For instance, the common register+immediate addressing mode was significantly faster than on the 8086,[a] especially when a memory location was both (one of) the operand(s) and the destination.

The (redesigned) CMOS version, 80C186, introduced DRAM refresh, a power-save mode, and a direct interface to the 80C187 floating-point numeric coprocessor.

[6] Both packages for Intel 80186 version were available in 68-pin PLCC and PGA in sampling at third quarter of 1985.

[10] The 80C186EB was a fully static design for the application-specific standard product using the 1 μm CHMOS IV technology.

[12] The 80188 variant, with an 8-bit external data bus was also available; this made it less expensive to connect to peripherals.

[19] The available 80C188EB in fully static design for the application-specific standard product using the 1-micron CHMOS IV technology.

[20] The 80188 series was generally intended for embedded systems, as microcontrollers with external memory.

Therefore, to reduce the number of chips required, it included features such as clock generator, interrupt controller, timers, wait state generator, DMA channels, and external chip select lines.

Because the integrated hardware included in the 80186 was incompatible with the support chips chosen by IBM for the 8088-based IBM PC released a few months earlier, the chip did not see wide success in the PC market.

Regardless, several notable personal computers used the 80186: In addition to the above examples of stand-alone implementations of the 80186 for personal computers, there were at least two examples of "add-in" accelerator card implementations: the BBC Master 512, Acorn's plug-in for the BBC Master range of computers containing an 80186–10 with 512 KB of RAM, and the Orchid Technology PC Turbo 186,[22] released in 1985.

[27][28] Pin- and instruction-compatible replacements might still be manufactured by various third-party sources,[29] and FPGA versions are publicly available.