Don't get this laptop in the hope that AMD will officially release FSR4 INT8 on RDNA3.5 iGPU:
FSR4 INT8 on RDNA3 looks so much better than what RDNA3/RDNA3.5 officially support:
youtube.com/watch?v=VPMOjdvmHMk "FSR4 on RDNA3 on Windows!!! How To Guide and Side by Sides Tested on RX 7800 XT"
youtube.com/watch?v=yB0qmTCzrmI "AMD Tried To Hide This From You - FSR 4 INT8 on RDNA 3 & 2 Tested"
youtube.com/watch?v=v70p700D94U And here Owen shows that even AMD's /r/radeon hardcore crowd is starting to get pissed off on AMD (and righteously so, of course).
QuoteVerdict: last gen ThinkPad laptop can be worth it
^ This, because it's the same chassis (no LPCAMM2 either) and the same CPU (Ryzen 400 AI is a rename of Ryzen 300 AI).
Interesting how even the older Zen 4 8840U (a rename of an even older 7840U) is equally fast (this is because Zen 5 offers minor improvements over Zen 4 (maybe more in server workloads)).
I know I'm comparing apples and oranges, but the APPLE Air 13 (13.6 inch) is lighter/2.64 lbs, has a better display, a similar keyboard (since LENOVO reduced the key travel), metal chassis and arguably looks better, has a 50% faster single-core CPU performance (4195 vs 2804) and 50% in multi-core, has an over 2x faster iGPU[1], is about 2 times faster in browsing (446 ms vs Air's 238.6 ms), .., and the 16 GB RAM option is also about
half the price (32 GB unified memory/RAM available for about the same price, but the Air's RAM is not upgradable and there's no 64 GB RAM option, but the upside is that the Air's memory is running at 9600 MT/s vs 5600 MT/s on this laptop (both connected to a 128-bit memory bus width)[2]).
[1] 3dmark.com/search -- Steel Nomad:
Radeon 860M: Average score: 430
MacBook Air (2026 M5, 8-core GPU, 13"): Average score: 941
MacBook Air (2026 M5, 10-core GPU, 13"): Average score: 1066
[2]
This: 89.6 GB/s = 128-bit * 5600 MT/s / 1000 / 8.
Air: 153.6 GB/s = 128-bit * 9600 MT/s / 1000 / 8.
(the Air has a 71% higher memory bandwidth (this is why e.g. its iGPU is much faster))
Ups, the 9600 MT/s are in the M5/2026 model and it starts at 1099, so not quite at half the price (would have to be 900 (the M4 is below this price, tho)), but still much cheaper.