Low-power AMD Ryzen 5 2500U CPU may be coming soon to the HP Envy x360 series
The Ryzen 7 1700 made its debut in the Asus GL702ZC gaming notebook last month with respectable results and even some performance surprises due to its greater core count than the Kaby Lake i7-7700K. With the higher-end CPU SKU now out of the way, AMD may be carefully prepping the mid-range Ryzen 5 and budget Ryzen 3 for additional notebooks to target mainstream users. A new leak suggests that the HP Envy series will be one of the first to receive the Ryzen 5 for an unconfirmed launch later this year.
While the official HP product page has since been 404'd, Videocardz.com was quick to screenshot some core specifications on the unannounced HP Envy x360. Most notable is the 2 GHz quad-core Ryzen 5 2500U with integrated Radeon Vega M graphics. If assuming a 15 to 25 W TDP based on the listed 45 W AC power adapter, then we can expect CPU performance to be competitive against the new 15 W quad-core i5-8250U or i7-8550U Kaby Lake-R processors. This would be an immense performance leap over the embarrassing Bristol Ridge SoCs if true while providing faster integrated graphics performance than Intel as has been tradition for AMD.
Another tidbit is the maximum supported RAM of only 16 GB DDR4 despite supposedly having two SODIMM slots. This could imply either a limitation of the Raven Ridge motherboard or that HP will configure up to 16 GB only.
There's little reason to not believe in the unconfirmed leak. HP has always been a staunch supporter of AMD processors and has been offering AMD options throughout its Pavilion and even business ProBook families for years. We would've liked to see the Ryzen 5 make its mobile debut in the flagship Spectre series instead, but the lower-end Envy series will likely carry the broader appeal through aggressive pricing against Intel.
Should the Ryzen 5 Envy x360 convertible be available soon, it would likely enjoy a quiet launch as HP would not want to divert attention away for its recent and more lucrative Kaby Lake-R Spectre refresh.
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