Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 2 laptop review: Affordable and fast thanks to AMD Renoir

[Redaktion]

Lenovo outfits its new ThinkPad E14 Gen 2 with dual-channel RAM, AMD Ryzen 4000 and a smaller chassis. The new model is not fault-free, but in many important aspects, the Lenovo laptop delivers. Its low price is an additional trump card.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-E14-Gen-2-laptop-review-Affordable-and-fast-thanks-to-AMD-Renoir.490256.0.html

[255BB]

 finally the Ryzen 8 4800U. The Ryzen 8, however, is not available at the moment. <<< typo here. Should be Ryzen 7 4800U.

[Andre1190]

GREAT THERE IS NO PWM!!!!

[Dogs]

What's up with that power consumption?

[Vit]

The only reason I am not a buyer of this is lack of 4K support for an external monitor.

[Jill Stingray]

Bought the R7 4700U / 16GB-3200MHz / backlit-KB & alimunium backplate variant for €614 - extremely satisfied (2 months in the use).

I'm surprised by the amount of upgrades compared to my previous E485, which happened to disappoint me greatly (cheap plastic, no backlit kb, ...)
The 8-core variant will shred any task you toss to it, and will even be able to run some games properly (Overwatch 1080p medium, @70fps capped with Vsync, any eSports title above a hundred frames, even some AAA games will run in 720p30 with a blend of low and high in the settings) on the go, though the aluminium back cover does get pretty toasty as it helps for heat dissipation.
It's very thin, pretty much the size of a previous-gen 13.3" laptop, and the build quality feels pretty satisfying overall (though it retains fingerprints, a lot). It does come with an average screen and very spartan I/O, but that remains acceptable in this price range, I guess.
Careful with the second M.2 slot that only seems to accept NVMe drives, as I tried with a Toshiba M.2 SATA and didn't get detected. (Samsung 970 Evo worked just fine.)

Overall: great buy, awesome price-to-performance ratio, modern yet classic design, but still perfectible (screen, I/O, idle power draw). AMD E-series Thinkpads are finally worth it, I hope to see even more improvements in the future!

[Arturas]

Bought the R7 4700U / 16GB-3200MHz / backlit-KB & alimunium backplate variant for €614 - extremely satisfied (2 months in the use).

What shop was that?

[ChinaInvasionOfTibet]

There'a a huge impeovement going from AMD Ryzen 7 4700/4750U to 4800U, especially for muktitasking and casual gaming.

Where is the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme or at least T15p with AMD Ryzen 9 5900HS (35Watt) and RTX 3060 Max-Q?

There's plenty of room in this chassis, and the Asus G14 showed it works with decent thermals.

The Legion 5/7's keyboards are trash compared to a ThinkPad if you need to type all day.

[xpclient]

The Intel Tiger Lake version (Gen 2) of this E14 or E15 is going to be a GREAT LAPTOP

[adam24523]

Battery life is about 4-5 hours of normal work (mostly in the browser) - specification says 10-13 hours and the test says 7-8 hours... not possible! (4500u version)

[VaruLV]

Battery life is about 4-5 hours of normal work (mostly in the browser) - specification says 10-13 hours and the test says 7-8 hours... not possible! (4500u version)

Its an old thread, however, perhaps someone, whos still interested in this laptop will find this information handy.

Battery life on mine isnt stellar either, the best I can get is up to 7h with screen brightness at or below 50%, web browsing/youtube watching - mixed usage.
Subpar screen quality(albeit mine seems to be as bright as 300 nits, eyeballing it) with crappy color rendition and poor battery life are the only things that are not up to my liking with this laptop.
Bought it as my secondary computer and battery life is really lacking overall since I cant keep it unplugged for the whole day.