I think there is some nuance in understanding Lunar Lake performance. It's easy to simply compare the MT performance in "ridiculously" multithreaded applications/benches like CB and Blender and conclude, "it's not good." Many reviewers have done that and they don't get it. The ARL mobile parts will compete in the segment of the market that requires massive MT capability.
Lunar Lake with 4 really strong cores and 4 ~Raptor cores is aimed at thin and light performance laptops running business applications while still being able to work well with graphics, video, and audio editing.
As we all know, to date, there still aren't a ton of applications outside of rendering and video transcoding that harness all cores. Most applications still rely heavily on 1 or 2 cores with the others chipping in with the "app on top" and/or taking care of background processes.
I'm still looking to buy and had the Asus with the 258v in my cart and almost checked out, but I really don't want to regret not finding one with the 288v processor.