Test Lenovo ThinkPad T14 G4 AMD Laptop: Ryzen-Power im kompakten ThinkPad

[Redaktion]

Die ThinkPad T-Serie stellt eine der wichtigsten Bestandteile von Lenovos Portfolio an Enterprise-PCs dar. Die Einkäufer der Firmenkunden bekommen dabei die Qual der Wahl: AMD oder Intel. Es gibt Argumente für beide Seiten - für das ThinkPad T14 G4 AMD spricht die Effizienz.

https://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14-G4-AMD-Laptop-Ryzen-Power-im-kompakten-ThinkPad.778625.0.html

[NikoB]

Again Lenovo is being redneck - instead of lpddr5 7500 it soldered the slow 6400. And I don't believe the result at a memory write speed of 94GB/s - it is too different from the speed in read/copy mode. In addition, access latency is simply monstrous - 130ns+(!) A complete shame for Lenovo engineers for such RAM settings in the BIOS. In addition, this directly affected the performance of the integrated graphics.

According to the author, despite the fact that this is a T series, the strength of the case has dropped very much compared to older models.

I would never give an fhd screen with such characteristics more than 82-83 points. In addition, I do not believe in the contrast result of 1700:1+. And I have long proposed checking the contrast with a calibrator by steps of 50 nits up to 30 nit, plotting a graph of changes in contrast depending on brightness. Not everything is clean there from different manufacturers, as tests of different models of panels from different models have shown problems with contrast for low brightness (<50%).
If there was 4k@120Hz and really with a contrast of 1700:1, then the screen would deserve at least 90 points. And if the real response was less than 7ms on B2W/G2G and no glare, then 95+ points would be possible.

As for the ports, as usual, Lenovo is bad for the fact that there is no power supply through the usual, round corner plug - there is a place for it on the left edge. Then the laptop could be used much more comfortably by reclining right-handers. And so USB-c power supply, as usual. idiotically sticks out perpendicular to the case and it is quite easy to break it while lying with the laptop on the sofa or bed - especially for right-handed people.

Well, there is room on the eSATA on the left or right - they could have brought at least one port out with it (or better yet, in the back, as power supply). This is necessary for testing the HDD in exclusive mode, which cannot be done via USB3+/USB40 under Windows/Linux.

After all, the old T series 10 years ago were much more packed with capabilities and solutions. And much stronger by case...

[LG]

I would never give an fhd screen with such characteristics more than 82-83 points. In addition, I do not believe in the contrast result of 1700:1+. And I have long proposed checking the contrast with a calibrator by steps of 50 nits up to 30 nit, plotting a graph of changes in contrast depending on brightness. Not everything is clean there from different manufacturers, as tests of different models of panels from different models have shown problems with contrast for low brightness (<50%).
If there was 4k@120Hz and really with a contrast of 1700:1, then the screen would deserve at least 90 points. And if the real response was less than 7ms on B2W/G2G and no glare, then 95+ points would be possible.

According to Lenovo, this particular screen  model has a contrast ratio of only 800:1. It seems Notebookcheck's measurement method to determine contrast ratio is not very accurate, or manufacturers are just very inaccurate with their specifications.
Lenovo usually offers several different screen options to chose from, often more than others laptop brands, and especially more than Apple where you're always limited to a single display option.
A lot of people including myself don't need 4K or 120Hz in a 13 or 14 inch office laptop. The blow on battery life is just not worth it. The most important things to me are decent brightness of at least 400 nits, rather 500 nits more, a proper anti-glare screen, 16:10 or even better 3:2 aspect ratio, and no PMW flickering. Contrast ratio should be high enough to provide good readability outside or next to windows and there should be little to no screen bleeding/IPS glow. I'd love the option to have 120Hz but also the ability to downscale to 60Hz (when saving on battery life is the priority) like on most Smartphones or an adaptive refresh rate. Anything between 2k to 3k is more than enough for most people on 13 or 14 inch laptops. For larger laptops it's a different story.

[RobinLight]

As for the ports, as usual, Lenovo is bad for the fact that there is no power supply through the usual, round corner plug - there is a place for it on the left edge. Then the laptop could be used much more comfortably by reclining right-handers. And so USB-c power supply, as usual. idiotically sticks out perpendicular to the case and it is quite easy to break it while lying with the laptop on the sofa or bed - especially for right-handed people.

