New Ryzen Laptops are Better than I Thought

Ryzen Ai 300 series processors got off to a bit of a rocky start since many laptops were shipped with low wattage Ryzen AI 9 365 processors. Enter the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 Gen 9, a thin and light laptop that takes the newest Zen 5 CPU and supercharges performance. Here we test it vs the 8845HS and 7840HS for a true apples to apples comparison.

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Kneecapping Zen 5 Performance
0:55 - Challenge Accepted
1:25 - Apple to Apples CPU Testing
2:58 - Getting around AMD's "Specs"
4:41 - Normalizing Power for REAL Testing
5:08 - Real World Performance Benchmarks
7:55 - Gaming Benchmarks
9:59 - Some Battery Testing
11:31 - Zen 5 Laptops can be REALLY Good

The Yoga Pro 7 Gen 9 was sent as a loaned unit by Lenovo. The two additional Yoga Pro 7 (8845HS & 7840HS) laptops were purchased by Hardware Canucks using funds from Lenovo & AMD. Additional staff overtime costs were also partially offset. Neither Lenovo, nor AMD gave direction for the devices included, testing methodologies, opinions or conclusions in this video. Both laptops purchased will be donated to local charities once additional testing has concluded.

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#hardwarecanucks

[HardwareCanucks]

Hello all, after the final edit was done and the video posted, we realized that out charts SHOULD have labelled the Lenovo Pro 7 as having a 73Wh battery and not the 57Wh listed. The results, naturally, do not change since its only the chart labelling that changes.

[JarrodsTech]

Zen 5 laptop CPUs are more interesting than Zen 5 desktop CPUs, that's for sure.

[rockatanescu]

I've recently bought the exact laptop you tested in this video, the Lenovo Yoga Pro 7 with AMD Ryzen AI 9 365, 32GB of RAM and 1 TB of SSD.

From a performance point of view, it's very close to my desktop PC, which uses a Ryzen 5900X, 64GB of RAM and a 1TB Samsung 980 Pro SSD. The only workload I noticed a significant difference was when restoring a 60GB Postgres database, but that's mainly due to the laptop using wifi and the desktop using a wired connection. For the rest of my day to day usage (programming in Ruby, working with Jira, etc) I could not see the difference.

There are a couple of things to note for potential buyers:

1. It's not easy to work on the laptop if the screen is in direct sunlight. The screen is bright enough, but the display is almost like a mirror. Otherwise it's superb.
2. The AI stuff is a joke. You have a Copilot key, but it only opens a browser window. For some reason it's not actually a "Copilot+" laptop, at least not yet, but they are working with Microsoft to enable Copilot+.
3. The Linux support is not there yet. For example, I needed to install Ubuntu in safe video mode, the laptop won't enter standby if I close the lid and the battery life is terrible. AMD is working on adding some patches to the Linux kernel, but it will take a bit and then distributions will need to move to the new kernel (Ubuntu 24.04 is on kernel 6.8, 24.10 will be on 6.11 and you'll probably need 6.12 or later)
4. If you install a clean Windows version, the drivers for the camera do not seem to work. I had to request from Lenovo the original installation media (thankfully it's a free 32GB download). Hopefully this will be changed in the future.
5. iLok does not work yet on Zen 5, which means that if you want to use this laptop for any kind of music production you should see if your software uses iLok/PACE (I have a UA Volt interface and the software that installs the drivers requires iLok to work when it gets initialized)

The battery life, for my usage, is almost 7 hours, which is enough for a full workday in case I forget my charger. However, since it's charged via USB-C, there is a good chance I can find some charger around (many modern displays have a USB-C connection with power delivery). I kind of wished an extra hour or two of battery life just so I don't hit 5% by the end of the day and have some headroom for when the battery degrades.

