Lenovo ThinkPad L14 G4 AMD Review: affordable laptop with good upgradeability and battery life

[Redaktion]

Lenovo sells their more affordable ThinkPad laptops for business customers as the ThinkPad L series. The ThinkPad L14 Gen 4 AMD is a budget model with AMD - though with Ryzen 7030. The fact that Lenovo does not use Ryzen 7040 does not make the L14 into a bad laptop, but it does have negative consequences.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-L14-G4-AMD-Review-affordable-laptop-with-good-upgradeability-and-battery-life.740094.0.html

[Bubba]

Those screens though? I get that these are not meant for people that need the best most color accurate displays, but still, that poor cubicle worker staring at a 220 nit crap screen all day in 2023 is so depressing and shows just how little companies (and Lenovo for that matter) care about the health (eye strain, etc.) of their workers.

 

[NikoB]

89% overall points for this garbage?! Probably the author made a typo (if you don't think about other reasons) and the real rating is 77-79%, as it should be.

There is nothing special to comment on - a morally obsolete series, with an extremely slow processor, RAM, slow wi-fi to return, an extremely slow screen (however, no one will work on a 14 "screen in adequate condition for a long time), idiotic extremely unreliable power supply from usb- c instead of a round angled plug on the side or a round one in the back as it was previously in all thinkpads, and usb-c is only a backup, additional.

The laptop howls with a cooler even in Idle, so it cannot be called quiet, despite the extremely slow processor for 2023. Especially in intensive surfing or working with online applications - where silence is valued as much as possible.

The sound quality from the speakers is mediocre.

From the point of view of a corporate device, the shameful antique RJ45 at 1Gbps is 20 years old, instead of at least 2.5Gbps, but 5Gbps is better. There will also be no fast connection to NAS and servers.

The L series is not strong enough and too heavy (1.5kg+, which is almost already the weight of 15.6" models) for 14" and for permanent carrying. It turns out neither this nor that.

Why 14" in the office? And on the road, why a fragile L, not T? The target audience, especially 14" L, is unclear. If 15.6+ can still be called a workplace, then a laptop with a 14" screen cannot be called an office laptop with an ugly keyboard without numpad. Any complex operations with numbers and fast group operations and even more so something else without a numpad, slow down by an order of magnitude immediately.

This Lenovo series has never been popular in any country either in companies or individuals.

Who wants to replace a stationary PC cheaply and with full upgrade options, plus a fast screen, take the "gaming" series 15.6+ both at home and at offices with low-end discrete gpu and fast cpu (like 7945hx+4050+18"/16:10 screen from Asus for 1500-1600$). And who needs a really reliable device for frequent carrying and not very careful handling, they take T or analogues from HP/Dell.

[8k]

Regarding use of slow processors, you cannot really blame OEMs for that -- as they're at the mercy of other chip manufacturers to supply them. The blame should go to Microsoft, Qualcomm and Apple. Microsoft for not building a fast x86 to arm translation layer, Qualcomm for still not yet building an M-silicon competitor yet and lastly apple because they probably could or have the money to sell their M chips (with proper native win/nix driver support) to other PC vendors but won't.

[Neenyah]

Damn, a CPU that is comfortably beating Apple's M1 and Intel's i7-1260U is "extremely slow in 2023". Lol, clownism is strong today.

[julia_top]

I do not understand why they have not put the processor that everyone is asking for and considered the best AMD product the Zen 4 7040 phoenix with = RDNA 3 + USB 4.0 + HDMI 2.1 + DDR5 + Oled Screen at 120Hz and to top it off with WIFFI 7 and It is found in the acer swift edge 16 (sfe16-43) which you already did an analysis and it is perfect for those who do not want to spend $1,000

[NikoB]

I do not understand why they have not put the processor that everyone is asking for and considered the best AMD product the Zen 4 7040

www.jonpeddie.com/news/client-cpu-shipments-up-17-from-last-quarter/

As I wrote earlier, AMD is rapidly losing the consumer processor market in favor of Intel. They don't care about the consumer processor market. It is no longer interested for AMD.

AMD has always had problems with the mass production of mobile chips, and now the desire to mass-produce a product has disappeared...

[Miro]

This Lenovo series has never been popular in any country either in companies or individuals.

Having E495 with even more obsolete Ryzen 3700U, it still fulfills its purpose as my only SW development machine. I value the upgradeability of RAM. I don't care about the screen - the notebook is connected to the external monitor most of the time. For very occasional travel, it is possible to take my work with me though. The USB-C plug together with Display port and power delivery is awesome - there's just a single cable on my desk connecting the notebook with the monitor. I haven't experienced any stability issues so far over past 4+ years.

Plus it is quite well supported by linux.

L14 Gen4 brings this even further. 64GB RAM instead of 32GB, two generations newer CPU, better display.
One can put this Lenovo next to the HP 845 G10 with the 7040U. The later offers the latest CPU, but it costs twice that much.

Still not convinced the upgrade is worth it, I would probably wait one more year for a refreshed model with 8040U and much faster AI/ML unit.

[Neenyah]

Still not convinced the upgrade is worth it,

It is not.

I would probably wait one more year for a refreshed model with 8040U and much faster AI/ML unit.

And this is definitely the right path and the right way of thinking.

[Miro]

I would probably wait one more year for a refreshed model with 8040U and much faster AI/ML unit.

And this is definitely the right path and the right way of thinking.
[/quote]

The AMD 8040U lineup unveild, no real gains over the past generation except for 40% gain in deep learning. I was hoping for significantly more. Let's wait for discounts and grab that 7040...

[NikoB]

no real gains over the past generation except for 40% gain in deep learning.

In general, I don't see any point in such local neural networks without significant amounts of fast RAM like HBM3. No one has ever described to me a single practical problem already solved based on these DSPs as part of the x86 SoC.