Last-gen ultralight laptops are nearly as fast as new models—and much cheaper

If you’re looking for a new thin-and-light Windows PC this year, the latest and greatest processors may not be all that necessary. Unlike with previous mobile chip releases, the 2023 options for ultralights from Intel and AMD are mostly similar to their predecessors. In the case of premium ultralights and 2-in-1s relying on integrated graphics, the gains are small enough that budget shoppers should consider a last-gen model, assuming all other things are equal, and save hundreds with a negligible loss in performance.

When Intel announced its 13th Gen mobile lineup in January, we called the chip “mildly improved.” The new chips are pretty boring compared to the 12th Gen release, when Intel brought its hybrid Alder Lake architectures to laptops and introduced the P-series. 13th Gen brings such minimal changes, as our testing will illustrate, that ultralights featuring 12th Gen systems are still worth serious consideration comparatively. And a specs comparison suggests a similar story with AMD Ryzen 6000 versus 7000.

As Ars’ Andrew Cunningham wrote upon Intel’s announcement of 13th Gen mobile, the lineup is “mostly identical to the 12th Generation CPUs they’re replacing.” 13th Gen brings notable updates to HX chips, including more E-cores than before and, with some of the chips, support for speedier RAM. But when it comes to the chips you’ll likely find employed in thin-and-light laptops—the P and U series—there’s far less of that “new and shiny” feel.

With the new U- and P-series chips (as well as the more powerful H-series), Intel limited gen-over-gen improvements to support faster RAM (up to DDR5-4800/LPDDR5-5200 versus DDR5-5200/LPDDR5-6400) and small clock speed increases. Just how small? Here’s a quick overview of how the 13th Gen U and P series compare to 12th Gen.

The U series is supposed to be slightly less powerful and more efficient than the P-series, and it shows similarly minimal differences between the 12th and 13th Gens (We’ve used Intel’s charts, as the series has more processors). When U series graduated from 11th to 12th Gen, it replaced two big cores with four to eight small cores, but there are no such changes with 13th Gen.

Intel

Intel

Intel

Intel

Intel

Intel

Intel

Intel

As we wrote in January, “these refreshes mostly tread water, and you shouldn’t hold out for a 13th Gen laptop if you can find an otherwise identical 12th Gen laptop for cheaper.” In a moment, I’ll show some benchmarks supporting that thesis.

While this article focuses mainly on Intel testing, there’s a similar story with AMD’s latest laptop processors. Beyond the new Ryzen 7040 series, a new Zen 4 and RDNA 3-based chip, the thin-and-lights likely to adopt Ryzen 7000 chips will probably stick to the Ryzen 7035 series, which we dubbed “Ryzen 6000 with a new name.” As of this writing, there are no ultralights with a Ryzen 7035-series processor readily available online in the US, but you can look at the table below for a specs comparison between this generation and the series’ predecessor.

AMD’s Ryzen 7000 chips targeting ultralight PCs.

AMD

AMD’s Ryzen 7000 chips targeting ultralight PCs. AMD

AMD’s Ryzen 6000 mobile lineup.

AMD

AMD’s Ryzen 6000 mobile lineup. AMD

AMD’s Ryzen 7000 chips targeting ultralight PCs. AMD

AMD’s Ryzen 6000 mobile lineup. AMD

To test the idea that 13th Gen isn’t worth holding out for if you can find what you need with a last-gen processor for cheaper, I tested a current-gen Lenovo Yoga 9i (Gen 8). A high-priced option from Lenovo’s 2-in-1 Yoga line, Gen 8 is virtually the same as the Yoga 9i Gen 7 I looked at last year. From the chassis to the 2880×1800 90 Hz OLED screen option, 75 Wh battery, and RAM speed, it’s essentially the same machine. The real difference is the processor, and as you can see, the 13th Gen chip brings a small bump in productivity and graphical performance.

Some numbers

Lenovo’s Yoga 9i Gen 8 laptop looks and performs quite similarly to Gen 7.

Credit: Scharon Harding

First, the chips. The Yoga 9i uses an i7-1360P, and 2022’s model had an i7-1260P. The chips use the same architecture, but the i7-1360P gets a boost in clock speeds. Its P-cores’ base speed is up to 4.8 percent higher, while max speed sees up to a 6.4 percent improvement. And the 13th Gen chip has E-cores with a 6.7 percent increase in base speed and an 8.8 percent jump in claimed max speed.

The Geekbench 5 numbers below provide a basic overview of what those differences get you in general productivity performance (with both machines set to Lenovo and Windows’ max performance settings). This is just one benchmark, of course, but it provides a broad look at the kind of productivity gains one could expect moving from 12th Gen mobile to 13th, with about everything else about the PC staying the same.

