Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 Review After Using Some time My Opinion and Verdict.

Lenovo has a number of laptop series that are doing well in the market. Lenovo's ThinkPad laptop series is one of its most appealing. Lenovo's mid-to-high-end business laptop, the ThinkPad T series, has long been positioned as such. The most recent ThinkPad series is growing slimmer and lighter, yet it still maintains its ThinkPad positioning.

Because this is not a game series, it does not have a harsh appearance. It has always had a sleek, beautiful, and premium appearance. Although the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 is sleek and appealing, it also appears to be strong, with a number of long-lasting professional tools. These products were created with the needs of commercial and corporate users in mind. We recently reviewed the ThinkPad X13 Gen 2 and ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 6; if you're interested, please see the links below.

This device can also be used by academics (mainly post-graduate or undergraduate students) who employ high-demanding applications and software. This laptop comes in a variety of variants, but we're looking at the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 Ryzen Edition right now. Because it uses the AMD Ryzen PRO 5000 series mobile processor, which AMD just released a few months ago, all eyes are on the performance of this notebook right now. You don't have to look any further because we've already written a full review for you.

Design and Appearance

The ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 Ryzen Edition is built on the same mould as the previous generation, with a simple and attractive design. There are no fancy decorations other than the renowned "ThinkPad" logo on the upper left side of the back cover. The word "ThinkPad" is inscribed in white on the back cover, which is black. The rear cover has a rough texture, almost like a matte finish. For the first several weeks, those who are used to smooth designs may find this item too difficult to handle.

Keyboard

This laptop's keyboard is a plain ThinkPad layout. Most mouse operations are replaced with the distinctive Little Red nob. Users may now do positioning, selection, and other control actions without having to leave the keyboard area. Rebounding is more comfortable, and the percussion is more rhythmic, thanks to the keyboard's 1.8mm keystroke.

The keycap features a unique arc design that fits the fingertips nicely. The design of this keyboard makes it easier to type on it and decreases typing strain greatly. Backlighting is available, and the keyboard is also splash-resistant. This implies that if you accidentally spilt water or a cup of coffee on the keyboard, a fast wipe down will suffice to keep the keyboard intact.

From a practical standpoint, this expands or increases the device's use. It relaxes users, especially those who want to work and drink at the same time. Humidity, high temperature, low temperature, dust, and vibration are all resistant to the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 2.

Display

The laptop has a 14-inch LCD screen with a 1920 x 1080 resolution and a 16:9 aspect ratio. This LCD screen's model number is NE140FHM-N61, and it's made by BOE. It's also utilised in the T14 Gen 1 model. The 16:10 display ratio that Lenovo just announced on the Legion series (Lenovo Legion 5 Pro) does not appear to be coming to the ThinkPad line, at least not yet. This device's display isn't new to Lenovo; it's an LG low-power LCD panel that the company has used for several ThinkPad versions.

In terms of display, there aren't many differences between this laptop and the previous iteration, the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 1. However, the TN HD option (1366 x 768) was removed from this monitor. Despite this, this laptop has a high contrast ratio of 1500:1 and outstanding colour reproduction, which is impressive for an LCD laptop. This device also has an sRGB of 93%, which is sufficient for basic picture processing. This is, after all, a business and academic laptop, so it should suffice.

An infrared camera with a physical switch is located on the top bezel. Users can protect their personal privacy on a physical level while the camera is not in use by swiping to cover the camera. In addition, because these are infrared cameras, users may log in by swiping their faces, just like they would on a smartphone. It is no longer necessary to use a password or a fingerprint sensor.

Ports

The ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 Ryzen Edition's interface is divided into three sections: left, right, and back. The majority of the ports, however, are on the left side. Two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports, one USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 port, an HDMI port, a headphone/microphone combination port, and a MicroSD card reader are located on the left side. The RJ45 network cable interface, USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 (always on), an optional smart card reader, and a Kensington lock slot are all located on the left side. The majority of the right side is dedicated to venting, which aids in heat dissipation. A single connector on the back serves as an optional SIM card slot.

Battery life

In terms of battery life, the PCMark 8 test yielded a result of 7 hours and 20 minutes, which isn't the "best," but it's a figure that most laptops can't match. In practice, it has a substantially longer battery life than the test results suggest. The battery life has been measured to be as high as 13 hours in some tests. Nonetheless, I'm not sure if it can endure two working days, but a single working day shouldn't be an issue. We actually only take the ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 Ryzen Edition charger with us when we go out to satisfy the needs of charging the computer and it also works with our smartphones because of the USB-C interface power supply.

As a result, we only need to pack one charger for both the laptop and the smartphone, which is really convenient. The battery capacity is unchanged from the previous generation at 50Wh, however, the new processor detects that the current generation utilizes more energy. This laptop charges completely in 2 hours and 20 minutes, owing to the rapid charge technology.

Hardware and Performance

Is the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U capable of meeting our business needs? Let's have a look at the tests below to see what we can learn. Let's sort out the major configuration of this ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 Ryzen Edition before we start the test. The AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U processor and AMD Radeon Graphics GPU are included in this laptop. It also has a 1TB Samsung solid-state drive and 16GB DDR4 3200MHz RAM. The AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U CPU has 8 cores and 16 threads, is manufactured on a 7nm technology and has a base clock of 2.0GHz. However, its maximum acceleration frequency is 4.4GHz. A 12MB three-level cache is also supported by this processor. It is ideal for notebook use because the thermal design power consumption is only 10-25W.

