ThisIsMe :
There is no AMD APU the can come close to those ultra low voltage Intel CPU's. Sure the AMD parts are cheaper, but there is a reason for that.
Under the philosophy of use, i don't see that as an issue. If you are trying to run this thing on batteries, or for some reason really want to watt pinch your house, then yes it would be an issue, but for most this is a non-issue because it looks like it uses a power cord. AMD does make a 19watt A8-4555M processors comparable to intel 3217 but with graphics better at games. However, they should have put either the 25w or 35watt amd cpu in this thing for graphics that blow the hd4000 out of the water.
If you are trying to watt pinch to save money, the difference between the 17w processor and 35watt processor is about $1.30 per month if used at full load 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.
But under it's design intent, it looks as if this is supposed to be like a home media PC, in which the AMD cpu plenty fast at doing all the normal HTPC tasks like surfing the web, serving up music, and multimedia graphics, but has the added bonus edge for light gaming.
Also the price is too high for something like this because now you are in laptop territory pricing. They would have been better served by going with the AMD APU for that reason alone.