Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 – Top 5 Pros and Cons

Like it or not, ThinkPads have been dominating the field for a while now. In fact, this year is their 30th anniversary. For the occasion, Lenovo decided to give us a special laptop that really tries to modernize the ThinkPad design language. The Z13 Gen 1 is a portable device with efficient Zen 3+ CPUs and quality display offerings, while the striking design doesn’t forget about the ThinkPad legacy.

Today we present you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1.

Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1: Full Specs / In-depth Review


3 reasons to BUY the Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1

1. Design and build quality

Despite this being a special laptop, it has a further, more special version with bronze accents and a leather cover on the lid. The standard version still comes fully enveloped in metal. It has an Arctic Grey finish, with the lid and base having a matte finish, while the sides of the chassis have a machined aluminum finish. The lid has a protrusion like a reverse notch, which houses the webcam and the microphone. The laptop has sharp edges, along with Lenovo and ThinkPad branding. In terms of portability, the Z13 stops the scales at 1.19 kg and has a profile of 13.99 mm.


2. Battery life

With a 51.5Wh battery and a Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U, the laptop lasts for  22 hours and 37 minutes of Web browsing, or 15 hours and 50 minutes of video playback, which reaches MacBook levels of longevity and battery life. Now, we conduct the battery tests with the Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with.


3. Display quality

There is an FHD+ IPS display as well as a 2.8K OLED panel to choose from. At a 13.3-inch form factor, both will offer good visuals. We worked with the FHD+ option, which delivers excellent viewing angles, peak brightness of 424 nits in the middle of the screen and 373 nits across the surface, with a max deviation of 19%, which is way too high, so colors might appear different on different areas of the panel.

In terms of creativity, the panel covers 95% of the sRGB gamut, while offering accurate colors with our Design and Gaming profile.

Here are the results of our test with the stock settings (left) and with our profile applied (right).


Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 configurations with 13.3″ BOE NV133WUM-N63 (LEN41A7) (Full HD+, 1920 x 1200) IPS.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


2 reasons NOT to buy the Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1

1. I/O

The port selection is slim, with only two USB 4.0 ports, a 3.5 mm audio jack, and a SIMcard tray.


2. Upgradeability

Upgradeability struggles as well, with up to 32GB of soldered LPDDR5 RAM. It runs at 6400MHz in quad-channel mode. In terms of storage, there’s only one M.2 PCIe x4 slot, which supports Gen 4 drives.

Here is our detailed teardown video, which shows how to access the single SSD slot.


All Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 configuration:

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