Why you should sometimes choose older AMD CPUs: Besides Copilot+, Krackan Point offers little

Recycling older processors with a new name is nothing new in the PC market. Intel does it, and so does AMD. Currently, AMD offers both Zen 4 and Zen 5 CPUs for laptops. Zen 4 aka Hawk Point Refresh is sold as AMD Ryzen 200, while Zen 5 aka Krackan Point takes the form of the Ryzen AI 300 series, with the older CPUs taking the role of the budget option.

This is clearly reflected in the pricing of laptops with these CPUs, such as the HP EliteBook 8 G1a 14. This small, aluminum-clad business laptop with AMD processors can be configured with either CPU generation. We extensively reviewed the version with the Zen 4 based AMD Ryzen 7 250, but you can also buy it with the AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 (available on Amazon). 

In our review, the older Zen 4 CPU showed that it is not at all obsolete. While the GPU performance is not the strongest, it otherwise did well in our testing, making the HP EliteBook laptop both fast and efficient with good battery life and low heat output. We have not tested the Krackan Point version, but we have many other Krackan Point CPU benchmark in our backend. Spoiler alert: The newer Zen 5 CPU does not do much better in most regards. It achieves better Singlecore CPU scores, but that is the biggest difference in terms of performance.

Really, the most notable advantage of Krackan Point boils down to its much beefier NPU, which makes it a Copilot+ PC. However, as useful that may be for some, for many users, this is an extra, not a necessity at this point.

What is not an extra, on the other hand, are the savings you can make by choosing the Ryzen 200 version of the EliteBook: The model with the older CPU costs $1,450 in the HP US online store, while the Zen 5 EliteBook laptop with the same screen, SSD and RAM comes down to $1,900.

We think: Those $450 are better in your bank account. Choosing the AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 over the AMD Ryzen 7 250 is not worth it for most users at this juncture.