AMD 'Mendocino' Chips Promise Budget Laptops With 10-Hour Battery Life

pcmag.com:

AMD is set to improve the performance offered in budget laptops later this year with the introduction of new "Mendocino" mobile processors as part of the Ryzen Mobile portfolio.

Mendocino chips will be manufactured using a TSMC 6nm process. AMD opted for quad-core chips capable of handling eight threads and are based on the Zen 2 architecture. That should be more than enough performance for everyday tasks, especially when combined with the included RDNA 2 GPU. It's battery life combined with price where Mendocino laptops promise to really stand out, though.

AMD is promising "mixed-usage" battery life of 10 hours in laptops ranging in price from $399 to $699. When you consider most budget laptops offer in the region of four-to-six hours if you're lucky, this is quite the leap in usability between charges.

As you can see from the image above, AMD included both Windows and Chrome logos, suggesting we're going to be offered Mendocino Chromebooks alongside budget Windows 11 laptops. Hopefully the 10-hour battery life isn't limited to the Chromebook models and AMD has found a way to offer those extra hours of use across the whole range.

Expect Mendocino laptops to start appearing in Q4 this year, which may mean waiting until early 2023 for stock to arrive depending on the state of global supply chains in the run-up to the holidays. Before then, expect to see the new Ryzen 7000 desktop processors and AM5 motherboards launch.

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