Hardware Canucks has tested the latest Dell XPS 14 laptop with a Panther Lake Core Ultra 7 355 chip at its heart, and the battery life appears to be nothing short of astonishing. The channel recorded a 43-hour+ result when performing a Chrome web browsing test, beating out the latest MacBook Air 15 by roughly 28 hours.

Hardware Canucks attributes the result to a combination of the laptop’s variable refresh rate display and a high-density 70 Wh battery. The MacBook has a more conventional 66 Wh unit, along with a more standard-spec display. Given the power efficiency of Intel’s latest mobile efforts, I’d say the chip itself would likely have a large part to play as well.

In the YouTube video playback test, the Dell machine also managed to pull massively ahead of its Apple competitor. The XPS 14 delivered 20 hour, 21 minutes worth of video playback, while the MacBook 15 Air managed a still-impressive 14 hour and two minute score.

In the gaming test, however, the MacBook Air 15 managed to gain a significant lead with a four hour and ten minute maximum, compared to the Dell’s two hour 38 minute battery life. That’s a shame, especially as the Core Ultra 355 has the standard Intel Graphics iGPU, and not the surprisingly-punchy Arc B390.

From my own Panther Lake battery life testing with that particular iGPU, I can say that it feels pretty revolutionary to be playing games on the train at high frame rates without being plugged into the wall or worrying too much about the remaining charge. What can I say, I’m used to traditional gaming laptop battery life, which is usually far from impressive.

Even having had some personal experience with a PTL laptop, though (albeit one with a more powerful, top-of-the-line chip under the hood), I wouldn’t have predicted a browsing battery life result for the lesser-chipped version of nearly two days.

It looks like the variable refresh rate display really is doing some heavy lifting here, alongside the efficiency gains of Intel’s new silicon. What’s next, gaming headsets that last for weeks? Oh yeah. We’ve been there for a while already. Never mind.