AMD Ryzen 5 150: The Same Rembrandt from Three Years Ago, Just Under a New Model Number

AMD's Ryzen 5 150 officially showed up in October 2025 as part of a new "100-series" lineup of mobile processors. It sounds like a fresh product, but under the hood it's the same Rembrandt-R die that powered the Ryzen 5 7535HS three years ago, and before that - with a small clock speed bump - the Ryzen 5 6600HS and 6600H. Six Zen 3+ cores, Radeon 660M integrated graphics, TSMC's 6nm process - none of it has changed since 2022.

That doesn't mean the chip is bad. Six cores and twelve threads at up to 4.55 GHz are still plenty for office work, school, and everyday multitasking. The real question is whether it's fair to market this combination as a "new 2025 processor," and whether it makes sense to pay as much for a laptop with it as you would for a model on a genuinely newer platform. The answer depends less on the chip and more on the specific laptop and its price.

Lineup Position and Architecture

The Ryzen 5 150 belongs to the Rembrandt-R family and is built on the Zen 3+ architecture - a refined version of Zen 3 with slightly higher clocks and support for faster memory, but no meaningful architectural changes. Officially it's part of AMD's "100 series" for laptops, which replaced the old naming scheme that gave us names like the 7535HS. Its specs are identical to the Ryzen 5 7535HS: six cores, twelve threads, a 3.3 GHz base clock, boost up to 4.55 GHz, 16MB of L3 cache, and a configurable TDP of 35 to 54 watts depending on the laptop maker's settings. The socket is FP7 or FP7r2.

This kind of rebranding isn't an exception - it's standard practice across the budget mobile processor market these days. Both AMD and Intel sell a large share of chips without an "AI" or "Ultra" badge that are simply old silicon under new numbers: the Ryzen 5 220 is a renamed Ryzen 5 8540U, the Ryzen 5 230 is a renamed Ryzen 5 8640U, and Intel's Core 5 210H is nearly indistinguishable from the Core i5-13420H. The Ryzen 5 150 is no exception to that pattern - except that the die inside it is three years older than most of its lineup neighbors.

Its closest relatives are the Ryzen 5 130 (a slightly lower base clock, same Rembrandt-R silicon) and the Ryzen 7 170, a renamed Ryzen 7 7735HS with eight cores. All three share the same Radeon 660M graphics.

Performance

The Ryzen 5 150 is new enough that independent laptop reviews are still scarce. But according to spec sheets and direct confirmation from tech outlets, its performance is identical to the Ryzen 5 7535HS - so the numbers below are for that chip specifically, since there's simply no difference between the two.

Averaged across public databases, the numbers look like this: Geekbench 6 Single-Core around 1,930-2,015, Geekbench 6 Multi-Core in the 7,900-8,350 range, and Cinebench 2024 Multi-Core around 580-615 points. That's solid mid-range 2023 territory: six Zen 3+ cores handle multi-threaded work confidently, but clearly trail modern hybrid chips with Zen 5 or Zen 4c cores, which distribute the same workload more efficiently at lower power.

For everyday use - a browser with dozens of tabs, office suites, video calls, light photo editing, coding at the level of school or small personal projects - that's more than enough headroom. Six threads give a real edge over four-core Ryzen 3 chips and older Core i3s: the system holds up better when a browser, documents, a messaging app, and music are all running at once.

Real-World Device Results

One caveat matters here. The Ryzen 5 150 is brand new, and there are still no independent lab tests of thin office laptops with this specific chip - think ExpertBook or Vivobook models without discrete graphics. What exists are tested gaming laptops with its twin, the Ryzen 5 7535HS, which - per spec sheets and Notebookcheck's own confirmation - performs identically to the Ryzen 5 150 at matching TDP.

Worth noting: both of these are gaming laptops with a discrete GPU, active cooling, and a TDP setting around 45-54 watts, meaning the chip is running near the top of its range. In thin office chassis like the ExpertBook P1 or Vivobook 15, where TDP is usually dialed down closer to 35 watts for quieter, slimmer operation, multi-core scores will likely come in lower, based on how similar Rembrandt chips have behaved before - the processor hits its power limit before it hits its clock ceiling. Exactly how much lower hasn't been measured yet for the Ryzen 5 150 specifically in that kind of chassis, so treat the numbers above as the chip's ceiling, not a guaranteed result in the laptop you actually buy.

Integrated Graphics

The Radeon 660M packs 6 RDNA2 compute units clocked up to 1.9 GHz - exactly half of what the Radeon 680M offers with its 12 CUs. It has no dedicated video memory of its own; it shares system DDR5 or LPDDR5 with the CPU, so the final result depends heavily on the memory speed and channel configuration in a given laptop - the gap between single-channel and dual-channel setups can easily hit 20-30%.

In 3DMark Time Spy, the Radeon 660M averages 1,400-1,600 points depending on memory and cooling, with the best results coming from devices like the ThinkPad Z13 running dual-channel LPDDR5. That's noticeably behind the Radeon 680M (around 2,400 points) and roughly on par with Intel Iris Xe in its top 12th/13th-gen configurations.

