Asus, Lenovo, and HP are selling cheap AMD Athlon Silver 10 laptops for your own sake, do not spend your money on inferior e-waste

Date:
Thu, 01 Oct 2026 19:10:00 +0000

Description:
Two Zen 2 cores, RAM you can't upgrade, and about a quarter of the PassMark score of Intel's budget chips make it a bad bargain no matter how you paint it.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter AMD's Athlon Silver 10 is a quietly renamed 2022 Athlon Silver 7120U with two Zen 2 cores and no SMT
Asus, HP, and Lenovo are selling it in laptops now, some with 4 GB of
soldered memory to barely meet Windows 11's minimum RAM requirement Both the Core 3 100U and Core i5-1334U score over four times the Silver's 95-sample multi-threaded average, making laptops powered by them a no-brainer alternative AMD 's Athlon Silver 10 seems to be a new-generation CPU
targeting budget-conscious consumers who want a modern, entry-level laptop with enough processing power for basic tasks.

Nothing could, however, be further from the truth here; Its own
specifications page lists what is a very basic mobile chip, offering two Zen
2 cores, skipping simultaneous multithreading (SMT) and a 15W TDP to go with its 3.5 GHz boost clock, essentially establishing itself as a rebadged Athlon Silver 7120U from 2022. While the current AI-induced memory, storage, and compute shortage continues unabated, buying an entry-level laptop with only 4GB of soldered RAM in 2026, even if it is presented as a 'new' choice by laptop manufacturers, is disingenuous when better Intel -based options exist in the same price range that offer up to four times the multi-threaded performance and twice the RAM as a de facto configuration. Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here: Skipping a rebadged chip from 2022? AMD's spec page lists the Athlon Silver 10 with a launch date of October 1, 2025, but no launch event accompanied it. The underlying Zen 2 cores are even older than the Athlon Silver 7120U's launch date, with the company first unveiling the architecture in 2019, and the performance numbers show it.

Its PassMark score is a low 3,543 on multithreaded workloads, at a time when Intel's competition in the same price bracket, a Core 3 100U CPU configured with 2 performance and 4 efficient cores, clocks in at nearly four times the speed, with a score of 12,308. You may like The best budget laptop in 2026 Chuwi UniBook laptop review Laptop specs are getting more confusing heres what actually matters in 2026

This isn't a new phenomenon either; the similarly positioned Intel Core i5-1334U, a 2023 chip, offers a similar 12,991 score across its 2 performance and 8 efficient-core configuration.

The performance gap hasn't stopped manufacturers such as ASUS , Lenovo , and HP from selling Athlon Silver 10 or 7120U laptops, often with as little as
4GB of soldered memory, which allows for no upgrades whatsoever. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting
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While Windows 11 can technically work on the 4GB it prescribes as its
absolute minimum , it idles at anywhere between 2.5 and 3GB of memory,
leaving very little headroom for applications even as lightweight as a word processor or a browser. Better alternatives exist in the same price range The irony is that better alternatives exist and are being sold in the same $350-500 price range as Athlon Silver 10-based laptops currently. Dell offers at least two alternatives, including a 6-core Core 3 100U option under $500 and a nother just $100 above that , with 4 more cores under the hood. ASUS also offers a similarly configured and priced option in the same range,
though with a smaller SSD than either Dell option.

All of these would be significantly faster than their Athlon Silver 10 alternatives and, perhaps more importantly, offer 8GB of RAM, which should be the absolute minimum, in my opinion, for a laptop, but we do have an in-depth analysis of that question here. What to read next GMKtec is offering a surprisingly affordable mini PC that won't break the bank Alienware 15 (2026) review: exceptional performance at a remarkable price... just ignore the single-channel RAM Geekom GeekBook X16 Pro business laptop review

One could argue that calling AMD Athlon Silver 10 laptops e-waste might be a bit too extreme here, but given that more powerful and well-configured alternatives exist that do not slap on CPU cores from 2019 into a rebadged
CPU from 2022 that might not even keep up with modern smartphones, it is an easily justifiable position.

These laptops would be short-lived at best and have limited utility at a time when e-waste continues to be an increasingly bigger issue for society: the UN's Global E-waste Monitor 2024 counted 62 million metric tons of e-waste in 2022, with only 22.3% documented as properly collected and recycled, and
found the world's e-waste "rising five times faster than documented e-waste recycling."

Buying a laptop that is slower than a modern smartphone when better alternatives exist, despite an AI-led price gouge, and can not be upgraded is simply not only a waste of money but one that is harmful to the environment, even if you can handle the pace of a laptop that offers performance that desktops from over a decade ago would embarrass. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.



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