Disclosure: I received this device as a pre-production test unit from Lenovo. All opinions are my own, and no one from Lenovo is receiving copy approval before this review is posted.
As part of Lenovo's entry-level ThinkPad line, the L14 Gen2 AMD strikes a nice balance between affordability, security, performance, and reliability for personal or enterprise use.
System Configuration
The machine tested is pretty powerful under the hood, with the following specifications:
- AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 5850U (8C / 16T, 1.9 / 4.4GHz, 4MB L2 / 16MB L3
- 64GB DDR4 SSD(32GB + 32GB dual channel)
- 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD M.2 2280
- 14" FHD (1920x1080) IPS 300nits Anti-glare, Touch
- Standard 2D RGB camera with privacy shutter
- CAT12 WWAN with physical or eSIM capabilities
- Wifi6
Design & Build
The L14 Gen2 sports a classic ThinkPad Black design, with a polycarbonate-ABS material for both the top and bottom cover. The lid and deck are made of a soft-touch material that is comfortable to use when opening up the laptop as well as putting my wrists on the deck while typing.
The L14 Gen2, as you may have guessed, has a 14-inch display and weighs a little less than three and a half pounds (1.58 kg). The bezels on the sides of the display are about a centimeter, on the top of the display is about two centimeters, and on the bottom of the display is about three centimeters. Overall, the laptop has dimensions of 13.03 x 9.25 x 0.75 inches.
As with every ThinkPad, the build quality is excellent. The chassis is stiff, with minimal keyboard flex and display flex. The hinges for the display are robust and keeps the display from wobbling at all while typing aggressively, and the display also lies completely flat, great for giving a presentation to a group of people with just the laptop display. The L14 Gen2 is MIL-STD-810H tested, meaning it was tested to withstand various conditions such as extreme temperatures, shocks, vibrations, and sand. The keyboard is also spill-resistant. All in all, the L14 Gen2 is well built and feels more like a piece of equipment than any old laptop.
As a productivity-oriented machine, the L14 Gen2 packs in a plethora of ports. On the right, there is a USB-A 3.2 port, a headphone and microphone combo jack, and a Kensington lock slot. On the left, there are two USB-C ports, with one being USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 and the other being USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, another USB-A 3.2 port, an HDMI port, an ethernet port, Smart Card slot, a microSD card slot, and a microSIM card slot. One of the USB-C ports is part of Lenovo's side dock port; while it can be used as a separate USB-C port, it can also be connected to one of Lenovo's ThinkPad docks (which are also used on other ThinkPad lines like the X and T series). The Wifi card onboard is an Intel WiFi6 card, so it's great to be ahead of the curve with Wifi6. There's also an option for LTE, which is nice for those who need internet access without Wifi.
Security
As an enterprise-oriented laptop, the L14 has many security features, both externally and internally. Externally, it has a physical webcam shutter to block the webcam when not in use. It also has Windows Hello support via a Power-on Match on Chip Touch fingerprint sensor that reads my finger in less than a second. Inside, there are various features such as a dTPM 2.0 chip, and is complemented by AMD's multilayered security suite. Some models also have an IR camera, which will allow for facial recognition login as well as other features via the Glance by Mirametrix software.
Performance
The L14 Gen2 AMD offers configurations with the AMD Ryzen 3, 3 Pro, 5, 5 Pro, and 7 Pro. This specific model has the AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U with eight cores, sixteen threads, and a max clock frequency of 4.4GHz. This is my first AMD laptop in over a decade, and I must say the performance is very impressive when stacked against its Intel counterparts. On Cinebench, both CPU multi-core and single-core results put it above the Intel Core i7-1165G7 at 15W TDP, and it's just slightly edged out by the 28W TDP Intel model for single-core performance. Considering the AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U has a default TDP of 15W, the performance by the AMD processor onboard competes very well against its Intel competitor.
A similar story follows on Geekbench 5, with the AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U scoring 1438 for single-core performance and 7148 for multi-core performance, with the Intel Core i7-1165G7 scoring 1403 for single-core performance and 4603 for multi-core performance.
On the graphics side, the laptop uses AMD's integrated Radeon Graphics, which competes very well against its Intel counterpart as well. For Geekbench 5's OpenCL test, it scored 15564, compared to 14423 for Intel's Iris Xe Graphics.
On the graphics side, the laptop uses AMD's integrated Radeon Graphics, which competes very well against its Intel counterpart as well. For Geekbench 5's OpenCL test, it scored 15564, compared to 14423 for Intel's Iris Xe Graphics.
My model is equipped with 64GB of DDR4-3200 So-DIMM memory (which is insane considering my phone has 64GB of storage!) and a 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD. Unlike a lot of ultra-portable laptops, the memory is user-upgradable and not soldered on the system board.
All of this results in very solid performance in all my use cases. In an extreme test, I simultaneously had a hundred Chrome tabs open in the background, started a recording on OBS, opened a drawing on AutoCAD, ran circuit simulations on both SIMetrix and Multisim, ran a remote virtual machine on X2Go, ran a Matlab program and a Python script, all while leaving Microsoft Teams open in the background. The laptop did not skip a beat and handled everything I threw at it like a champ. I also did not notice any thermal throttling and the exterior of the laptop stayed around 100 degrees Fahrenheit. This is truly a performance beast and would be a great choice for those looking to deploy an affordable enterprise laptop that is also extremely powerful for their business.