I don't get your point. You have 8.5 to 12 hours of battery life so there is no need for the power supply when you sit on your couch... Or do you never get up from there 🙄? In the (lunch) pauses you could charge the device again.

But even when you want to have the power supply connected: USB-C offers a lot of possibilities! You can extend your USB-C cable easily and use a compact corner connector so nothing sticks out. You can also replace the Lenovo USB-C charger by a much better / lighter one! All those possibilities you never had using those old bullshit proprietary connectors. Today I would no longer buy a notebook without power supply via USB-C PD. Now every device, even those iPhones can be charged by a single power adapter, great for traveling and this is what notebooks are made for.

[NikoB]

I don't get your point. You have 8.5 to 12 hours of battery life so there is no need for the power supply when you sit on your couch... Or do you never get up from there 🙄? In the (lunch) pauses you could charge the device again.

This is quite funny due to the fact that the performance of the processor and graphics on x86 drops significantly from the battery.

USB-C offers a lot of possibilities! You can extend your USB-C cable easily and use a compact corner connector so nothing sticks

There are no reliable adapters on the market. Or a power supply with an initially angled USB-C plug. Moreover, the USB-C connector itself is an order of magnitude less reliable than the round angled plug.

USB-c when operating from a power supply is extremely uncomfortable - it must be a backup plug and nothing more. The main one must be a round corner on the side or USB-C, but only in the back.

A lot of people including myself don't need 4K or 120Hz in a 13 or 14 inch office laptop.

Again, another nonsense from another ordinary person on NB. When was the last time you looked at your smartphone? Where is the text clearer? Why is it so much clearer on a smartphone? This is a homework assignment for you to understand why.

You are all ruining your eyesight in Chrome, where black and white anti-aliasing cannot be disabled with incorrect rendering of shadows around characters, leading to cloudy text, which I have 100% proven on many forums. No one could dispute this, because... the evidence is absolute. Google is an evil corporation that deliberately ruins people's vision on desktops. This problem does not exist on smartphones. Again - guess why?

When running on battery power, no one bothers you to switch 4k to fhd mode at 60Hz, but from the power supply the picture must be ideal for the eyes. Only 300ppi+ produces high-quality text and graphics. You didn't guess this? The consumption of the matrix controller and video card will immediately drop significantly at fhd@60Hz, if the hardware designers are not idiots.

[Neenyah]

Again Lenovo is being redneck - instead of lpddr5 7500 it soldered the slow 6400.

Ah, 6400 is now slow, lol. You forgot to add your favourite word there for its prefix though - shameful.

As for the ports, as usual, Lenovo is bad for the fact that there is no power supply through the usual, round corner plug - there is a place for it on the left edge. Then the laptop could be used much more comfortably by reclining right-handers. And so USB-c power supply, as usual. idiotically sticks out perpendicular to the case and it is quite easy to break it while lying with the laptop on the sofa or bed - especially for right-handed people.

+

USB-C offers a lot of possibilities! You can extend your USB-C cable easily and use a compact corner connector so nothing sticks

There are no reliable adapters on the market. Or a power supply with an initially angled USB-C plug. Moreover, the USB-C connector itself is an order of magnitude less reliable than the round angled plug..

+

USB-c when operating from a power supply is extremely uncomfortable - it must be a backup plug and nothing more. The main one must be a round corner on the side or USB-C, but only in the back.

One of many reliable solutions. Welcome to 2020, about 10 years ahead of you (and we are almost in 2024).

When running on battery power, no one bothers you to switch 4k to fhd mode at 60Hz, but from the power supply the picture must be ideal for the eyes. Only 300ppi+ produces high-quality text and graphics. You didn't guess this? The consumption of the matrix controller and video card will immediately drop significantly at fhd@60Hz, if the hardware designers are not idiots.

You are a braindead moron. I will explain it again to you by simply copy/pasting my previous comment on that matter:

Quite literally nothing is true nor accurate in that wall of text, pretty impressive. Especially not this part:

When running on battery power, there is no problem switching to fhd mode on a 4k panel without losing any sharpness at the pixel level - 4 4k pixels turn into 1 fhd, and the interpixel distance is still less than on a native fhd panel.

