Lenovo ThinkPad E14 G4 AMD laptop review: Affordable and no major weaknesses

[Oleksa]

Lenovo, put 2 full slots, or change the BIOS!!!
I ordered memory for my ThinkBook (and for 2 other people) from different stores (1 from China, 1 from Germany, 1 brought from the USA).
The strips are 32 GB each.
The laptop has 8GB soldered in, there is one free slot. It works fine only with 8GB or 16GB flash drives.
As soon as you put in 32GB, you get errors and unstable performance.
Memtest on Windows and Linux is successful.
The website says it supports 40GB!!! I wish Lenovo to continue losing sales with this policy.

And the settings in the engineering bios did not help me, I lowered the frequency, lowered/increased the voltage, also does not help with stability.
And also, Lenovo, if you put s**** screens in laptops, then at least allow the edp 40 pin interface so that people can replace the display with a better one in 2023.
Unfortunately, Lenovo displays are still degrading every year. What's going on?

[NikoB]

What's going on?

notebookchat.com/index.php?msg=538182

[Russel]

+1 You are absolutely right The AMD Zen 3+ and Zen 4 chips support USB 4.0 and HDMI 2.1 I

+1 You are absolutely right The AMD Zen 3+ and Zen 4 chips support USB 4.0 and HDMI 2.1 I

This is AMD's lie that most people believed. The first AMD chip with built-in USB4 (2 ports) is Zen4 Phoenix, which is clearly reflected in the specifications for the series and which is not in the Zen3+ datasheet.

Zen3+ does not have a built-in USB40, it can work with an external controller, which must be additionally soldered. If it is not there, no firmware update will help you.

On the series where the firmware update turned it on, the additional soldered controller was originally, for example, on the L5Pro/L7 2020 and Thinkbook G4 + 2022.

Intel, on the other hand, has TB4 built into the U/P series for several generations and since 2022 into the H series, it is not in the HX either, so the eGPU performance is much worse there, as well as on AMD when working with an external controller.

If everything was exactly as you believe, why would the IdeaPad 3 Gaming 2022 series lack a USB40 port when the Intel version does?

Moreover, Lenovo deceives buyers in the data on the Intel version, stating that the HDMI port is only 1.4b version - indicating the maximum supported mode at 4k@30Hz (although the Intel H series and discrete 3xxx chips from NVidia have native HDMI 2.1 ports - i.e. Lenovo intentionally vilely worsens the characteristics of the ports in relation to the hardware capabilities of the chips), but in reality there are 4k@60Hz, which has already been proven by tests. And why did they do so vilely misleading potential buyers of Intel and AMD series? And for a simple reason - AMD does not have a USB40 built-in port in Zen3+, buyers of this series lose the eGPU output, two DP1.4b ports (there is only one DP1.4b) and 40Gb/s output to 4k@144Hz monitors in 30-bit color, because DP1.4b does not support it (and in 24 bit color), and the input ports of such monitors (everyone on the market now) come with HDMI 2.1 cut in half by bandwidth (which is still not here, Lenovo disabled native 2.1 version in the BIOS, neither in the AMD version, nor in Intel, despite the fact that that both versions support it in hardware). And in order to somehow brighten up the lack of a USB40 port in the AMD version for buyers, they lied in psref on the Intel series that HDMI is 1.4b(only 4k@30Hz), not 2.0b, as in AMD. In reality, the Intel version has port setup to 2.0b version, at least, i.e. the Intel version is vastly superior in port capabilities to the AMD version. But fools buyers, ordinary inhabitants can buy AMD for HDMI with 4k@60Hz. At the same time, the price of the AMD version with 6800H+3050/8GB (DDR5 4800, but it is of little use due to the extremely slow Zen3+ memory controller)/512 is almost the same as the Intel version with 12650H+3050Ti /16(DDR4 - here Lenovo is just saved on the Intel version)/512.

The AMD version's only advantage is a more power efficient processor - according to Lenovo, the 6800H version lasts up to 7 hours longer when playing 1080p video with the same battery. Which of course affects the overall noise from the laptop in normal operation.

And who knows about this, except for me and a handful of experts on the planet? Well, now a little more ordinary people know ... =)

I never got such battery life from 6800h. (I turned off the 3070Ti using legion tools kit and checked).
You'd probably need to reduce the brightness to less than 25% and then go for quiet mode to get such great battery life, at least in legion 5 pro.
Even with that, you probably wouldn't get over 4 hours at most from what I see.

[NikoB]

Your usage pattern differs from Lenovo's and this site's methods, which is why there is such a difference in results.

However, Lenovo claims that the AMD version has 7.7 hours more battery life when playing 1080p video at 150 nits of brightness and with the default volume value, in the case of the Ideapad 3 Gaming 2022 (we were talking about it, not the subject of discussion).

For the ThinkPad E14 Gen 4 (AMD), Lenovo does not give the video playback time in psref at all, which is typical, while for Intel it is 15 hours.

In the Ideapad 3 Gaming series, this time is indicated for both platforms and the AMD version gives 7.7 hours more in exactly the same testing conditions, according to tests from Lenovo.

So the 6800H gives 7.7 times longer 1080p/150nit video viewing time than the Intel i7 Aldel Lake generation.

[French User]

Thanks for the review. FYI, I just received this laptop (a 21EB0041FR, I believe only the keyboard is different from the reviewed model) and it came with a MediaTek MT7921 (PCI ID 14c3:7961, subsystem ID 17aa:e0bc) chip for the WLAN, not a Realtek one.
I replaced it with an Intel AX210 but I'm getting very similar performance with both cards (around 600 Mbit/s) in iperf3 on Linux connected to Netgear R7800 or WAX214 APs. Maybe the gap would be more significant if I were using APs supporting Wi-Fi 6E but still, the MediaTek adapter seems to be of better quality than the Realtek one.

[NikoB]

I replaced it with an Intel AX210 but I'm getting very similar performance with both cards (around 600 Mbit/s) in iperf3 on Linux connected to Netgear R7800 or WAX214 APs.

This is not a problem of the adapter and router, if the test is carried out within the line of sight - 2-4m and the transmit power on the router is set to 75% (DO NOT do 100%), but on the laptop adapter to High, but as antennas (and their connectors ) and shielding the signal with a metal screen cover, which automatically blocks, if there are no plastic inserts at the antenna output point, a 180 g viewing area for reflections, and wifi works on reflections.

I have the same situation where a laptop with a plastic screen cover with an older 9560 easily puts out considerably more speed than a laptop with a metal cover + AX200.

There is no way to solve this problem with the antenna arrangement used in this and many other laptops with a metal screen cover.