Core i5-6200U: CPU benchmarks and laptop guide

The Intel Core i5-6200U is a Skylake-era dual-core from 2015, the kind of chip that defined the mid-2010s business ultrabook. The catalog tracks 40 models carrying it — one of the deeper rosters on the site, all secondhand today. It does not meet the recommended CPU requirement in any of the 69 tracked games. This guide covers where the chip sits among laptop CPUs, what it brings, and which laptops carry it.

Where the Core i5-6200U sits in 2026

A catalog score of 20.6 places the chip 451st of 672 scored laptop CPUs — the lower third of the table. The neighborhood is honest about the era: the Pentium Gold G5420T (20.9), Core i3-5015U (20.7) and Core i5-7200U (20.6) just above, the Core i7-2630QM (20.3) and FX-9830P (20.3) just below, and the Core i7-3612QM (19.9) after that. Two details stand out: its direct successor, the i5-7200U, scores essentially identically, and older quad-core i7 parts sit within half a point of it. Generational progress in this class was measured in single-digit percentages, and core count was the only lever that moved the needle.

What the chip brings

Skylake-U is a 2-core, 4-thread design on a 14 nm process, rated at 15 W: a 2.3 GHz base and a modest 2.8 GHz boost. It is a transitional part for memory, supporting DDR4-2133, LPDDR3-1866 or DDR3L-1600 in dual-channel configurations of up to 32 GB at 34 GB/s. The integrated HD Graphics 520 handles display duties and not much more. Public benchmarks in the catalog: 558 GeekBench single-core, 1,333 multi-core and a PassMark overall score of 2,991.

Games: CPU-side readiness

Nothing in the 69-game catalog clears the recommended CPU tier. Only 14 titles sit at the minimum CPU tier at all, and they are the light end of the list: Minecraft, Valorant, Dota 2, League of Legends, The Sims 4, Civilization 6, Grand Theft Auto V, Batman: Arkham Knight and Rainbow Six Siege among them. Everything else — from Cyberpunk 2077 and Elden Ring back to Overwatch and Hitman 3 — falls below the minimum CPU bar. These verdicts are CPU-only — actual playability depends on the laptop's GPU and RAM, but with a processor at this tier there is no configuration of these machines that makes the modern list comfortable.

Laptops that carry it

The 40-model roster is almost entirely business hardware from 2015 through 2018. Dell Latitude models dominate: the E5470 at $167, the 7280 at $174 and the 5480 at $184. Lenovo's ThinkPad T470 sits at $182, HP's ProBook 640 G4 at $204, and the consumer-adjacent Inspiron 15 5566 and Vostro 15 3559 at $230 and $225. The band runs from a $121 Latitude 3380 to a $468 HP 250 G5. Roster medians describe the fleet honestly: office comfort 50, energy efficiency 56.6, mobility 41 — machines for documents, browsing and remote sessions, with a gaming index of 23 to match.

Bottom line

The Core i5-6200U is a minimal-budget purchase: from $121 to the low $200s it buys a sturdy business laptop that still handles browsing, office suites and video calls, and the roster is full of durable Latitude and ThinkPad chassis. It is not a machine for anything on the modern game list, and no GPU pairing fixes a dual-core from 2015. Buy it for the keyboard and the price; buy anything newer for performance.