This AMD Ryzen 5 processor we tested bucks the AI trend: The CPU without an NPU

AI this, AI that - many consumers are already tired of the AI hype cycle. The tech industry seems to put everything on this one card, at least many parts of it. There are still some niches that are free of AI, and many PCs still ship with processors without a Neural Processing Unit (NPU). This is especially true in the budget sector.

One example is the Lenovo ThinkPad L16 Gen 2 AMD that we recently reviewed. While the affordable ThinkPad does have a fairly modern AMD processor, this processor curiously does not include an NPU. The AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 215 is a CPU of the Hawk Point Refresh series, based on the Zen4 technology that originally came out as the Ryzen 7040 series in 2023. For the ThinkPad, the Zen4 chip is a step forward, as its predecessor, the Lenovo ThinkPad L16 Gen 1 AMD (available on Amazon), was limited to Zen3+ chips.

We tested it for the first time in the Lenovo ThinkPad laptop. As marked by the "Pro" label, this CPU is mainly meant for business use in the office, and for that, the processor is certainly more than capable enough, with six Zen4 cores that clock up to 4.7 GHz. For more demanding tasks, there are clearly better choices, especially also since the CPU of the Ryzen 5, the AMD Radeon 740M, is also rather weak. Still, the choice to cut the NPU makes this processor are curious case, as other AMD CPUs of the Ryzen 200 series, like the AMD Ryzen AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 230 and Ryzen Pro 7 250 do include the AI focused hardware.