Trackpad, Trackpoint, Keyboard
The keyboard follows the same story with all ThinkPads: the chiclet-style keys create an excellent typing experience with a decent amount of key travel. ThinkPad keyboards have been my favorite for a very long time and I'm always reminded of this every time I use a friend's laptop from a different brand. The layout is identical to my X1 Carbon and X1 Yoga and it has been a tried-and-true formula I'm familiar with. Up on the function keys there are many shortcuts ranging from volume to brightness to call settings (perfect for today's video calling era). The function and control keys can be swapped in Lenovo Vantage if you're looking for that. Like many other ThinkPads, the keyboard is spill-resistant which adds an additional piece of mind. The palm rest is made of a soft-touch polycarbonate material, which has a nice feel to it when typing for extended periods of time.
The TrackPoint is a standard slim version TrackPoint also found on the X series. It works very reliably and I have no complaints. Many people don't know the purpose of the TrackPoint, but for me, it's much easier to type, scroll, and move my cursor with the TrackPoint being in the center of the keyboard since I don't have to move my entire hand down to the trackpad to scroll and then move it back up to type. The trackpad is coated with a Mylar material to improve haptic quality and longevity. Ultimately it means a pretty good tracking experience with a soft-touch matte finish. The trackpad is notably larger than on my X1 Yoga due to the laptop's larger bezels, and that's nice for those who enjoy using the trackpad more often. For reference, the trackpad is 4 inches by 2.75 inches compared to my X1 Yoga's 4 inches by 2.25 inches.
Display
This model has a 14-inch FHD 1920 x 1080 multi-touch display, and is rated at 300 nits. It has a matte finish which is great at preventing glare or reflections from the sun or shiny surfaces, though the 300 nits can get a bit dim when used outside. The quality of the display is decent, with a 700:1 contrast ratio and 45% NTSC color gamut. If you're looking for a better display and the touchscreen isn't too important to you, Lenovo also offers a 400 nit non-touch display with 800:1 contrast ratio and 72% NTSC color gamut, which will definitely be brighter and pack more punchy colors.
Speakers, Camera, and Microphones
The speakers on the laptop are downward-firing and lack bass, so they are not the best for media consumption. For video calls and voice, the speakers do a good job as voices come out very clear. There is a pre-loaded Dolby Atmos portal to play around with some of the speaker settings and they do improve performance based on the use case.
The camera on the laptop is a standard 720p webcam that is fine for video calling and the like. As mentioned earlier, it has a physical switch to turn the camera off when not in use, a very useful feature in today's Zoom-oriented world. There are multiple microphones around the laptop and they do a good job isolating my voice from background sounds as well as keyboard sounds. There are settings in Lenovo Vantage to control what the microphone focuses on as well and I found these settings to be quite effective, specifically when choosing the microphone to optimize for 'Only my voice'. There is a keyboard shortcut switch with an LED indicator light letting you know if the microphone is muted, so it's nice to be able to see the status of your microphone with just a glance down at the keyboard.
Battery
The L14 had a 45Wh battery which is rated for 11.8 hours from Lenovo's MobileMark 2018 testing. In my usage which usually consists of Microsoft Word, ten tabs of Google Chrome, and a code editor, I found it to last about half a day on full brightness. Included with my machine was a 65W AC adapter which charges it from ten percent to almost full in a little over an hour. A cool feature that you can configure in the Lenovo Vantage app is Modern Standby, which keeps the machine in a state to wake up the laptop in sleep in less than a second. You can change when this feature is enabled or have it automatically determine the settings based on your usage, and it's particularly nice if you close the lid frequently.
Linux support
I installed a dual-boot of Ubuntu alongside Windows on the L14 and all the basic functionality works fine. This includes the keyboard, TrackPoint, trackpad, webcam, function keys, wireless connectivity, and fingerprint sensor. I did not need to install any additional drivers, everything worked on its own after the Ubuntu installation. This machine was certified by Ubuntu and Lenovo to work with version 18.04, though I tested it on version 20.04 and it worked fine for me. While Lenovo doesn't offer a Ubuntu pre-installed configuration, they do offer a configuration with no operating system installed, and you can install Ubuntu on your own after the fact. For those who use Linux regularly, this machine works well and is seamless to install.
Odds & Ends
The machine I tested comes with a WWAN card, meaning it has support for LTE. You'll need a data plan for it to work, and in my testing with a T-Mobile data plan, coverage and speeds are similar to what I get on my phone. If your model does not have a WWAN card, the M.2 2242 slot can be used as additional storage.
Servicing the laptop is very easy as it uses standard Philips screws to open the bottom cover. Both the memory and storage are user upgradable as well. Everything in the machine seems to be modular, so repairing parts should be a breeze.
Servicing the laptop is very easy as it uses standard Philips screws to open the bottom cover. Both the memory and storage are user upgradable as well. Everything in the machine seems to be modular, so repairing parts should be a breeze.
Conclusions
The L14 Gen 2 is great for those who want a machine that just gets things done. It's an entry-level ThinkPad so it doesn't have a fancy display or a carbon fiber or aluminum build you might find on their higher end models, but the L14 is very well equipped with many productivity and security features, extreme performance to handle processor, graphics, and memory intensive applications, and the durable and quality of a ThinkPad. Whether you're a student like me who needs a powerful machine to run CPU and graphics intensive programming and engineering software or you're a business owner looking to deploy a powerful, secure, and reliable machine to your workforce, this machine is well-suited for those uses cases and everything in between.
The L14 Gen 2 (AMD) is coming out soon on Lenovo.com. Keep an eye out for it here: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/coming-soon/c/coming-soon
The L14 Gen 2 (AMD) is coming out soon on Lenovo.com. Keep an eye out for it here: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/coming-soon/c/coming-soon
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