PC World - USA (2020-09)

SEPTEMBER 2020 PCWorld 39

PERFORMANCE
For testing, we ran the Envy x360 13 using its
out-of-box default setting of “HP
recommended,” as well as the laptop’s
Performance setting via the HP Command
Center.
Our first test for the Ryzen 5 4500U is the
CPU-focused Cinebench R15. It’s a test built
on an older version of Maxon’s Cinema4D
rendering engine and measures performance
of a CPU rendering a 3D model. While 3D
modelling on a 13.3-inch laptop isn’t what
most people are doing, the test is a good
stand-in for how well a laptop will perform at
multi-threaded tasks.
The Ryzen 5 4500U is built on AMD’s
game-changing Zen 2 cores and features six
cores, but it doesn’t have Symmetrical Multi-
Threading turned on. Based on the price of
the Envy x360 13, you really should expect to
get midrange to budget performance. But the
Envy x360 and its Ryzen 5 deliver better—
basically premium performance that runs right
up against Intel’s newest and most powerful
10th-gen chips.
In multi-core performance, only Intel’s
10th-gen Core i7-10710U, with its six cores
and 12 threads, outruns the Ryzen 5 4500U.
That midrange Ryzen 5 even holds its own
against the four-core, eight-thread Core
i7-1065G7 found in so many premium laptops.
While Cinebench R15 performance might
be a good way to represent how well a CPU
can run highly multi-threaded tasks, most

mainstream applications are single-threaded,

so we run Cinebench R15 again using a single

CPU thread. The single-threaded

performance of the Envy x360 13 is solidly in

the middle of the pack, but in real life it would

be very hard to tell the difference.

Modern laptops are mostly limited by how

Dell XPS 15 7590Core i9-998xq0HK

Dell XPS 13 7390Core i7-10710U

Acer SwRyzen 7 4700Uift 3

HP Envy x360 13 Performance

Ryzen 5 4500U

HP Envy x360 13Ryzen 5 4500U

Dell XPS 13 9300 Default

Core i7-1065G7

M14 DefaultSI Prestige

Core i7-10710U

HP Spectre x360 13 5t h Gen

Core i7-8565U

Dell XPS 13 9380Core 7-8565U

MLaptop 3 15”icrosoft Surface

Ryzen 7 3580U

Dell Inspiron 15 7000

Core i7-8665U

HP Spectre x360 13 2019

Core i7-8565U

Acer SwCore i5-8250Uift 3

Cinebench R15.038

Multi-core performance

LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

1,7 12

842

1,0 61

726

1,10 6

780

865

714

705

695

684

623

551