Scharon Harding

Scharon Harding

Scharon Harding

Scharon Harding

Scharon Harding

Scharon Harding

The 13th Gen-based laptop’s overall single-core score was 2 percent higher than the 12th Gen-based system. Overall multi-core performance improved 7.8 percent. Interestingly, the newer laptop showed a 16.1 and 8.6 decrease, respectively, in its Geekbench crypto scores, an indicator of cryptographic instruction performance.

We see a smaller productivity boost than what users expected when moving from the 11th-Gen Yoga 9i Gen 6 to the 12th Gen 7. You can still find the Gen 6 laptop with an i7-1185G7 online, and Lenovo sells it with an i7-1195G7 (starting at $1,310). Ars didn’t test Gen 6, but according to Windows Central, which tested the system with an i7-1185G7, Gen 7 brought an 18.4 percent improvement in overall single-core performance in Geekbench 5 and a 105.3 percent boost in overall multi-core performance. We can’t verify Windows Central’s testing methods, and Gen 6 does offer other changes compared to Gen 7 besides the processor. However, these numbers are still interesting.

A look at graphics performance gen-over-gen doesn’t excite much, either.

Scharon Harding

Scharon Harding

Scharon Harding

Scharon Harding

Scharon Harding

Scharon Harding

The Yoga 9i with a newer chip showed a 1.7 percent improvement in the Vulkan benchmark and a 1.9 percent gain in its 3DMark Wildlife Extreme score compared to the last-gen version.

As of press time, the Yoga 9i Gen 8’s MSRP is $1,700 compared to $1,200 for Gen 7 with the same RAM, storage, and display specs. Are you willing to pay 41.7 percent more for about a 7.8 percent gain in productivity performance and 1.9 percent in graphics performance? Before you answer that, let’s briefly talk about battery life.

Battery life

When we tested 12th Gen Intel laptops last year, battery life compared to 11th Gen disappointed, particularly in ultralights like the Framework Laptop and Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 that both rely on P-series processors.

The 12th and 13th Gen P- and U-series chips have the same power consumption specs from generation to generation, although OEMs are free to tweak those limits as they see fit. That means this year’s Yoga 9i may or may not be using the same base power limit as last year’s.

I tested the 12th Gen-based Yoga 9i before Ars settled on our new battery life benchmark, but the small number of available reviews comparing battery life to the laptop’s predecessor suggests the 13th Gen can bring improvements to ultralights in this regard.

Laptop saw battery life increase from 8 hours and 6 minutes on its test, which surfs the web over Wi-Fi with the screen set to 150 nits, to 10 hours and 10 minutes. Tom’s Guide had a similar experience (8:08 versus 10:10) but noted that battery life is still behind “top-tier ultraportables.”

However, Digital Trends reported that the new laptop lasted 7 hours and 41 minutes in its web browsing test and 13:25 in its local 1080p video looping test. It said Gen 7 lasted for 9 hours and 12.75 hours, respectively.

Meanwhile, PCWorld said the current-gen laptop lasted 10:10 on its battery test, “which loops a local 4K video file until the laptop dies.” The publication tested the last-gen version with a higher resolution screen, but the PC also used less battery-taxing display technology (IPS) and lasted a longer 12:12.

Then there are Lenovo’s claims. Lenovo says the older Yoga 9i should last up to 10.5 hours with MobileMark 2018 and the OLED screen set to 150 nits’ brightness. Making things more complicated, Lenovo is using different parameters to discuss battery life for the updated 2-in-1. The most similar test used is local video rundown, tested at 200 nits with an estimated battery life of 10 hours and 40 minutes, compared to 14 hours with the last-gen machine set to 150 nits. (For what it’s worth, the Yoga 9i I tested lasted 8 hours and 13 minutes on the PCMark 10 Modern Office battery benchmark with its screen set to 200 nits.)

We’ve also seen claims from OEMs that 13th Gen can bring battery life boosts (although, for obvious reasons, we should take those claims with a grain of salt). Framework recently announced the 13th Gen version of its laptop and claimed that 13th Gen P-series CPUs, along with “firmware optimizations,” will improve the machine’s battery life compared to 2022’s model. This could be a good thing, but we’ll need to do more of our own testing to find out.

While I don’t have benchmarks showing this, heat management is expected to be about the same, too. And I didn’t notice any obvious temperature differences when using the Yoga 9i Gen 8 compared to Gen 7.

A drop in performance could be worth the savings

When it comes to processors targeting ultralight clamshell and convertible laptops, we aren’t seeing massive productivity improvements from the 2022 class to the 2023 class. If you’ve been following CPUs for a while, this won’t feel unprecedented. As noted in our coverage for the 13th Gen mobile launch, Intel’s 7th Generation and 10th Generation mobile chips didn’t bring groundbreaking improvements over their immediate predecessors.