Intel Core i5-8365U Review

The Core i5-8365U is one of Intel's mid-range-low-power Laptop processors. It was released in 2019 with 4 cores and 8 threads. With base clock at 1.6GHz, max speed at 4.1GHz, and a 15W power rating. The Core i5-8365U is based on the Whiskey Lake U 14nm family and is part of the Core i5 series.

Core i5-8365U is also the successor of Intel's last gen Core i5-8265U processor that was based on the Whiskey Lake and 14nm process and was released in 2018.

What this all means is that the Intel Core i5-8365U is an absolute beast when it comes to multi-threaded workloads, especially at this price point. If you're counting on doing some video editing or compiling one hell of an Excel spreadsheet, you're going to see firsthand a performance boost with the Core i5-8365U.

The Intel Core i5-8365U is another impressive release from Intel and its 10 Generation of Core i5 chips. With it, you’re getting 4-cores and 8-threads, with a boost clock of 4.1GHz. It may not be the strongest contender ever made on paper, but when you see and feel the actual performance gains it offers, you’re certainly getting a lot of bang for your $297 buck.

Bear in mind, however, that if you already have something like the Core i5-8265U, this generation doesn't offer the biggest boost in performance. You might want to wait another year or so before dropping a few hundred bucks, or even opt to splurge on a higher-end but pricier chip.

So which should you buy? Let's get that out of the way. Before this comparison review we updated our Best CPU feature and we said you should go with the Ryzen 5 4600H as it comes with a better stock cooler, can be overclocked, and the FP6 platform offers a significantly better upgrade path.

We stand by that assessment, but that won't escape us from running a few up to date benchmarks. We'll focus on gaming performance which should make life a little easier for AMD's CPU. For application performance you can refer back to our day-one coverage of the Ryzen 5 4600H where the Core i5-8265U was included. You can safely bet the 2.5% factory overclock isn’t going to make the Core i5-8365U any more than about 1-2% faster than those figures.

One of the nice things about the Intel Core i5-8365U processors is that the retail boxed models come with a CPU cooler. So, you can pick something like the Intel Core i5-8365U up for $297 and don’t need to spend any extra money on CPU cooling.

The Intel Core i5-8365U retail boxed processor comes with the traditional ‘pancake’ CPU cooler. Nothing fancy, but it gets the job done on this processor which is rated at 15W TDP. You do not need to have an aftermarket cooling solution unless you want to.