as always, I'll wait for reviews before jumping on either team. So far, more of the same:  AMD improved something where Intel is good, but didnt add meaningful things to close that gap faster

Deep dive???
More like advertisement.

While no one should discount the importance of hardware decoding and the IGP, I wouldn't say that Intel did anything that meaningful to thwart AMD's threat to their dominance -- they just kept their existing strengths (i.e., their connectivity is unrivaled with TB) and improved their IGPs. That's it.

What I would say is that AMD fundamentally fails to understand the laptop market, and that's why hardware decoding is not a thing they care that much about, and also why these SoCs don't leverage the new USB 4 standard to reach (potentially) a similar feature-set of TB3. (I say potentially because there are many optional features that budget integrators would cut for cost-optimization)

Worst of all, the new launch pulls mayhem at the level of an Intel launch. They'll have Zen2 and Zen3 chips using the same branding, only a different digit which buyers need actively search to understand which is which.

C'mon AMD!

NikoB, calm down Intel fanboy  ;D ;D ;D

In fact, if we ignore the multi-threaded performance, in all other respects AMD has become again catching up with the flagship of the market - Intel.

4 years ago, AMD (without even advertising it) was the leader in integrated graphics - having HDMI 2.0b in all Ryzen laptops, where Intel had a complete shame with the outdated HDMI 1.4b. Now what? Intel supplied HDMI 2.1 (but also did not supply the much needed DP2.0 for new 8k monitors, it is extremely important on diagonals from 27 "+), Intel has long had Thunderbolt 3.0+, AMD still without it and even without a common USB 4.0 standard in 2021 ! She does not have a bunch of other chips, but she suddenly lifted prices so that notebooks immediately increased in price by 40-50%! At the same time, they did not offer anything other than multi-threaded performance (and even that is quietly underestimated by 20% by manufacturers like HP / Acer) ...

Moreover, the prices for laptops in general have grown completely inadequate against the background of a shortage due to COVID-19 and the general excitement with remote work from home ...

Integrated graphics cover AMD's head with endless shame against the backdrop of Intel's progress.

Not only do they deceive the entire public with VP9 hardware video decoders, which in reality have been quietly made hybrid since the beginning of 2020 with Zen+, because they didn't pull hardware without drops and friezes for 2560x1440+@60fps, so they completely disgraced themselves in Zen3, not installing Display Port 2.0 overgrown with moss (which is already 2 years old!) and even the infamous HDMI 2.1, which is already 3 years old! They broke through without even adding an AV1 decoder! They did not add USB4.0 (aka TB3.0/4.0) to the SoC, which Intel already has at least with Ice Lake (2x2 ports!)! They even cut out pci-e 4.0, which Intel also has! Intel already has built-in Wi-Fi 6E, AMD still does not. As there is no AVX512 and no neuroDSP (Intel already has the second version!) For working with neural networks.

Well, how is it AMD? Having in your structure the GPU division inherited from ATI, you lost the NVidia discrete market, being the leaders 12 years ago, and now you have even lost iGPU market for the Intel new SoC! You urgently need to do something with the leadership of these areas. You can't hold out for a long time in such conditions ...

Cinebench R20 multi-threaded test for 4600H artificially underestimated by AMD marketers. In reality, it is significantly faster than the 4600U / 4700U and 15% faster than the 4800U in REAL notebooks. Moreover, with long calculations, there is nothing to discuss here.

AMD's shame is that it did not increase the L3 cache on the U series (at least up to 16MB), and it shamefully merges in front of Intel precisely in the memory subsystem, like Zen2+.