Intel Core i5-8250U 8th Gen Quad-Core Processor for Laptops (Review)

The 8th Generation Intel Core i5-8250U is one of the first quad-core processors in the mainstream Core U lineup. It’s an important chip on the market since upgrade from the previous dual-core U-series processors to quad-core is a big leap. That’s visible in the i5-8250U benchmark results.

Intel Core i5-8250U CPU Benchmark

Intel Core i5-8250U 8th Gen Benchmark

Extra performance over its 7th Gen i5-7200U dual-core counterpart while retaining low (15-Watt) power consumption and low heat is a great achievement. The Intel Core i5-8250U will be therefore a great choice for those who want fast laptop computing without sacrificing portability or battery life. The User Benchmark CPU test also shows the i5-8250U is close performance-wise to the power-hungry 45-Watt quad-core i5 and i7 HQ series. However, it’s worth noting that software applications running on a single computing thread won’t benefit from the chip’s four-core (and eight-thread) design.

Our Everyday-Use Test of the i5-8250U

In our real-world tests, the i5-8250U proved its amazing performance for day-to-day use. We tested the i5-8250U in an HP 470 G5 laptop with 16GB of dual-channel RAM and a solid state drive. We put the CPU through some common everyday-use application tests, like web browsing, work in Microsoft Office applications, and multimedia playback. The i5-8250U had no problems with crunching these tasks and the CPU utilization was quite low. These aren’t too demanding tasks. They can be easily handled by the previous dual-core i5-7200U, too. So, the difference between the two chips wasn’t noticeable during these activities. However, when we stressed the CPUs a bit heavier, the i5-8250U showed its greater potential. For instance, a minute and a half long video was exported from Microsoft’s Movie Maker to a 1080p video file in 42 seconds on the laptop with the i5-8250U. The same tasks took 55 seconds on the i5-7200U-equipped notebook. The advantage of the 8th Gen chip was also somewhat visible when applying filters on large jpeg picture files.

As for 4K video playback on the i5-8250U, it’s completely smooth. Playing various 4K Ultra HD video samples including 60fps ones in popular video apps consumed only up to 3% of the processor capacity. Playing random 4K YouTube videos in Chrome browser consumed up to 5% of the CPU power. Of course, playing 1080p Full HD and lower-resolution videos was a piece of cake.

The processor’s operating temperatures on the tested laptop were quite low. Under normal workload with a couple of browser tabs, MS Word, and MP3 player running at the same time, average CPU temperature was around 40 degrees Celsius. The laptop was only mildly warm on the bottom of the chassis. Under full 100% CPU load while exporting a video from Movie Maker, the average temperature rose to around 70 C. The laptop got warmer on the bottom, which is normal, but still it wasn’t hot. Please keep in mind that CPU temperatures greatly depend on CPU cooling of each laptop model, so temps on them may be different than those presented here.

Gaming on the i5-8250U

What hasn’t been upgraded on the 8th Generation of the i5 U-series chips is integrated graphics. The CPU still uses the basic Intel 620 series from the previous 7th Gen Core CPUs, with a very minor clock speed speed boost and new “UHD 620” name. However, greater power of the processor itself can help in certain CPU-intensive gaming scenarios. Take a look at our Intel UHD 620 review or this gameplay video playlist:

Note: The benchmark scores of the listed processors are averages measured across various devices with these processors. The scores and real-world performance of the Intel Core i5-8250U and compared CPUs may vary depending on the notebooks' other components, settings, cooling, and other factors. However, the benchmark results are good indicators of the processors' performance.

Specifications of the Intel Core i5-8250U

Here are the most important specs of the Intel Core i5-8250U:

Processor Name

Intel Core i5-8250U

CPU Family

8th Generation Intel Core "Kaby Lake R"

Number of Cores

Quad-core / 2 computing threads per core

CPU Clock Speed

1.6 GHz – 3.4 GHz

Cache Size

6MB

Memory Support

DDR3 (2133 MHz max. speed)
DDR4 (2400 MHz max. speed)

Integrated Graphics

Intel UHD 620

Power Consumption

15W

Production Technology

14-nanometer

Typical Use

Mainstream laptops & 2-in-1 PCs

Notable Technologies

Intel HyperThreading (enables two computing threads per physical processor core)
Intel QuickSync Video (speeds up conversion of video files)
Intel TurboBoost (dynamically boosts performance of cores, depending on power and thermal headroom)
VT-d virtualization
VT-x virtualization

Year of Release

2017

Published on October 10, 2017

User Reviews and Q&A on the Intel Core i5-8250U

Below you can read and submit user reviews, questions, and answers about the processor. Thank you for your contribution.

Current rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
  1. Muhammad yasir

    Hi
    How are you sir. I m take new laptop hp core i5 8th.. But my laptop very slow. To much take time run system.

    • Dan Z

      Hi, do you have hard drive or solid state drive storage in the same laptop? Having a hard drive instead of solid state drive is the most common cause of slow performance of laptops with good processors such as the Core i5-8250U.

