Lenovo’s ThinkPad laptops have prolonged been well-known with business enterprise customers, and the corporation proceeds to grow the vary. A current addition is the ThinkPad T495s, which is based on AMD’s second-generation Ryzen Pro processors. It truly is intended to provide a additional inexpensive alternative to the firm’s present Intel-based styles.
Lenovo Thin-Pad
You need to have to continue to keep a shut eye on Lenovo’s product numbers, as there are two fourteen-inch AMD-based ThinkPad laptops — the T495s reviewed right here, and the pretty equivalent T495. The T495s fees about £100/$100 additional than the T495, but business enterprise travellers might perfectly think about the excess price to be a pretty worthwhile expenditure. That ‘s’ flags up the fact that the T495s is slimmer and lighter: it measures 16.1mm thick and weighs one.28kg, compared to 18mm and one.54kg for the T495.
That’s a superior fat for a fourteen-inch notebook — it really is only a number of grams heavier than Apple’s thirteen-inch MacBook Air, which weighs one.25kg — and the ThinkPad’s smooth profile will certainly enchantment to business enterprise customers who prefer a more substantial display screen for viewing files.
That said, it really is a minor disappointing that Lenovo has restricted the IPS display screen to FHD (one,920 x one,080) resolution (157.35dpi), because a larger resolution option would make improved use of the display screen place. Even so, the impression good quality is pretty superior: the four hundred-nits anti-glare display screen isn’t the brightest we have ever arrive throughout, but its powerful distinction produces a crisp, specific impression with a good color balance that will work perfectly when looking at movie. And, of program, the fourteen-inch display screen will get the job done perfectly for business enterprise shows, or basically quantity-crunching in spreadsheets. For an excess £84 you can specify a variant of the display screen with a PrivacyGuard filter.
Our assessment sample of the fourteen-inch ThinkPad T495s ran on a quad-main AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 3500U processor running at 2.1GHz (up to three.7GHz with Max Improve) with 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and integrated Radeon Vega 8 graphics.
Photographs: Lenovo
Design and style & features
The T495 has the common ThinkPad seem — a matte-black chassis and a pink trackpoint in the center of the keyboard, additionally three chunky buttons at the leading of the trackpad. Trackpoint units are earning a little something of a comeback at the second, and they can certainly arrive in handy for business enterprise travellers who are hoping to get the job done whilst sitting in a cramped airline seat.
While this laptop’s layout is considerably conservative, we cannot fault its establish good quality. The T495s is pretty sturdily constructed, and the slim display screen panel — just 6mm thick — even now feels firm ample to secure the glass display screen from the occasional bump when you happen to be travelling. According to Lenovo “the T495s is examined in opposition to twelve armed forces-quality prerequisites and additional than 200 good quality checks to be certain it runs in intense ailments”.
The keyboard will be a delight for rapidly typists as well, with a good, firm travelling motion on the keys, and a moulded, curved surface area on every single key that feels pretty relaxed and assists to guidebook your fingers to the centre of the key.
It truly is perfectly connected as well, with two USB-C and two USB-A (three.one) ports, HDMI for an exterior show, and a three.5mm microphone/headphone jack. There is certainly a fingerprint reader for excess protection, and a proprietary Ethernet port for wired networks that will demand an further adapter costing £20/$thirty. The T495s also contains a three-calendar year elements-and-labour guarantee, which should really continue to keep your IT section delighted.
Ports on the T495s include comprehensive-measurement HDMI and a proprietary Ethernet connector that demands an RJ-45 dongle.
Image: Lenovo
Cost & options
Lenovo’s AMD-based ThinkPads are noticeably additional inexpensive than their Intel-based stablemates, and there is certainly an entry-stage configuration for the T495s running Home windows 10 Household for just £716.sixty six (ex.VAT, £859.99 inc. VAT, or $one,154.thirty).
We examined the mid-vary product that steps up to Home windows 10 Pro 64. and fees £1,033.32 (ex. VAT, £1,239.99 inc. VAT). It truly is based about a quad-main AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 3500U processor running at 2.1GHz (up to three.7GHz with Max Improve) with 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and integrated Radeon Vega 8 graphics.
SEE: twenty professional strategies to make Home windows 10 get the job done the way you want (absolutely free PDF)
There are also a quantity of customisation options, such as a leading-of-the-vary Ryzen seven Pro 3700U processor, a 512GB SSD and Vega 10 graphics, which provides the complete selling price to £1,333.32 (ex. VAT, £1,599.99 inc. VAT). The options on Lenovo’s US site are additional restricted, while a customised configuration that matches our assessment device will come in at $one,407.70.
As described, the display screen for all configurations is restricted to just one,920 by one,080 resolution. If you need to have a larger-resolution show, you’ll need to have to seem elsewhere.
General performance
The actual toughness of the T495s lies in affordability and portability, relatively than uncooked overall performance. Its Ryzen 5 Pro achieves scores of 887 (one main) and 2958 (multi-main) when running the Geekbench 5 CPU examination, and 9980 in the Geekbench 5 Compute examination for graphics overall performance. People are relatively modest scores, while the integrated Vega 8 graphics provides additional respectable scores of 35.4fps in Cinebench R15, and 8fps in the graphically intensive Unigine Valley benchmark. The SSD cruises together efficiently as well, with read and generate speeds of 3Gbps and one.6Gbps respectively.
This kind of overall performance will be additional than sufficient for mainstream workloads involving efficiency computer software this sort of as Microsoft Business office. You are going to get a lot of get the job done carried out as well, as the laptop’s battery-preserving mode allowed it to edge just previous 9 hours of wi-fi streaming on BBC iPlayer. For the record, Lenovo statements up to fourteen hours’ lifestyle for the 57Wh battery.
Image: Lenovo
Conclusions
The ThinkPad T495s isn’t likely to gain any awards for uncooked computing horsepower, but it should really verify a responsible platform for office environment computer software, electronic mail and net browsing when you happen to be on the street. With a slim but strong layout and all-day battery lifestyle, it also has a additional competitive selling price tag than lots of of its Intel-based rivals.
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