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I wish that I had seen this thread last week. I bought a laptop a couple months ago with a Ryzen 5 2500u processor. I was having difficulty with the HP drivers and the touchpad driver in particular, so I ordered a laptop with an 8th generation 8250u i5 and an nvidia video processor. By the time the second laptop was delivered, I had the problems with the Ryzen laptop worked out. So I ran a bunch of benchmarks and the Ryzen laptop was far more powerful than the i5 even with the discrete video processor. This was largely because the i5 and nvidia produced so much less heat that it was thermal throttling down to a pathetic pace when trying to do demanding tasks. I am a big believer in the Ryzen family of processors at this point.

Yes, the Ryzen has received good reviews for a reason, but your configurations are comparable. At press time, the Envy x360 with Ryzen 5 was $100 less than the unit with Intel inside. The difference in performance between these chips is really small for most users, and for AMD, that's a huge win. https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/amd-ryzen-mobile-vs-intel-8th-gen-core.

Sorry for your experience with the i5. But I think you meant "the i5 and nvidia produced so much ~~less~~ more heat that it was thermal throttling down." But you should be able to configure it not to do so (except in extreme heat) in the BIOS plus power config. in Windows.

These know-it-alls who claim that the i3 beats the Ryzen 5 have no clue.

Note though that there are many iterations of the i3, while i think the the claim was that the i3 beats the Ryzen 3200g for the same price, and which simply is not the case. Video cards can cost more than the $100 AMD Ryzen 3 3200G 4-Core Unlocked Desktop Processor. Thank God we can even get such tools (not for wasting time on gaming though).

But I think you meant “the i5 and nvidia produced so much less more heat that it was thermal throttling down.” But you should be able to configure it not to do so (except in extreme heat) in the BIOS plus power config. in Windows.

Thanks for catching my “typo”. As was said in the movie Hail Caesar, “Would that it were so simple.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G629a_3MkkI

Believe me I have read every review that compares the mobile Ryzen processors with their Intel counterparts and the full size 17” touch screen laptop that I used for 18 months had an i5 8250u with an inexpensive discrete GPU. In a laptop with a large case this combo worked very well. When you go to laptops with smaller and thinner cases however, the greater thermal efficiency of the Ryzen 5 2500u makes a huge difference. This was greatly exaggerated by the thermal throttling that kicked in whenever the i5 8250u reached 40C in the 15” Lenovo Flex 5. Please believe that I put some serious effort into getting around this limitation with this laptop and was no more successful than any of the others who have tried.

The reviews of the Ryzen 5 based HP Envy 15” X360 were basically all written before AMD released the new series of drivers that made a huge difference in reliability and performance. It still sometimes has a minor glitch or two but overall it is an amazing little laptop and the “tablet mode” with pen is actually surprisingly useful.

Thermal efficiency and power consumption is not that great of a factor in desktop computers. Those who have written reviews comparing the mobile processors have not done a very good job with real world side by side comparisons with laptops with thin small cases. And they typically also have not done a good job letting customers know which manufacturers are using severe thermal throttling to make up for deficiencies in their case designs.