ran Cinebench R23 to find a CPU single core score of 1,086 and a multi core score of 3,171 points.

The plus side with this set of processors is also thermal and noise efficiency. While this may vary depending on the machine being used, we saw our laptop remain fairly cool throughout. While its thermal efficiency is not quite Apple M1 level, it is more than adequate. Even for general multimedia consumption, you will not hear your laptop fans spinning out of control in these circumstances.

Video editing

In the past, video editing required hefty on-board power. Today, it does not seem to be the case, at least with the i7-1165G7 on-board the Asus ZenBook Flip 13. Both 1080p and 4K video is editable using Adobe Premiere Pro. Simpler files are obviously less strenuous, allowing you to bump up playback resolution. But as you deal with more complex files, with refresh rates of 60fps and beyond, you will need to tone down a bit. Despite this, you can still edit using just the 11th Gen Intel Core processor’s power. However, sacrifices in playback quality and overall fluidity will need to be made.

As great as the editing experience could be with this power and Intel Iris Xe graphics, it does not quite beat out a dedicated GPU. The biggest issue with the i7-1165G7, and any other processor without a companion GPU is render time. For simpler projects, this is not an issue, and in that way, a laptop like this is the ideal companion for those that work on simpler videos. But as soon as you are rendering 4K files, render times cripple, increasing by about 5x.

Battery life

Among all the improvements that the new Intel Evo processors bring, the biggest has to be battery life. Easily being able to use these laptops for a full day without recharging is great. Even when editing videos, you can get between 3-4 hours of actual usage, which was not always a guarantee in the past.

Intel Evo equipped machines also come with Type-C USB charging support. This means you can easily top-up with any Type-C adapter even when on the go. More often than not, you will also benefit from fast charging options. For instance, our ZenBook Flip 13 fully charged in just under 2 hours.

Gaming performance

If there is one area where the i7-1165G7 struggles the most in, it is gaming. We know that a dedicated GPU goes hand-in-hand with gaming, and not having one on the ZenBook Flip 13 is a miss. We tried a variety of games on the machine, including Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone and Rocket League.

Unsurprisingly, we saw performance at the 25-45FPS range, which is not ideal. Even lowering down the graphics settings to an absolute minimum resulted in a choppy experience. Perhaps for extremely lightweight games such as Among Us, the power available is adequate. But otherwise, not so much.

Conclusion

The 11th Gen Intel Core processors deliver on a number of fronts. But their biggest selling points include battery backup and value for money. We had recently checked out the Asus ZenBook Duo 14, and that too delivered some incredible performance for the price tag. What Intel can look to address next is gaming. Its new Intel Core H-series of processors recently launched and with them being gaming-centric, it will be interesting to gauge how much of a difference they make. We will update this piece with our findings when we get a chance to check them out.