AMD’s Ryzen 7020 Chip Promises Long Battery Life for Low-Cost Laptops

To improve entry-level laptops, AMD is preparing the Ryzen 7020 chip series, which promises to enhance the battery life, processing power, and graphics on affordable notebooks. 

The Ryzen 7020 is different from the recently announced 5-nanometer Ryzen 7000 desktop line. The 7020 series originates from a 6-nanometer “Mendocino” chip AMD first introduced in May during the Computex trade show. It’s targeting laptops that’ll range in price from $399 to $699.

The company today announced more details about the Ryzen 7020, which will cover three CPUs and is slated to arrive in a trio of laptop models from Acer, Lenovo, and HP in Q4 2022.

The main selling point for the Ryzen 7020 series is how it promises to offer laptops up to 12 hours of battery life for video playback, and possibly more, depending on the hardware specs, according to AMD. (At Computex, the company said the Mendocino chip would deliver about 10 hours of battery life for “mixed” PC usage.)

In terms of performance, AMD released a benchmark that shows the Ryzen 7020 chip handily beats a rival Intel 11th Generation processor—albeit one from(Opens in a new window) 2020—when it comes to office productivity, multi-tasking, and app-loading times.

In addition, the Ryzen 7020 features a built-in Radeon 610M GPU, which uses AMD’s RDNA 2 graphics architecture. The same GPU is pretty low-powered, but AMD says it can support 720p gaming at 60fps on titles including League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. 

The Ryzen 7020 CPUs will start with a 4-core Ryzen 5 7520U chip; a mid-tier Ryzen 3 7320U, which is a 4-core chip with lower clock speeds; and then a dual-core Athlon Gold 7220U at the low-end. Lenovo will release a new IdeaPad 1 with the chip. Acer is creating an Aspire 3 laptop with the processor, and HP is preparing a 17-inch notebook with the chip. Stay tuned for our reviews.