The Death of Cheap Laptop CPUs

[Redaktion]

Budget laptops are dying, because budget laptop chips - real budget chips, not just last generation's leftovers - are already dead.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Death-of-Cheap-Laptop-CPUs.940997.0.html

[Mr Majestyk]

You'd have to be insane to buy a new low-end laptop when you can buy a mid-tier or even top tier second hand laptop for the same or not much more. Don't forget there are lunatics out there that are religiously on the upgrade cycle wasting thousands of dollars to gain a few % more performance. Their loss is your gain.

I purchased a less than 12 months old Apple Air Book with M1 and 512GB ssd and 16GB for 55% discount over new and it's far better than any of the budget PC trash that was selling for similar money. More memory and storage, more efficient and powerful cpu, and massively better screen.

[GeorgeS]

Sure, the major OEM's are no longer releasing stuff with low end CPU's.

Forgetting for the moment that even TODAY (in 2025) one can still get a NEW device with an Apple M1 chip, there are almost countless 'a few models old' x86 devices that can be had.

As other(s) have mentioned, there is a robust USED market where systems from big companies get swapped out every 1.5-3yrs for new items, these perfectly functional systems get refurbished and sold at a great discount.

The author did mention that these older systems might be lacking in computational power as well as battery life however one has to take that in the context of MUCH OLDER systems rather than what new modern systems can do.

If we are going to assume that a COMPANY or CORPORATION will be purchasing NEW, the market for these very discounted systems is more likely home users, hobbyists, students and others that can work within the limitations of these systems. (otherwise they might opt for purchasing something new and is a recent model/release)

BTW: This is being typed on a 2013 MBP i5/2c/3t 8GB, my M1 iPad Pro is used everyday.

Sure, the press pushes a 'must have latest and greatest' narrative and there are countless sheep/lemmings that follow it but not everyone is drunk on that Koolaid. :)

[opckieran]

Walmart Online and Amazon (and likely NewEgg too) are awful for browsing for laptops since they allow for 3rd party sellers. I'd only use them if you knew exactly what model you wanted.

Otherwise, Best Buy, Staples/Office Depot, Microcenter, really any place that has their laptops out on display, That's where you want to go to find good prices on new equipment.

[ChrisB]

It would seem that maybe that ARM is the natural CPU to fill the budget market, now that Windows on ARM is viable.  AMD and Intel are probably focusing on higher value parts of the market, assuming it will be a low-margin game where ARM has an advantage at the basement.
Though the N100 and future variants may be the right answer for this space.

[mevinyavin]

"A casual buyer trying to find something for under $500 these days can really only pick between "bad" and "worse", wherever they're shopping. (Image source: Amazon.com, Walmart.com - own screenshots)"
Well, there's your first mistake. Try looking only at computers sold directly from Amazon and Walmart, and you won't see any of these nonsensical listings. And there is plenty below $500 that is still excellent value AND modern budget processing. $300 can already buy you a Core 3 100U in a computer, but you are better off getting a Ryzen 5 7530U (old Zen 3 tech but with DDR5 RAM) for the same price, and why should that be worse because it is older?

"Intel's last few generations of mainstream mobile processors haven't gone below Ultra 5s; AMD's Strix Point never even bothered going below the Ryzen AI 9 tier. But looking at Intel's own datasheets, 2023's Core Ultra 5 125U is priced at $363 - the bulk price for Intel's manufacturing customers - meaning that once you factor in a display, memory and storage, a few luxury extras like wireless connectivity and a battery, plus a margin for both those manufacturers and the retailer you're buying it from...

That pricing event horizon is starting to look awfully high."
But that CU 125U is not the midrange option you are looking for. That would be the Core 5 120U. How much is that? I've seen Ideapad 5s with that processor often in the $400 range. And AMD's Strix Point was designed for $1200 laptops, so what do you know - you can only find it for $950+, exactly where I would have predicted it. On the other hand, their actual latest budget processors can be found for sub-$500 - the Ryzen 3/5 8x4xU.

"The point-of-no-return that used to be around $500, or €/£450, has now shot up dramatically. A brief search on Amazon US with a price limit filter set to $700 throws up plenty of laptops with Intel's 11th or 12th gen processors and a handful of Ryzen models - along with one very bold seller attaching "AI Powered" to a dual-core Celeron N4500. A look at other retailers at least offers more variety, yet the most recent chips seemingly available in that price range are 2023's Core Ultra 100 series."
As mentioned, that's your problem. Just because SOMEONE is selling 11th gen computers for highway robbery prices (or inside solid computers like the Latitude or Thinkpad, and the price is actually right) doesn't mean that is the going rate for normal sellers.

"This is the elephant in the room: previous generations of CPUs are hanging around for shelves longer and longer. For a while it seemed like it was just a matter of clearing out inventory, but these days it seems like a reliance on silicon from yesteryear - heck, often from 2021 or earlier - to provide for budget buyers."
This was ALWAYS true, buddy. Always. Where have you been?

"Intel's 11th gen chips are still popping up despite being discontinued early last year, and while their now-modest performance is to be expected for the price, their power draw when placed under any real load chews through batteries at a frustrating pace, a flaw shared by their 12th and 13th gen successors. AMD's Ryzen 5000 series are efficient and performant enough to stay relevant, with both the Ryzen 3 5300U and Ryzen 5 5500U being diamonds-in-the-clearance-bin for a while now, but their onboard Vega graphics were put on the road to retirement over a year ago and their end-of-life is rapidly looming. And to top it all off, the ongoing debacle with Windows 11 uptake shows just how readily Microsoft is willing to arbitrarily cut off older hardware for the heinous crime of being, well, old."
11th gen processors did not chew through battery life at a frustrating pace (that started 12th gen). Full disclosure: typing on an 11th gen computer I got two years ago for $700, which gets me 17 hours of battery life without any exaggeration.
Moreover, battery life is only a flaw for some. The same comment applies to concessions to Ryzen 5000 as being plenty of performance - their "old" Vega 7 graphics is a flaw only for those who need to take advantage of it. Indeed, the same tech shows up in "modern" Ryzen 7x3x processors, and you aren't complaining about those, nor should you. So why dig on Ryzen 5000s as they are still relevant?

The most frustrating thing here is that the decline isn't due to a lack of technical solutions. Both AMD and Intel have demonstrated their ability to design highly efficient and compact cores and integrated them heterogenous CPU designs. Both will well be aware of the economics of silicon manufacturing - that smaller dies made using space-efficient cores produce higher yields and lower costs - and that NPUs and ever-bigger integrated graphics for their "headline" offerings is pushing up die size, all while the costs of manufacturing each silicon wafer are also going up. Yet both, to date, have yet to really follow through with a cheap, no-frills design, one that's highly capable for content consumption and basic productivity but doesn't bother with lofty ambitions of content creation or on-the-go gaming.

So like the Core 100 series.

There's a lot of room for something in-between a $363 Ultra 5 and a $55 N100.
Indeed!