Intel’s latest generations of consumer mobile processors haven’t gone below Ultra 5; AMD’s Strix Point never even bothered to go below the Ryzen AI 9 level. But if we consult Intel’s technical sheets at , we see that the Core Ultra 5 125 125 2023 is a cutting-edge processor, the 2023 Core Ultra 5 125U is priced at $363 – the wholesale price for Intel’s manufacturing customers – which means that once you factor in screen, memory, and storage, a few luxury extras like wireless connectivity and a battery, plus a margin for those manufacturers and the retailer you buy it from…
The horizon for this pricing event is starting to look awfully high.
The point of no return which was around $500, or €/£450, has now skyrocketed. A quick search on Amazon US with a price filter set at $700 turns up plenty of laptops with 11th or 12th generation Intel processors and a handful of Ryzen models – as well as one very bold seller who pairs ” AI Powered” to a dual-core Celeron N4500. A look at other retailers at least offers more variety, but the newest chips apparently available in this price range are the 2023 Core Ultra 100 series.
This is the elephant in the room: previous generations of CPUs are staying on the 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 we’re relying on the silicon of yesteryear – or often even 2021 or earlier – to satisfy buyers on a budget.
Intel’s 11th generation chips continue to emerge despite being discontinued early last year, and while their modest performance is expected for their price, their power consumption when subjected at a real charge depletes batteries at a frustrating rate, a flaw shared by their 12th and 13th generation successors. AMD’s Ryzen 5000 series is efficient and capable enough to stay relevant, with the Ryzen 3 5300U and Ryzen 5 5500U being diamonds in the trash for some time, but their onboard Vega graphics card has been put on the retirement path over a year ago and their end of life is fast approaching. And to top it all off, the current Windows 11 adoption debacle shows just how willing Microsoft is to arbitrarily arbitrarily rip off older hardware for the heinous crime of being, well, old.
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