Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Review - Intel vs AMD By MobileTechReview

This is Lisa from mobile tech review and what's better than one ThinkPad. Well too, we have the ThinkPad t14s times two. We have both the intel and the AMD Ryzen models inside, so the casings are identical. The display options are mostly identical, but the CPU inside is going to make a difference, and the price tag is also different too. The intel is about 150 more for those of you who aren't familiar with the t14s. It's a big change in Lenovo's nomenclature.

This used to be the t490 and the t495s and well obviously they're starting to run out of numbers there, so they simplify, which makes sense, because these are 14-inch Ultrabooks. So t14 s stands for slim, there's some other variations too we're going to look at them now, but first, a shout-out to our sponsor expression VPNs: keep your connections safe and secure private tunneling encryption, all that sort of thing. So what's the idea you don't want to be tracked by websites and by ads maybe you're a little nervous about the government tracking? You all the reasons why you want to use VPN and even if you're working at home expression has a wonderful analogy. If you're sending data back and forth over your internet connection, it's like a postcard anybody who handles that data gets the hands on it can see what you've written so expression is like the envelope or encryption around that data to keep it private and secure. Also, for those of you who want to stream content, and maybe you're in a country or where you just can't access certain content.

For example, I, like BBC player and in the United States, we can't get that a VPN, because you can connect to different servers provided by expression around the world. Gets you around that restriction and, of course, if you're, using insecure, Wi-Fi hot spots at the hotel or the airport, our stuff stays secure, find out how you can get three months free by clicking on the URL in the description box, below expression, forward, slash mobile tech review and now back to our video. So, as you might guess, the ease with which I was holding two of those at once. These are very thin and light Ultrabooks 2.81 pounds, which is around 1.27 kilograms and under 13 millimeters thick so again, with the t14 and previously the t490 series, there's an overlap with the x1 carbon, which is the most expensive and the most premium and typically starts with higher end specs and better display, and all that sort of thing. Well, as with these, you have to upgrade them to get those better displays.

Still, it's definitely worth a look, because it's a lot less expensive than the x1 carbon. So inside you have your choice of intel, 10th generation, CPUs or the AMD Ryzen platform. Renoir, and that's been the big excitement for 2020, because the dozen CPUs have been so fast. So this is the dozen 5 and dozen 7 pro. Basically, it adds v-pro like features, so business laptop makers like Lenovo and others who need v pro CPUs for their customers.

Well, you've got something: that's commensurately suitable here. It doesn't mean a lot more performance versus the dozen, not pro it's more like pro features in either case ram is soldered on board. You can get up to 16 gigs of ram with the AMD version and up to 32 gigs of ram with the intel. Why that bit of unfairness, I don't know the ram, of course, with dozen's a little faster. The clock, speed that they require is 3200 megahertz versus 26.66 megahertz for intel. Both of them have an m.2, NVMe SSD slot. You can get anything up to a terabyte SSD in this.

If you want LTE is available 4g and that's cat 9 as an option. If you want it, and so it's a fingerprint scanner and windows, hello IR camera with the usual think shutter the physical slider that goes over the webcam. So you know nobody is serving out on you and watching you remotely, because these are think pads. The keyboards are excellent. The usual concave smiley shaped keys a little more key travel than we've seen in some very thin Lenovo and boy.

This is a thin laptop. It feels fantastic. This is a type of stream, and we have the usual track point eraser, stick pointer with the dedicated click buttons and the standard trackpad below, which works very well. No complaints with that. We have stereo speakers on board two times.

One watt with Dolby software- and I know Lenovo always surprises us with their business laptops, and they have pretty good audio there's a reasonable amount of bass, and certainly plenty of volume here for something. That's not a multimedia consumer targeted laptop ports are ample too again business facing laptop means. You want something other than here's a couple of USB ports knock yourself out right. You have got USB a ports on board. Furthermore, you have USB, in fact, two of those and on the intel model, you'll get thunderbolt 3 and on the AMD model, they're just USB gen2, because until recently that thunderbolt 3 was intel's intellectual property.

Now it's opening up, hopefully in the future, this will be different from AMD, but so that's one of the selling points for intel. If you really need thunder ball 3 and not just USB you're only going to get it with the intel version of that we have HDMI 2.0 on the AMD version and HDMI 1.4 b on the intel version. Go figure mostly that's important. If you're going to drive, 4k monitors at higher refresh rates, headphone jack, of course, Ethernet via optional dongle adapter is always with Lenovo laptops and the mechanical or physical, connecting dock connector on the side. For those who want to use think pad docks for display options.

Well, it's a 14-inch laptop, so 14 inch display, and you've got a variety of IPS displays to choose from the lowest and full HD is a 250 nit. Well gosh. I hope you're staying indoors when you're using that one, that's not very bright, then there's a 300 knit touch screen, which is what we have on both of our models. Then there's a 400 low power display, so we've seen opus and other business manufacturers as well and even some consumer laptops. So it uses a bit less power for those who really care about their battery life and probably get you about a half hour better run times.