In practice, that means Dota 2, CS2, GTA V, and other less demanding games run fine at medium settings in Full HD. In modern AAA titles, you'll need to drop the resolution, turn on FSR, and dial settings down, and even then a stable 60fps isn't guaranteed. For everyday work, video playback, and light photo editing, the graphics are more than adequate.

Real Devices, Prices, and Availability

The Ryzen 5 150 is now widely used across budget and business laptops from ASUS, Lenovo, and other manufacturers. Here are specific models currently available directly from the manufacturer in the US:

• ASUS Vivobook 15 M1502NAQ-RS53 - 15.6" FHD, 8GB DDR5, 512GB SSD, Windows 11 Home. Listed on ASUS's site at $699.99.
• ASUS ExpertBook P1 PM1503CDA-XS54 - 15.6" FHD, 16GB DDR5, 512GB SSD, Windows 11 Pro, business-grade with MIL-STD-810H durability, a fingerprint reader, and a camera shutter. Listed on ASUS's site at $1,099.99.

Beyond these, ASUS offers dozens of ExpertBook B1/BM1 and ExpertBook P1 configurations with the same chip in various memory and storage combinations, plus the Vivobook 16 and Lenovo's IdeaPad Slim 3/3i line in base 8GB/256GB trims. This is genuinely a mass-market chip, not a niche one.

The price gap between the Vivobook 15 and the ExpertBook P1 is nearly $400 despite the identical processor. You're not paying for performance there - it's the same - you're paying for the chassis, warranty coverage, fingerprint reader, military-grade durability, and the Pro edition of Windows 11. That's a reasonable premium if you actually need the business features. If you don't, it's a real overpay.

Competitors and Alternatives

The direct competitor here is the AMD Ryzen 5 220. It's technically a rebrand too - of the Ryzen 5 8540U and Ryzen 5 7545U (the Hawk Point family) - but the architecture underneath is genuinely newer: two performance Zen 4 cores plus four efficiency Zen 4c cores, TSMC's 4nm process instead of 6nm, Radeon 740M graphics, and support for DDR5-5600/LPDDR5x-7500 versus DDR5-4800 on the Ryzen 5 150.

Worth correcting one assumption right away: "newer" doesn't automatically mean "cheaper." A business configuration of the Lenovo ThinkBook 14 G9 AHP with the Ryzen 5 220, 16GB of memory, 512GB SSD, and Windows 11 Pro sells through business reseller Connection.com for $1,141.45 - actually a bit more than the equivalently configured ASUS ExpertBook P1 on the Ryzen 5 150 ($1,099.99). So when comparing specific listings, you need to check each model's price individually rather than assuming the newer platform is automatically the cheaper one. But at a comparable price, the Ryzen 5 220 makes more architectural sense: newer cores, more current graphics, faster memory - essentially no premium for the upgrade.

Intel's Core 5 210H is the mirror image on the Intel side: functionally the Core i5-13420H with cosmetic tweaks. It shows up in similar business and general-purpose laptops in the same price bracket. But Intel's 13th-gen platform is objectively older than the Zen 4/4c architecture in the Ryzen 5 220, so the Core 5 210H is worth considering not for architectural reasons, but only where a specific laptop model is noticeably cheaper or more convenient.

The Ryzen 7 260 is the pick for anyone who needs more than six cores: eight Zen 4 cores at 45 watts, found in gaming laptops like the Lenovo Legion 5. It costs meaningfully more, but the multi-threaded performance gain isn't a couple percentage points - it's substantial.

Before buying a laptop with the Ryzen 5 150, it's worth checking the price of a comparable model with the Ryzen 5 220 or 230 within the same manufacturer's lineup - if the price difference is small, the newer platform is the smarter buy.

Bottom Line

The processor itself isn't the problem. Six Zen 3+ cores and the Radeon 660M still handle office work, school tasks, browsing, and light photo editing just fine, and thanks to how widely the chip is used, finding a laptop with it is easy. It doesn't have the graphics horsepower for modern AAA gaming, but for Dota 2, GTA V, and similar titles at medium settings, it's enough.

The problem starts when a three-year-old die gets priced like a current platform - not with where the chip shows up in general. The ASUS Vivobook 15 at $699.99 with 8GB of memory will handle simple tasks fine, but 8GB is already tight for comfortable multitasking in 2026, and that's worth factoring into the decision. The ExpertBook P1 at $1,099.99 is priced high enough that you should definitely compare it against Ryzen 5 220 business laptops at the same retailer: sometimes they'll cost more, sometimes less, but for roughly the same money you're getting a newer architecture instead of paying a premium for an older one.

If your budget is genuinely tight and a Ryzen 5 150 laptop is noticeably cheaper than the alternatives, buying it is a safe bet - the processor will do its job. But buying it specifically because of the "new" lineup number, without comparing it against neighboring models on newer chips, doesn't make sense.