In this video I’m taking a proper look at Intel’s Arrow Lake S Refresh “Plus” chips: the 250K Plus and 270K Plus, and I’m comparing them directly against the existing 245K and 265K. Because it’s a refresh there’s not much architecturally different (still Lion Cove P-cores and Skymont E-cores), but the stack has slid down in a genuinely useful way: the 270K Plus picks up the 8P+16E core layout, and the 250K Plus gets extra E-cores too. Clocks are basically the same, RAM support is officially up to 7200 MT/s, and—credit where it’s due—Intel is calling this what it is: a refresh, not some made-up new “generation.” The big talking point is Intel’s Binary Optimization Tool (which I’m absolutely calling “I Bot”). It’s essentially on-the-fly function call swapping via APO profiles, and Intel claims it can add meaningful performance in supported titles (there are only 12 at launch, and it’s Plus-only). I ran the usual productivity tests (Cinebench/Blender) and then gaming at 1080p and 1440p using a realistically affordable GPU, because not everyone has a 5090 lying around. In practice, on a mid-tier card the gaming uplift is mostly minor, with a couple of notable results (like Hitman 3 CPU data), and some games showing basically no change. The real win is pricing: these Plus parts land at the same money as the non-Plus chips they replace, so if you were buying a 245K/265K anyway, the Plus versions are the sensible pick.