Industry observers note that but the opposite holds true, too — which a sneaky, pernicious pattern permeating the laptop market might reveal. One of the core tenets of productivity is to do more with less.
In a fresh development, shoppers are left trying to figure out whether their productivity laptop is truly fresh — and should be priced accordingly — or if older devices is being sold at a premium price. Microprocessor vendors have begun reusing old silicon, but in a way that obscures that decision from consumers.
As part of the ongoing story, the issue is how they’re being positioned, and priced. There’s just no easy way to tell whether a fresh laptop contains a fresh processor, and it feels like laptop makers are taking advantage of that. Intel’s not totally immune to all of this, but the real culprit is likely AMD, which was recently called out for launching “fresh” versions of mobile Ryzen processors that it had dropped several years ago. As I’ve demonstrated, the problem isn’t in actually repurposing old silicon; older chips can be perfectly competent, even now.
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Industry observers note that but as chips became more complex, adding integrated graphics, multiple cores and threads, and turbo clock speeds that would kick in when needed, the PC devices business struggled to communicate this to users. Things got so out of hand that AMD issued “decoder wheels” as something of a joke (but not really) to help people figure out what something like the Ryzen 5 7640U actually included. For years, the PC industry followed Intel’s lead as it pioneered the “good, better, best” branding using Core i3, i5, i7…and then eventually i9, too.
Industry observers note that today, whatever rhyme and reason was used to come up with chip branding has been largely discarded.
In a fresh development, 2023. AMD said then that those chips were “architecturally aligned” (basically the same as) with the Ryzen 7000 chips it had launched 12 months before. But in early 2025 AMD renamed those chips the “Ryzen 200” lineup. (You can compare the Ryzen 5 7640HS [arrival date: April 30, 2023] and the Ryzen 9 270 for yourself: They share the same Zen 4 architecture.). Take, for example, the AMD Ryzen 8000 series of mobile processors, launched in Dec.
According to the latest update, again, Zen 4, the same chip architecture AMD launched in January 2023. TweakTown even caught AMD adding four fresh Ryzen 100 chips that include Zen 3+ “Rembrandt” designs, which goes all the way back to 2022, four years ago. Recent chips! Based on 4-year-old designs! Now, it’s 2026, and AMD just launched seven “fresh” Ryzen 200 parts last month, ranging from the Ryzen 3 205 to the Ryzen 7 253.
Industry observers note that intel’s Core Ultra brand for laptops now includes desktop chips as well. Intel admitted that its older chips have seen increased demand, but it brought back older devices called out as updates using code names like “Raptor Lake Refresh” and “Arrow Lake Refresh” chips. That’s a bit more honest, in my book. Intel’s not totally off the hook.
In a fresh development, i found Lenovo’s list of ThinkPads being sold with a Ryzen 250 processor inside, for between $900 and $1,000. I’d expect a 3-year-old chip would command bargain-basement prices, but no: $900 isn’t what I’d call cheap, not up against the $600 Dell XPS 13 or the Apple MacBook Neo. Lenovo’s laptops, the XPS 13, and the Neo all include modest configurations, some of which include 8GB of RAM and small SSDs. However, the Neo and XPS use modern chip designs and cost less than the Lenovo laptops, built on the older Ryzen architecture. I don’t like that. In the real global stage, all of this has an impact.
In a fresh development, they do, at an anemic 16 TOPS. It’s like those vestigial spare tires that cars come with now. It has one! But…not really. I also hate the lawyerly language that Lenovo uses to imply that these laptops include up-to-date functions like “AI experiences” and NPUs.
The report highlights that i discarded that idea. All of these laptops are fresh, with upgrades (1200p displays, for example) that you’d associate with newer machines. I originally thought that portraying older devices as fresh could be the antithesis of last week’s newsletter, that the best fresh laptop is an old one.
According to the latest update, i can pick up a productivity laptop, note how light it feels; the arrangement of the ports; how crisp and clean the newer, high-refresh-rate, high-resolution displays appear. They make you want to set them down, boot them up, and start banging away on your to-do list. The specs make sense. In general, I love how productivity laptops have progressed.
According to the latest update, i’m all for variety in laptops, but I also trust that the differences between them are being clearly communicated. Increasingly, the processor name does the opposite: It conceals, rather than clarifies. All except one.
As part of the ongoing story, make it your goal, for example, to simply get out of bed or to go for a walk. Accomplish that, and you’re done for the day. Even if you’re the opposite — a hyperproductive person — it’s not a bad idea to start out with an easy win. Take the task’s most basic step and complete it. Baby steps: One of the treatments for depression is to treat life in manageable steps.
Industry observers note that momentum may just carry you along until you’re well on your way to simply getting what you need to get done, done. The idea isn’t that you’ll just stop there — and if you do, that’s fine.
Industry observers note that sign up and have it sent to your inbox every Thursday! Thanks for tuning in to this edition of Smart Mode, PCWorld’s newsletter devoted to helping you make the most of your life, smartly.
The report highlights that he has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Highly adopted Science and Electronic Buyers' News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room. Mark has written for PCWorld for the last decade, with 30 years of experience covering technology.