  2. SHAHID IMRAN KHAN

    Question: I have new laptop Latitude 7490 with Core i5
    Display resolution max is 1366×768 , but as per specification must be 1920X1080. Updated all drivers and as per Dell diagnosis there is no issue in system. How can I get max 1920 x 1080

    • shan

      bro everything is fine but ur screen should be full hd then it will give u 1920*1080

  3. 5 out of 5

    Patrick

    A few years ago I foolishly bought a new HP 15 “red flyer,” with the Pentium N3540 quad-core processor. I was very disappointed with performance in Win 10. Then last week I bought a new Acer with the i5 8250U in it. Wow, what a difference. Granted, the Acer has a few things that the HP did not, like a SSD, 8 GB RAM instead of 4, etc… but the price difference between the two laptops is only $200. The i5 8250U benches almost 400% faster in many tests, yet a few companies like HP still sell rigs with the Pentium N-series processors. For only a $150-$200 price difference, the i5 8250U is miles ahead of it’s lesser-priced competition.

    • zzzzz

      You couldn’t compare few years back laptop and current laptop though…..

  4. Sam

    Hi all, any help much appreciated.

    I’m looking to buy a new laptop and currently split between two options. Little difference in price. Both have 1000GB HDD, but they’re slightly different in that one is:

    i5-8280U with the integrated intel UHD 620 graphics card

    whilst the other is:

    i7-7500U with the Nvidia GeForce 940MX graphics card

    What one will be better suited for casual gaming? (mainly football manager 2019, possibly some old classics like rome total war and sims etc)

    • Danijel Z

      The i7 + 940MX combo is noticeably better for gaming than the i5 / UHD 620. But if you play games that aren’t GPU-demanding like Football Manager or some quite old titles like the original Sims, than the difference can be small. However, as soon as you run something mid-to-heavy like CSGO, Skyrim, Overwatch, Fortnite, PUBG, or the latest Sims, then the difference will be much bigger in favor of the i7 + 940MX.

    • Greg Snow

      The i7-7500U with the Nvidia GeForce 940MX graphics card is the better choice. Any time you can get a discrete video card the performace will be better.
      If this combination is the same price go for it.

  5. Charles Abad

    I just bought an Asus Vivobook Ultrabook with a core I5-8250u processor paired with NVDIA MX130 but the problem was transferring data and it lags I dunno if the optimization of the OS or the hard drive of my ultrabook maybe I’ll just upgrade with a SSD PCIE.EE 2x Any suggestions if that

  6. 4 out of 5

    Snylon

    Holy is this thing fast. On day-to-day tasks, it works like theres no blockade to ever exist in front of it. On gaming, however, the Intel UHD 620 isn’t really the best. On a Mid-2018 HP Spectre x360 with SSD and 8 GB Of RAM, games like CS:GO and World o WArships require a crank-down to 720p, which is still HD, but not as High-Def as 1080p. Overall decent processor, should be the absolute baseline or all laptops.

    • Joseph

      Same here bro

  7. 1 out of 5

    Jean Brown Thomason

    PS: My ancient dinosaur laptop, a Dell Inspiron M5030 with the notorious heating problem, is 7 1/2 years old and I have had it for 4 years already and it runs like a top…it outruns the wimpy Intel Core i5-8250U processor (which is a joke) 15 ways to Sunday!!!

  8. Jean Brown Thomason

    Intel i5-8250U processor? Pure trash!!! I am in the process of returning a brand-new laptop with this trashy, wimpy processor. I put Linux on the laptop and can barely open 1 tab in the web browser without it freezing up, and locking up and wait 15 min for it to finish so that I can open another browser tab. My ancient dinosaur laptop, a Dell Inspiron M5030 with the notorious heating problem, because of poor design of the heat-sink right over the processor, runs rings around this junky processor. The AMD Athlon II P-360 dual-core, 64-bit processor with 4 GB Ram, can open 8 browser tabs with no problem…with Intel’s trashy processors, can only open 1 browser tab before it locks up…in spite of having 12 GB Ram along with a 2 TB hard drive. Wow!!! AMD rules…my brother who used to fix and sell laptops was right…AMD processors run rings around Intel’s trash…any day of the week. AMD has made me a believer…boo to intel and hooray for AMD!!!

    • janko

      you should change your dinosaur dell and linux… on my hp with windows 10 it bowing away all tasks

    • Bozidar

      Is this cheap marketing AMD vs Intel promotion?Well it is trully cheap.AMD is for those who dont want to spend money to more expensive rigs.I have been using AMD and Intel rigs for 18 years and only real deal AMD vas made is Athlon XP CPU s in the early 2000 s…Rest of the line is simple cheaper and slower.Period.

    • Minygizmo

      AMD is as trashy as your cheap attempt for advertising SMH. This processor runs circles around almost any AMD processor unless you want to spend more money but if I do I’ll spend more on an I7 or I9 that’ll again blow any AMD out of the water period.

  9. M E

    Can I edit panasonic 4k video which I took by using Panasonic software?
    I want to get a 4k photo from a 4k video.

  10. tom

    Do you have Cinebench of the processor? I want to compare it to my old laptop. Thanks.

    • Danijel Z

      Hi, 499 cb multi-core, 139 cb single-core, 50,64 fps Open GL.
      Intel Core i5-8250U Cinebench R15 Benchmark

    • tom

      Thank you!

  11. 4 out of 5

    Danijel Z

    Based on the benchmark and real-world tests presented on this page, I’ll give the i5-8250U 4 out of 5 stars. The CPU itself deserves 5 stars because of great improvement over the previous-gen i5 counterpart and overall great performance without producing excessive heat. But, its integrated graphics hasn’t been meaningfully upgraded. That’s why the i5-8250U received a star less.

×

Related CPUs