Has Intel just ‘unreleased’ its Arc GPUs?
Intel Arc laptops are impossible to find in any store right now.
It has now been a week since Intel launched its Arc GPUs for laptops. Initially, only the entry-level Arc 3 series are now official ‘available’, with more powerful gaming variants launching in early summer. But even a week after launch, those Arc A350 and A370M laptops are nowhere to be found.
We asked our followers on Twitter if anyone actually bought an Arc laptop, but we are yet to hear about a single purchase. This means that the Arc Mobile launch was sadly nothing more than an announcement, and despite the promises, the company has failed to release its GPUs to the market in the first quarter.
According to the Intel Support account, Intel Arc laptops will be available for purchase by the end of the second quarter. Although it was posted more than 24 hours ago, it has not been removed or commented on by any Intel employee yet, but we believe that this might be a misunderstanding. It might either refer to the whole Arc Mobile lineup being available, or simply the Arc 5/7 series. In any other case, this new information would be contrary to what Intel has said at the Arc event.
Hi! Laptops with Intel ARC will be available for purchase by the end of the second quarter of 2022. We suggest you follow our newsroom at https://t.co/AlNpzzMu5P for all the updates.
— Intel Support (@IntelSupport) April 6, 2022
There is no doubt, however, that something is clearly wrong with Arc launch. In fact, many of our readers have reached out to us asking where they can buy an Arc-based laptop, but frankly we do not know.
So where are Intel Arc laptops?
It seems that the Acer Swift X laptop with Arc GPU that was listed for preorder even before the Arc launch, is still available for purchase, but the shipment date has been pushed back from May 25 to June 13.
Furthermore, we are now being contacted by B&H customers who purchased Samsung Book2 Pro with ARC GPU (as listed on March 17). Apparently, the laptops that they receive (as crazy as it may sound) do not actually have Arc GPU. There are in fact threads on Samsung Forums describing exactly this problem. The Book2 Pro was supposed to be the first design to go on sale with Arc 3 GPU right after the event:
One might think that some retailer might have mistakenly listed the wrong Galaxy Book2 Pro models with Arc GPUs, while those models specifically were never meant to have any. But as far as we know, there are Book2 Pro laptops from Samsung with Arc GPU on sale in the US right now and Samsung website does not list any either. For now, Arc GPUs in Book2 series are only mentioned as ‘optional’ in the official press release.
