Does Intel give the Evo certification to laptops with dedicated GPUs?

AMD A10-9600P · April 24, 2021

I've seen a fair few laptops with Intel's Evo certification, and some without, and wondered whether the presence of dGPU meant they would ignore it. I've seen HP and ASUS (which I actually bought) machines with i7-1165G7s and Nvidia MX450s without the Evo certification, yet an almost identical ASUS laptop without the MX450 was Evo certified.

This made me curious, and I thought it could make sense if Intel wanted to ignore these machines, as the dGPUs take the focus away from the Xe iGPU, which is one of their main selling points right now. They say that Evo means the laptop should have a certain level of battery life, and a few other specs, but this just smelled off to me, as I saw a Dell XPS with the same i7-1165G7 but a horrendous 4 hour battery life and horrific quality control that somehow earned the Evo sticker. Is this actually a statement on the performance of the machine, or, as I am expecting, just a desperate marketing buzzword?

Just wanted to note, this is nothing I have against the 11th Gen mobile CPUs, as they're actually very good, but just something that I suspect Intel's marketing team is doing.

AndreiArgeanu · April 24, 2021

Quote

So, in order to get the Evo badging, laptops:

must run on Intel 11th gen Tiger Lake Core i5/i7 processors with Irix Xe graphics (or later), with 8+ GB of RAM and 256+ GB of SSD storage;

must provide consistent responsiveness on battery;

must instantly wake from sleep (in less than 1 second);

must provide 9 or more hours of real-world battery life (on laptops with a FHD display) and must be able to charge quickly over USB-C (4+ hours of battery life in under 30 minutes of charging);

must include modern connectivity options: WiFi 6 (Gig+), USB-C with Thunderbolt 4, optional LTE;

must include biometrics (IR cameras or finger sensor), Precision touchpads, backlit keyboards, 3-side narrow bezels around the display, good speakers, and a few other aspects inherited from the original Project Athena fact sheet.

https://www.ultrabookreview.com/42630-intel-evo-laptops/

I'd imagine the reason the other one didn't get it is because it didn't pass one of those requirements, could be the one related to battery life.

Chris Pratt · April 24, 2021

It's mostly a marketing buzzword. Intel has always done stuff like this. However, it does serve to sort of set a baseline and give consumers some idea of what to expect.

The Evo badge defines a certain number of key minimum specs, but they're nothing too spectacular. The focus is on Xe onboard graphics, and especially with the batter life requirements, you're not going to find a dedicated GPU Evo machine. Speaking of the battery, Evo only means 9+ hours at *FHD*. So, some of these higher end laptops with like 4K screens may get 9 hours if you drop the res, but may not actually be able to run native for that long.

AMD A10-9600P · April 24, 2021

4 minutes ago, AndreiArgeanu said:

https://www.ultrabookreview.com/42630-intel-evo-laptops/

I'd imagine the reason the other one didn't get it is because it didn't pass one of those requirements, could be the one related to battery life.

That's an interesting table, thanks for sending it. Curiously, I bought an ASUS UX435, on that list, with the MX450, and it has a much larger battery capacity than some of the machines listed, with no battery life issues whatsoever, but no Evo certification.

3 minutes ago, Chris Pratt said:

It's mostly a marketing buzzword. Intel has always done stuff like this. However, it does serve to sort of set a baseline and give consumers some idea of what to expect.

The Evo badge defines a certain number of key minimum specs, but they're nothing too spectacular. The focus is on Xe onboard graphics, and especially with the batter life requirements, you're not going to find a dedicated GPU Evo machine. Speaking of the battery, Evo only means 9+ hours at *FHD*. So, some of these higher end laptops with like 4K screens may get 9 hours if you drop the res, but may not actually be able to run native for that long.

As I thought, thank you, it did seem just to be a marketing thing to me! I understand making requirements for these laptops, as when buying in this price range you do expect a certain quality, but they are very subjective and not at all consistent. I decided to avoid the Dell XPS as battery life was supposed to be a horrendous 4 hours, yet it has still been certified for "greatness", or whatever the adverts say. For the average consumer that is very misleading, as I could see the material and expect over 9 hours of battery, yet not realise that the stock settings and resolution will only give me 4. Oh well!