If you go with that low power display and then there's the 500 nit privacy guard display for those of you who don't want people on either side to see what it is top secret stuff that you're working on so our touchscreen, which is a 300 knit touchscreen, is matte. I mean really that's pretty refreshing and very rare. So that's nice! The color gamut is not so nice. This is kind of sad and pathetic, and when I was saying that the x1 carbon starts with higher end displays, what I mean is even the lowest and carbon display at least usually covers the full RGB gamut. Where these don't even do that.

Of course, if you go for nicer higher end panels here, you can get that there's a 4k display option which, probably especially for a business focused laptop, might be overkill in 14 inches, but it's available, but only with intel. So for those who are think pad people and love that matte black finish, I mean these are very thin, like good, looking laptops that are not port compromised, long gone far away, we don't have things like removable, hard drives and removable batteries anymore. That legacy of the ThinkPad history is long gone, but as they go, the durable magnesium casing that we've got on here. The spill resistant keyboard all those things that, if you'd like a thing, tab the wonderful keyboard they're here, and it's if you're looking for a 14-inch Ultrabook. These are pretty tempting things.

But what you probably really want to know is intel versus AMD here and no surprise, given what we've seen throughout 2020 with the Verizon series of CPUs. Is it really mops the floor with intel's 10th generation offering to the tune of 20 to 25, often in benchmarks? Now for those of you who are buying these? That said, right, that's pretty exciting stuff, especially considering the AMD is cheaper, but still for those who are buying this just to do word and excel and zoom video calling and streaming video. Will you notice that performance difference not so much unless you're the kind of person who does spreadsheets that have 50 000 entries, then you will notice the difference, but for the average person is working on a couple of page Excel spreadsheet? Both of these are going to be fast enough for you, but for those who are pushing the envelope say you're doing some video production these days for Zoom presentations or whatever that sort of stuff, then yes, you're, going to benefit from the performance increase that dozen offers. Likewise, if you're a coder when it comes to compile times, dozen is going to rock there too. In terms of heat and noise, you know they're actually very similar.

They have the same chassis, they have the same fan the same size fan different motherboards there, but other than that. Neither of these gets burning hots and such by any means. You know they're Ultrabooks. They just don't do that and in terms of CPU temperatures they're pretty much surprisingly on parody. Now often it depends on rising.

You know depends on the cooling solution. Sometimes those can get pretty toasty too, but they're on par and perfectly fine. I mean at idle you'll see temperatures in the 30s centigrade where 100 is max allowed before you see thermal throttling push them hard. They go into the 70s 75, so the cooling solution is adequate here. The noise is similar.

The physical surface temperatures are similar in these, so how about battery life battery run times well again AMD because they have a seven nanometer process, it's well more efficient than the intel. Usually that means longer battery life but in this case we're seeing almost parity. In fact, the AMD gets a little less, I'm seeing about 9.4 hours, doing average productivity and streaming video use with brightness at 40 on the intel model and 9.0 hours straight on the AMD so a little longer, but not a lot. So in the end, if you're trying to choose between these, if you want the raw performance at 150 less starting price, well, it's going to be the AMD. If you need thunderbolt 3, specifically, you got thunderbolt 3 docks.

You want to use or something like that. Then it's going to have to be intel and for those who actually want that 4k display option that is only available on intel and lastly, intel gets a little better battery life, but not so much that I would say you should give up the performance on AMD. If you don't need the thunderbolt 3 and the 4k display to get inside as you'd expect business laptops, no nonsense, Phillips head screws all visible and then the magnesium lids come right off identical on both of these models says magnesium. Look at that they're bragging on it now all right, so here are internals. This one here is the intel model.

This is the AMD model, so we got our battery over here symmetrical the same, but the motherboard is no kidding different and if I turn them and put them in the same orientation to simplify that concept there you go. Let's see same cooling system, all that sort of thing. So here's our pocketed m.2 PCIE, NVMe SSD. Now the intel SSD benchmarked a little faster, but they are different brands. I don't know this is going to be a consistent difference.

I've seen one other reviewer, they found the same thing, but it's not a huge difference in speeds just ever so slightly over. Here we have our pocketed Wi-Fi card on the AMD. That's an intel, Wi-Fi 6 ax200 card. Here we have a soldered Wi-Fi card. How interesting is that ax-201 also intel Wi-Fi six cards? This slot here is for the optional 4g LTE card, which would go right there.

We have our antenna leads ready for that in case. Well, you get that ram is soldered on board with these. So nothing to see there heat sink design pretty much very similar, again same fan, all that sort of thing, and these are our speaker- drivers. They are down firing. So that's the ThinkPad t14s times two and by the way there is a t14, not s not as thin just like Lenovo's also done- and if you like this, but you want a 15-inch size, there's a t15s.

The t15p is a mobile workstation, with a different class of CPU and dedicated GPUs, but if you're looking for a 14-inch thin and light premium, tank Ultrabook well, these would be it, and it's nice to have the choice between the two processors inside. Let me see, for mobile tech review, be sure to subscribe, to YouTube channel for more cool tech, videos and laptops up. If you like this video.

Source : MobileTechReview