In terms of overall performance, we tested with PCMark 10 Extended mode and received a total score of 4482 points on average. In addition, we received 9645 points for fundamental operations, 7650 points for productivity, 5336 points for creating digital material, and 2785 points for gaming. This score distribution is in accordance with what one would expect. The ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 Ryzen Edition performs like a high-performance laptop in terms of basic functions, productivity, and digital content creation.

In terms of gaming, it performs mediocrely. This is to be expected, given that it is not a gaming laptop. This AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U processor gets a single-core score of 568 and a multi-core score of 3898 according to CPU-benchmark Z's test. When comparing the single-core 593 and multi-core 2795 performance of notebooks equipped with Intel's 11th-generation Core i7-1165G7 CPU, it can be seen that the single-core performance suffers a slight loss, but the multi-core performance leads by 39.5 per cent.

This laptop received a single-core score of 232 and a multi-core score of 1257 on the Cinebench R15 test. A single-core score of 550 and a multi-core score of 2907 was obtained in the Cinebench R20 test. A single-core score of 1408 and a multi-core score of 7399 was attained in the Cinebench R23 test. We compared the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 2's Cinebench R20 scores against notebooks equipped with Intel's 11th Gen Core i7-1165G7 processor. Intel's 11th generation Core i7-1165G7 CPU has a single-core performance of 563 and a multi-core performance of 2150 in notebooks. The T14 Gen 2's single-core score is 2.5 per cent lower, while its multi-core score is 35 per cent higher. On multi-core tests, it maintains a considerable advantage, as expected.

AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U scored 5845 MIPS on a single thread and 53381 MIPS in multi-thread in the 7-Zip benchmark test.

This device scored 36.95 frames per second in the X264 FHD benchmark and 23.75 frames per second in the X265 HD benchmark.

GPU and SSD Performance

This AMD Radeon Graphics core display has 512 stream processors, 512MB DDR4 video memory, 128bit video memory width, and 42.7GB/s total video memory bandwidth, and is manufactured on a 7nm technology. Although the GPU test results are not quite up to the line with many other options on the market, they are adequate for those who use this laptop for professional or academic purposes.

The ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 Ryzen Edition has a Time Spy score of 1336, a Fire Strike score of 3219, and physical scores of 5955 and 16519 in 3DMark testing. Although the total result is uninteresting due to the lack of an independent display, the T14 Gen 2 Ryzen Edition does admirably in terms of physical scores.

For actual testing of the 512GB Samsung SSD on this laptop, we used AS SSD Benchmark. To avoid affecting the disc read and write test results, we ran the test with the hard disk's remaining capacity as large as feasible. The continuous reading speed is around 2966.78MB/s, the writing speed is around 1718.36MB/s, the 4K reading speed is 51.76MB/s, and the writing speed is 135.23MB/s, according to the results of the test. This speed is rather good, and it ensures that it will not be stretched when performing various jobs due to the SSD's read and write speeds.

Temperature and heat dissipation

We all know that when it comes to business notebooks, heat dissipation isn't as vital as it is when it comes to gaming notebooks. However, no one wants a laptop that gets dangerously heated during even the simplest actions. This is why we also consider the notebook's heat dissipation, and the heat dissipation capability is still worthy of consideration.

The processor is tiny and compact, and it consumes roughly 20W when under heavy load, while the GPU claims to use about 25W. With this kind of power consumption, there should be some baking going on in the vicinity of this gadget. To determine the performance of this notebook in terms of heat dissipation, we employed two software programmes: AIDA64 and FurMark. A thermal imager was also employed in the test to determine the temperature of the notebook's surface. Using this device for 30 minutes at a room temperature of 26°C, the average CPU temperature stabilised around 65.2°C, while the GPU temperature stabilised at around 64°C.

The keyboard and palm rest stayed cold at this temperature, and the surface temperature hovered at 40 °C. This means that in severe circumstances, the surface temperature is only a few degrees higher than our body temperature, which is barely noticeable and does not cause pain. The temperature regulation is still strong, and we can see that the ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 Ryzen Edition stabilises at a power consumption of 23W in extreme high-usage conditions. Its battery life is also guaranteed due to its minimal power usage.

The Lenovo ThinkPad T14, on the other hand, is engineered to dissipate heat in a unique way. The heat is mostly focused around the air outlet on the right side of the T14 Gen 2 Ryzen variant, according to thermal imager photographs. This is a great design since when using this laptop, the left palm is at the far left edge of the keyboard, while the right palm is close to the middle. This indicates that there is a significant distance between the palm and the highest heat concentration location. This ensures that the heat dissipation does not cause any pain to the consumers.

Verdict

In the office notebook segment, the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 2 Ryzen Edition is still a “tank.” However, we won't be comparing this laptop to other gaming or high-power laptops because it still has a long way to go. With the inclusion of the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U, which consumes only 15 watts of power, it now has computational capability comparable to that of a regular pressure CPU while maintaining a high level of endurance. This implies we can leave work earlier, address errors earlier, and easily demonstrate our worth at work.

If you require an office tool rather than a recreational tool, it is well worth your time to begin. Finally, the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 offers a minor upgrade over the previous model. In the following generation, the corporation will undoubtedly have a lot of work to do.