The first laptops with AMD’s new Ryzen Mobile processors are set to start shipping soon, with models from Acer, HP, and Lenovo due by the end of the year. Dell and Asus are said to have models coming early next years, which means we’ll probably find out more at CES in January.
While AMD’s new chips will compete with Intel’s Kaby Lake Refresh processors, it looks like the first three laptops expected to ship with the new AMD chips are… slightly modified versions of existing laptops that already ship with Intel processors.
Oh, and we already kind of knew about two of the three thanks to leaks.
Acer Swift 3
Acer’s Swift 3 laptop is a 4 pound laptop with a 15 inch full HD IPS display, support for up to 256GB of solid state storage, and up to 8GB of DDR4-2133 memory.
It’ll be available with AMD Ryyzen 5 2500U or Ryzen 7 2700U processor options, and the notebook has a 48 Wh battery.
The laptop will join the rest of Acer’s Swift 3 family, which currently includes 14 and 15 inch laptops featuring 6th, 7th, and 8th-gen Intel Core processor options.
We had a pretty good idea that a Ryzen-powered Swift 3 was in the work, thanks to leaked benchmarks.
HP Envy 15 x360
This laptop has a 15.6 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel IPS display and a 360-degree hinge that allows it to convert from a laptop to a (big) tablet.
It weighs about 4.7 pounds, supports up to 8GB of DDR4-2400 RAM and comes with either a 512GB SD or 1TB hard drive. The notebook has a 55.8 Wh battery.
It’s expected to sell for $699 and up when it launches in November. And like the Acer Swift 3, we already knew that this laptop was coming.
Lenovo IdeaPad 720s
This one I hadn’t heard about until this morning. It’s also the model that’s most appealing to me as a purveyor of tiny computers.
The Lenovo IdeaPad 720S with Ryzen is a 13.3 inch laptop with full HD or 4K display options (both IPS). It measures a little over half an inch thick and weighs about 2.5 pounds and the notebook has a 48 Wh battery
It’ll be available with Ryzen 5 2500U or Ryzen 7 2700U processor options and supports single channel DDR4-2133 memory.
Lenovo first launched an Intel-powered IdeaPad 720s with a 7th-gen Intel Core processor, NVIDIA GeForce 940MX graphics, and a 14 inch display earlier this year.
via AnandTech and Tom’s Hardware
In re Yoga 720s, there should be a law against pairing an APU with single channel RAM.
Need a built-in benchmark to each unit.
Wait…MS tried that with Vista!
Lenovo is using SINGLE channel? Why? Why would you not have DUAL channel? That’s just dumb.
Especially considering that there are midrange phones with dual…
So are all of these going to be capped at 8 GB, or will there be 16 GB or expandable options available?
There are a lot of good choices out there, and these will definitely be welcome. It would be nice if more than a handful offered soldered RAM.
The Lenovo 13.3 Thinkpad looks great. I’ve been looking for an AMD powered 13.3 laptop for a long time. I’ll probably buy one of these if it isn’t overpriced like a $1000 Ultrabook.
Only the Acer looks to be an interesting choice. The other two looks more like trolling in AMD’s face. HP seems to only have one SATA storage, Lenovo comes with single channel memory.