AMD believes it can build a better cheap laptop with 10 hours of battery
Just a few years ago, you could barely find a laptop with an AMD chip. Then, they started sprouting up in a few of the best notebooks you could buy. Now, AMD says its chips will feature in 200 different laptop models in 2022 — and with the just revealed “Mendocino,” announced at Computex 2022, it’s trying to “redefine the everyday laptop” as a budget machine with decent battery life.
We’ve no idea whether it’ll deliver on that notion, but what it’s promising sounds like a good start: a new series of Ryzen laptop chips that combine four last-gen Zen 2 CPU cores with the latest RDNA 2 graphics on TSMC’s 6nm process to deliver over 10 hours of battery life on a charge — all for a price between $399 and $699. That includes both Windows machines and Chromebooks.
Now, you’re probably wondering: what does 10 hours actually mean? It could mean anything; manufacturers quote outrageous battery life estimates all the time. But we at least have a frame of reference here: “Most people are used to four, five, six hours on a notebook in the $399 to $699 space,” says AMD technical marketing director Robert Hallock. “At a minimum, we want 10 hours out of these notebooks.”
If I’m being honest, the announcement gives me a little bit of déjà vu — a decade ago at the very same Computex tradeshow, AMD was similarly trying to pitch a quad-core chip with better battery life and better graphics as the way to stop being seen as the cheapo alternative to Intel.
But back then, laptop manufacturers didn’t take the company seriously. Now, it’s clear the company has clout as those manufacturers introduce laptop after AMD powered laptop. That includes one AMD says has the longest battery life ever measured on a recent benchmark (the HP Elitebook 865
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