At 720p four pixels are binned into one pixels down to perfect integer number with 2560x1440 so try to use 1280x720 on a 1440p panel. You certainly won't manage to go "without losing any sharpness at the pixel level" and everything will look like s***.

I mean if you are lazy to change your screen resolution to 50% lower one, just literally take a screenshot of your screen, paste it in Paint, resize it to be 50% smaller, then save that screenshot and open it on your native resolution screen and make it fullscreen. It looks like crap. It's pretty clear that you don't have a 4K screen, lol. That is obvious from your point of looking at everything through 100% scaling; good luck using 100% scaling with 4K at 16", haha. Most people use 200% and that is effectively FHD, just much sharper.

Also just switching to a lower-resolution mode most definitely won't help with battery life because the 4K panel is still taking higher amount of power (than a FHD panel) regardless of what data is sent to it. The power savings will not come from the display when you lower the resolution; the saving come from the GPU because it doesn't have to render as many pixels. Switching to lower refresh rate will help though.

But then again that is not the case anymore since about Intel HD 520 (which was working flawlessly with 4K) so I understand why you think it is as that GMA 950 in your 2008 MSI laptop is clearly struggling even with its own 768p native resolution; perhaps it is time for an upgrade, NikoB?

[02nz]

LOL "Leistung: Ryzen schläft Core i mühelos in Sachen Multicore-Performance"

[Kabelkanal]

An sich ein starkes Gerät.
Leider ist der RAM verlötet - das schmälert die Attraktivität deutlich.

[Kabelkanal]

A lot of people including myself don't need 4K or 120Hz in a 13 or 14 inch office laptop. The blow on battery life is just not worth it. The most important things to me are decent brightness of at least 400 nits, rather 500 nits more, a proper anti-glare screen, 16:10 or even better 3:2 aspect ratio, and no PMW flickering. Contrast ratio should be high enough to provide good readability outside or next to windows and there should be little to no screen bleeding/IPS glow. I'd love the option to have 120Hz but also the ability to downscale to 60Hz (when saving on battery life is the priority) like on most Smartphones or an adaptive refresh rate. Anything between 2k to 3k is more than enough for most people on 13 or 14 inch laptops. For larger laptops it's a different story.

Yes, yes, yes! Spot on, on what is on the wish list for most people.
2k to 3k RES, anti-glare, 16:10, 400 nits minimun, 60hz, no PWM is the sweet spot.

4k @ 120 Herz with high contrast and fast response rates? No. Way too inefficient. 

I have a laptop with 500 nits, touch, and 120 hz and if I use the screen and the graphics card to its full potential, the battery is faster empty than someone in his thread can write his long comments of shamefulness.
The T14 G4 AMD is designed to be also productive on the road. If you are just stationary, just connect a nice large monitor.

[NikoB]

The T14 G4 AMD is designed to be also productive on the road.

With a keyboard without a full-fledged numpad, this is a priori impossible.

[Benjamin Herzig]

I don't need a numpad and I don't want a numpad, it would impact my productivity in a negative way. Your priorities are not everyones priorities.

[NikoB]

I don't need a numpad and I don't want a numpad, it would impact my productivity in a negative way.

But you are not a professional developer, engineer, or scientist. Even in business, the lack of a numpad is a critical flaw.

[Kabelkanal]

If it was a requirement for most IT professionals or business people, then thinkpads would have them. Because what the market needs, is what gets paid for, is what gets produced.

Can we agree that thinkpad keyboards should revert to a deeper key travel distance? For those who know the original / earlier Thinkpad keyboards... they are a joy with a travel distance of >= 1.8 mm ;-)

[Neenyah]

Can we agree that thinkpad keyboards should revert to a deeper key travel distance? For those who know the original / earlier Thinkpad keyboards... they are a joy with a travel distance of >= 1.8 mm ;-)

I honestly don't care about travel distance, that one is easy to get used to as long as it stays on reasonable levels and not something bizarre like 0.4 mm or so. My first ThinkPad was T420s, I have a much newer X1 Carbon now and I had an opportunity to try the brand new Z13 G2 yesterday. Key travel is fine on them all... But what I miss a lot from those old(er) keyboards is 7 rows instead of 6 now. That is a way more significant difference than 0.3 mm key travel, IMHO. Well said everything in the first paragraph btw 👏