The Ryzen 3 3200U performs so closely to the Core i3-8145U that any differences are essentially negligible to the target budget user

If you’re not a performance user, minor differences between the Ryzen 3 and Core i3 are much less impactful than the differences you may see between displays, thickness, weight, and keyboard feedback. Physical features of these budget laptops are arguably more important for the target audience.

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Of all the laptops we receive for testing, very few come equipped with AMD processors and even fewer come with the Ryzen 3 series. Chipmakers, resellers, and OEMs would rather send us high-end Core i7 or Ryzen 7 models as these pricey options usually represent the best and fastest that they have to offer to consumers. It’s actually exciting to see an inexpensive laptop come in just because we never know what to expect or how it might perform in its category.

We published on the budget Asus Vivobook 15 F512DA last week equipped with the Ryzen 3 3200U and it is currently only the second laptop in our database to sport the processor. The CPU is designed to tackle budget Intel Core i3 laptops while being cheaper at the same time.

Our graphs below compare the AMD-powered VivoBook 15 to select Core i3 laptops ranging from the 2016 Asus VivoBook Flip to the 2019 Dell XPS 13 all housing Core i3 CPUs of various generations. In general, the Ryzen 3 3200U is behind the Whiskey Lake-U Core i3-8145U by about 7 percent and 20 percent in multi-threaded and single-threaded workloads, respectively, while being 11 percent faster in graphics benchmarks.

Overall performance is only a few percentage points behind Intel’s 9th gen Whiskey Lake-U Core i3 series to be essentially the same in practice. In other words, a Core i3 laptop is unlikely to feel any faster than a Ryzen 3 laptop if all you’re doing is emailing, browsing, or video streaming which is what these budget processors are designed for.

Of course, this isn’t to say that everyone should be buying cheap Ryzen 3 laptops as there are other features worth considering beyond the processor. If you’re in the market for one, we’d recommend comparing properties like the display, keyboard, ports, warranty, or weight as these will impact your experience more significantly than any minor Core i3 or Ryzen 3 performance differences.