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日本[Video Review] Lenovo ThinkBook 14 Gen 4 – Is Lenovo going overboard with the comfort
Lenovo ThinkBook 14 Gen 4 (Intel) in-depth review
We can't believe it has already been four years since Lenovo released the first of their "stylish" business laptop devices. Now, the subbrand is more widely recognized, and many people are preferring modern looks to the old-school ThinkPad vision.The latest product to come to fruition is the Lenovo ThinkBook 14 Gen 4. It can be found in both AMD and Intel iterations. Interestingly, team Red "only" provided the refreshed Ryzen 5x25U chips, while the Intel model is equipped with an Alder Lake CPU. Furthermore, you get to choose between 15W TDPs and 28W ones.As you can imagine, we chose [...]
Pros
- Wide I/O, which includes an SD card reader
- Two M.2 storage slots, one of which runs at 4.0 speeds
- Fingerprint reader embedded in the power button
- Wi-Fi 6, PCIe x4, Thunderbolt 4
- Doesn't use PWM for brightness adjustment (LEN140FHD)
- Comfortable keyboard with a backlight and spill-resistance
Cons
- Covers only 53% of sRGB (LEN140FHD)
- The 45Wh battery option doesn't provide a great battery life
Lenovo ThinkBook 14 Gen 4 (Intel) - Specs
- HDD/SSD
- up to 8000GB SSD
- M.2 Slot
- 2x M.2 PCIe Gen 4 x4 slots See photo
- RAM
- up to 40GB
- OS
- Windows 11 Pro, Windows 10 Pro, Windows 11 Home
- Battery
- 45Wh, 3-cell, 45Wh
- Body material
- Aluminum
- Dimensions
- 323 x 218 x 17.9 mm (12.72" x 8.58" x 0.70")
- Weight
- 1.40 kg (3.1 lbs)
- Ports and connectivity
- 1x USB Type-A
- 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
- 1x USB Type-A
- 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Sleep and Charge
- 1x USB Type-C
- 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
- 1x USB Type-C
- 4.0, Thunderbolt 4, Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort
- HDMI
- 2.1
- Card reader
- SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC
- Ethernet LAN
- 10, 100, 1000 Mbit/s
- Wi-Fi
- 802.11ax
- Bluetooth
- 5.2
- Audio jack
- 3.5mm Combo Jack
- Features
- Fingerprint reader
- Web camera
- HD / FHD
- Backlit keyboard
- optional
- Microphone
- Dual Array Microphone with AI Noise Cancellation, switchable audio modes
- Speakers
- 2x 2W Stereo Speakers, Dolby Audio
- Optical drive
- Security Lock slot
- Kensington Nano Lock
All Lenovo ThinkBook 14 Gen 4 (Intel) configurations
[Intro]
How has it already been 4 years, since the establishment of the ThinkBook brand? Time flies when you’re having fun and after warming up for a bit, now the brand is attracting more and more consumers with their stylish looks. The ThinkBook 14 Gen 4 comes for a 4th year in a row, this time bringing Alder Lake processors, with both the U-series and P-series. If you prefer some Zen 3 goodness, there are the Ryzen 5000 U-series, which has decent performance and efficiency.
[Design]
Entirely made from aluminum and with a two-tone silver/grey finish, the ThinkBook 14 can hold its own with other business machines. It’s durable and light at the same time, weighing 1.40 kg and having a profile of 17.9 mm. The aluminum delivers decent flex resistance, but due to the lighter weight, the lid still can’t be opened with one hand.
[Input devices]
Surrounding the display, there are thin bezels with a 720p webcam on top, which can be upgraded to a Full HD unit. The base itself has a shorter keyboard with no NumPad, with the power button being separated, while also including the fingerprint reader.
[Ports]
The I/O of the ThinkBook keeps a lot of ports between the two sides. On the left, there’s one USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port, a Thunderbolt 4 port, an HDMI 2.0 port, one USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and a 3.5 mm audio jack. On the right, there’s an SD card reader, one more USB Type-A port, and a LAN connector.
[Display]
The display selection of the ThinkBook 14 includes both TN and IPS panels, but we advise you to stick with IPS units, like the Full HD version that we have now. It covers 53% of the sRGB color gamut, while the brightness maxes out at 330 nits and the contrast ratio is high as well [1580:1]
There is a version with 100% sRGB coverage, but it has the same resolution and brightness so do your research carefully before buying.
Our Design and Gaming profile also improves the accuracy two-fold, however, the dE value is still above 2.0, so in a professional setting it wouldn’t be considered accurate. We’ll leave links to all of our profiles in the description, including both the Health-Guard and Office Work profiles, which can certainly help you in your work.
[Sound]
The sound coming off of the bottom-firing speaker setup is decent and has no major deviations from clarity, however, the max volume could have been a bit higher.
[Performance]
When it comes to performance, you can pick between the more efficient U-series and the more powerful P-series. We tested the very popular Core i5-1235U, which doesn’t necessarily deliver top-notch scores when compared to competitors with the same CPU. The ThinkPad E14, once again from Lenovo, as well as the MSI Modern 14 deliver better performance in both Cinebench R23 and in Photoshop.
[Cooling]
When we stress test the laptop we can easily see why that is, as even in the first few seconds, the chip only boosted to 33W and 2.55GHz on the P-cores. In long runs, like a video render, it maintains a 28W TDP, which is admirable. Lenovo really wanted to optimize the comfort, as the temperatures suggest that the Core i5 can go for more. They succeed, as even under full load, the hotspot on the keyboard reached only 36°C, while the single fan won’t bother you at all.
[Battery]
Unfortunately, the more laid-back approach to cooling and power management doesn’t lead to any improvements as far as battery life is concerned, as the laptop’s 45Wh battery pack only lasts for 5 hours and 33 minutes of Web browsing, or 5 hours and 38 minutes of video playback. There’s a 60Wh version too, but we haven’t tested it to say if it’s that much better.
[Teardown and upgradeability]
Finally, the upgradeability of the ThinkBook is better than we expected, as we thought we’d see soldered memory and no slots. While the former is still present, we also find one SODIMM slot, so you can get up to 40GB of DDR4 RAM in total. Storage-wise, you get two M.2 slots for Gen 4 SSDs.
You can check out how to upgrade the machine in our teardown video, which is linked below.
[Verdict]
The Lenovo ThinkBook 14 Gen 4 is a fine business laptop, thanks to its wide port selection and good upgradeability. The performance that comes out of it is decent, however, there are more powerful business devices out of it, if that’s your main priority. The battery life is its main flaw, in our opinion, so keep that in mind.
For the full ThinkBook experience check out our written review that’s linked down below.
