ThinkPad Fans, Take Note—Here’s What the T14s Gen 6 Gets Right (And Wrong)

Yoga in Black: Classic Lenovo Design

The notebooks in the ThinkPad series, which were once an established tour de force from IBM, had an almost legendary reputation that came close to Apple's Powerbooks, the predecessor to today's Macbook Pro. With their angular, black-painted metal chassis, they stood out just as clearly from the rest of the competition. 

The shape and color of the latest ThinkPads have remained the same, but the days when this made them recognizable – as with Apple's notebooks – are over. A large number of competitors have already adapted the basic tenets of Apple's design and the ThinkPad's clean lines have also been the inspiration for many other business notebooks.

While Apple remains true to itself, the current ThinkPad shows off the synergy that is being sought with the Yoga series. This particularly applies to the display lid, which bears the classic lettering with the glowing red dot on the "i" on the outside, but has the same shape for the video camera on top.

Tough, Eco-Friendly Build

To make the T14s robust on the outside, Lenovo relied on a colorful mix of materials for the chassis. The lid of the 31.4 × 22 × 1.7 cm notebook is made of carbon, the inside is made of magnesium, while the base uses aluminum, whereby a high proportion of recycled material is always taken into account.

It is extremely lightweight at 1.3 kg, which ultimately also ensures that both the base and the lid are more than capable of holding their own against external pressure. I must say, there is hardly a competitor that does it better.

The hinge, on the other hand, is beyond reproach. Not only does it allow the display to be opened up to 180°, but it also remains in position well even when strong jolts are applied, without being awkwardly stiff.

Inspiring Full HD Display

When evaluating screens, the resolution is usually used as the primary quality criterion. However, its significance is limited, as the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s proved once again: the display in a 16:10 format delivers just 1920 × 1200 pixels, which translates to a pixel density of just 161 ppi with a viewing area that measures 14-inch across diagonally.

Nevertheless, the screen content looks sharp at the usual viewing distance. You have to get very close to the display to see the staircase effects and blurring that is typical of lower resolutions, and even then, they are barely noticeable.

This is not the least due to the excellent contrast and color reproduction that almost makes you forget that you are viewing a matte IPS panel. It covers 100% of the sRGB color space. The only drawback here is the speed with a disappointingly low refresh rate of 60 Hz.

AMD Ryzen 7 Beats Intel Core Ultra

AMD's processors played a minor role in notebooks last year. The new ARM processors from Qualcomm, which for the first time also met higher performance expectations, made the headlines. However, the new ThinkPad T14s showed how AMD chips do not have to hide behind the competition.

With a performance figure of 50 TOPS, the Ryzen AI 360 Pro not only offers the fastest NPU, all eight CPU cores, which can execute 16 threads in parallel, also have nothing to cower from.

They achieved around 2,700 points in the Geekbench benchmark in single-core tests and around 11,500 points in multicore tests, clearly outperforming Intel's Core Ultra 7 258V. AMD integrated its Radeon M880 into the processor for graphics, which is only slightly faster than Intel's Arc 140V in the Geekbench OpenCL test.

For high workloads, the chip is also supported by 32 GB RAM that complies with the LPDDR5X standard and also achieves fast transfer rates of 7500 MT/s, although the chips from Intel and Qualcomm are slightly faster in this respect. However, following an unsightly trend, pragmatism has come to an end elsewhere as the RAM is permanently soldered.

ThinkPad T14s Lacks Storage

Lenovo is not particularly generous when it comes to storage space. The SSD manufactured by Kioxia only offers a storage capacity of 512 GB, a size that is standard even for inexpensive entry-level models.

Nevertheless, the SSD is above average when it comes to speed. In the Diskmark benchmark, speeds of almost 7,000 MB/s were achieved when reading data. Transfer rates of just over 5,000 MB/s are possible when writing data.

T14s Battery Falls Short

With a capacity of 58 Wh, the battery that Lenovo uses in its ThinkPad is not particularly large. However, it is not that bad when paired to a rather simple display, ensuring the power reserves are not overly strained.

After spending slightly over an hour with just the browser, the battery level still stood at 92 percent. After an hour on the Asphalt Legends Unite racetrack, there was still 65 percent of battery life, which is not such a bad figure. If the demands are not too great, one charge should be enough to get you through a working day.

5G On Board

With four USB ports and a HDMI 2.1 port, the Lenovo notebook appears to be equipped for use with cables at first glance. However, the two classic USB slots are disappointing in terms of speed.

They comply with the USB 3.2 Gen 1 standard and therefore can only achieve data transfer rates of 5 Gb/s. The two USB-C ports are based on Intel's Thunderbolt 4 technology. However, one of them will be used for charging purposes when the battery runs low.

The ThinkPad T14s is also state-of-the-art in this respect. The NCM825 module from Qualcomm provides access to WiFi networks based on the WiFi 7 specification and also comes with Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity.

What makes this special, however, is the slot for mobile phone cards. Business people who were initially targeted as customers can take advantage of the 5G standard to access the Internet at any time while on the move (as long as there is network coverage, of course!).

TrackPoint Stays, Touchscreen Doesn’t

ThinkPads have always gone their own way when it comes to controls. A red TrackPoint lights up in the middle of the black keys and is used to control the cursor. The right and left buttons are located above the touchpad.

It takes a short while to get used to it, and it is great to work with. However, you can also use a classic touchpad, which measures 11.5 x 6 cm, is not that large due to the additional buttons. Thankfully, it works well enough, just like the keyboard.

However, there is still room for disappointment. Unlike competitors such as ASUS with its Zenbook S14, Lenovo does not offer the option of using a touchscreen display for input.