I'd also like to mention the size a bit. It's very, very comparable with a Macbook Air when it comes to weight and performance, but I found the 13" MBA too small and the 15.3" MBA too big. The 14" MBP is the right size, but the 14" MBP with 18GB of RAM (vs 32) and 512GB SSD (vs 1TB) is already significantly more expensive than this laptop (in the UK the Lenovo is sold for 1400 pounds, while the MBP costs 2100 pounds). Speaking of price, I found it a bit weird that the Lenovo US site does not have this model. I live in the EU and bought the laptop from a local retailer and it already had a 10% discount from its original 1500 Euros price!

That being said, I'm really happy with this laptop and I'd recommend it to anyone looking to buy a laptop that's not meant for gaming or heavy video production.

[batemanboi]

I do not understand why your channel harbors some of the absolute worst takes and pessimistic/negative people in the comments. Your content is great for overviews of new architectures, NOT the product lines — maybe people don’t understand the difference. Also it seems you either bother the Intel fans or the AMD fans. The objective viewer appreciates your methodology.

[Alpharaven]

I think this kind of video is really good when a new generation of tech is being released, it really minimised the bias that can alter the difference by comparing it directly with the same older generation laptop

[Jabid]

AMD didn’t even use TSMC’s most advanced node for Strix Point (N4) like Apple M3 and Intel Lunar Lake does. It would be more interesting to see how Zen 5 laptops would do on the N3 node.

[FoxxFire]

Just based on this first Cinebench graph at 5:25 of the video, we are getting about 20 percent more performance for 75 percent more power. While that is pretty great, considering that temps and fan noise aren't taking much of a hit, it does also show how efficient these chips are at the lower wattages. And in laptops that give the user the choice of how much power to feed the chip (like this Lenovo), having the option to set the machine in the highest performance possible, when needed, is a great option to have, albeit at the cost of efficiency (which is a trade off we might want to make when battery life and noise are less of a priority than performance).

[eduardopatricio]

Great approach to comparisons. It's insanely helpful to understand better the behaviour or recent AMD APUs. Thank you!

[philipreininger]

please can we get a lunar lake comparisson? would love to see efficiency testing because even if intel uses less power, if amd is much faster it might be more efficient or vice versa

[seungwan]

I wonder why so many comments are complaining about something. I think this review is amazing, especially comparing it to prev gen with various wattage with great visual. Makes me feel to get one of new Ryzen laptop. Kudos.

[aymanelzain]

The laptop market is literally on fire, more competition is good for us as consumers.
What really impressive about zen5 laptops cpus is how they scale in different power levels, which make them good for ultra book and also for gaming laptops.

[Pravculear]

it's nice to see all the improvements in regards to integrated graphics.

[riba]

Great test Mike, these really do look good!

[VicharB]

I'd like to see Lenovo Thinkpad 14" and/or HP EliteBooks 14" with ~58W capable HX 370 notebooks in order to consider upgrading my current EliteBook 845 7840U based notebook. Even after watching latest notebooks based on Intel I'd opt for AMD Zen 5 for my needs.

[Bushwacked]

Disappointed to not see lunar lake included here. Someone in the market for a new thin and light is weighing zen 5 and LL.

[TednTin]

I usually don't comment but i feel like you did a mistake by not including 7845HS/8845hs at 30-33w. This is same as AMD 9700x release reviews where everyone compared it with 7700x and thought it is very efficient compared to zen4 but in reality when compared to 7700 at 65W it is similar in efficiency

[kaiservulcan]

Hi guys, I love this channel and the chill and soft mood you give to your reviews. Thanks for the great job. Btw, this sentence "I asked AMD and Lenovo to prove that they can do better" seems quite bold! They must have been very scared 😂

[HablaConOwens]

I feel like there is a ways to go. Would love to see ddr7 in the future.
These apus should be treated like socs

[fringeanomaly]

i request reviwers to please test sleep and hibernate modes on new thin n lights to see if they lose battery overnight etc

bcz as per my observations with snapdragon chips they seem to have lower performance and equivalent battery life but they seem to handle the sleep and hibernate very consistently and better over a weekend or moving between classes

[castigo]

I really can't wait to see these cpus come to the Thinkpad T14 format, the definitive work laptop for me.