The Lenovo ThinkPad L14 is successor to last year’s 14-inch ThinkPad L490. During last year’s review, we noticed that neither the display nor the CPU performed particularly well despite what turned out to be an overall decent package. This year, for the first time in the history of Lenovo’s L-series, you can choose between an Intel and an AMD processor. Lenovo’s L-series sits right in-between the higher-quality T-series and the more affordable entry-level E-series and is aimed primarily at business users. Given that the L14 shares many of its exterior attributes with its predecessor we are going to focus mainly on the new AMD CPU in this review.
Case – Typical ThinkPad
As expected of Lenovo overall build quality is solid. The ThinkPad L14 neither creaks nor flexes considerably, and the entire top of the 14-inch case is made of roughened plastic despite of which it manages to attract fingerprints. The thin display bezels are slightly rubberized and sit flush with the palm rests with the display lid closed. The two hinges are firm and offer the perfect amount of resistance required to ensure that one-handed opening remains possible. The maximum opening angle is 180 degrees.
Maintenance is simple and straightforward on this model as well given that the bottom panel can be easily removed by undoing a few screws. This will give you access to the most important components, such as for example the RAM which can be upgraded up to 64 GB. The battery, unfortunately, is not user replaceable.
Connectivity – AMD brings HDMI 2.0
Connectivity remained unchanged over last year’s L490. The L-series continues to lack a Thunderbolt port, which is only available on the T-series. Port layout has also remained unchanged over the ThinkPad L490. The main difference is the new HDMI port, which now supports 4K resolutions at 60 instead of 30 Hz.
Keep in mind that the HDMI port differs between the Intel and AMD models. While AMD SKUs support HDMI 2.0 (4k at 60 Hz) Intel SKUs are still limited to HDMI 1.4 (4K at 24 Hz).
Display – Only Marginally Better
Last year’s L490 featured a different panel than its predecessor, and it was barely any brighter than the L480’s display that was significantly too dim. This year, we see yet another panel in the ThinkPad L14, the Innolux N140HCA-EAC – basically a cheaper model of the ThinkPad T14s’s Innolux N140HCG-GQ2 panel.
The differences between the L and the T-series are very obvious in regard to maximum brightness (244 vs. 371 nits) as well as color space coverage, and the L14 is far behind its more expensive business sibling. When compared with the L490, brightness remained practically identical with some improvements in contrast ratio and black level. That said our review unit still managed to outperform the HP and Dell.
Outdoor usability was decent even in bright environments, but you should definitely avoid direct light sources. In order to get comfortable, you need an overcast day or at least full shade.
The panel itself is a relatively inexpensive IPS panel that continued to suffer from major color deviations even post calibration. The L14 is thus unsuitable for serious photo editing but should work perfectly fine in typical office and business environments.
Performance – No Throttling with AMD
Processor
AMD’s Ryzen 5 4500U does not support Hyperthreading on its six Zen 2 cores and thus features exactly as many threads as it has cores to offer. It does, however, run at a slightly higher base clock speed of 2.3 GHz with a turbo boost of up to 4 GHz. Additional details can be found on our dedicated page.
In multi-core benchmarks, the AMD Ryzen 5-powered ThinkPad L14 performed similarly to the recently reviewed ThinkPad E14 and outperformed its identically equipped HP ProBook 445 and Dell Latitude 14 competitors. We also found no evidence of throttling as performance remained stable and consistent even after 20 consecutive runs into our CineBench loop, much unlike Intel CPUs whose performance tends to drop significantly after the first run. Long story short: Intel CPUs seem to be more susceptible to performance throttling than AMD CPUs.
All Ryzen 5 notebooks performed almost identically in our single-core benchmark and managed to outperform Intel’s Core i5 by a small margin.
System Performance
Compared to its competitors, the ThinkPad L14 performed average in PCMark 10. Nevertheless, it performed above average for an office and business notebook, which became noticeable not only in this particular synthetic benchmark but also during everyday use.
Storage Devices
Our review unit featured a 512 GB Wester Digital SSD (WDC PC SN730 SDBQNTY-512GB) whose very important (from the operating system’s point of view at least) CrystalDiskMark 5.2 read/write 4K performance was lower than on all of its competitors. In AS SSD, its 4K read performance was lower than expected as well. We also found a significant performance difference between running on battery and running on mains. Without an active power supply, the read seq numbers dropped by almost 40 %.
GPU Performance
The Ryzen 5 features an AMD Radeon RX Vega 6 GPU with 8 CUs running at 1.2 GHz. This new GPU is a giant leap compared to the L490’s ancient Intel UHD Graphics 620, which is best exemplified by the fact that scores in 3DMark 11 doubled. Thus, the AMD-powered L-series is capable of taking on its Intel-equipped T-series that continues to include Intel’s UHD Graphics 620, and thus only performed half as well in our benchmarks. That said our review unit could have achieved even better scores with dual-channel RAM instead of its default single-channel configuration. Take for example the ThinkPad E14 with the very same iGPU as the L14 but dual-channel instead of single-channel mode RAM: it ran up to 29 % faster.
The L14 passed our stress test with flying colors. You will find more details in the emissions section under temperature below. Performance dropped slightly on battery. In 3DMark 11, we noticed a 5 % decrease in CPU (6,664 vs. 7,061 in Physics) and 9 % decrease in GPU performance (3,092 vs. 3,401 in Graphics).Gaming performance was right where we would have expected it to be. Overall, the L14 performed slightly below average for an AMD Radeon RX Vega 6. AMD’s Radeon RX Vega 7, such as we find for example in Lenovo’s T14s, was significantly faster, and outperformed our L14 by 10 FPS on average in FHD, a very common gaming display resolution.
Gaming Performance
Gaming performance was right where we would have expected it to be. Overall, the L14 performed slightly below average for an AMD Radeon RX Vega 6. AMD’s Radeon RX Vega 7, such as we find for example in Lenovo’s T14s, was significantly faster, and outperformed our L14 by 10 FPS on average in FHD, a very common gaming display resolution.
Emissions – Quiet Fan, Quiet Speaker
Noise Emissions
Just like its predecessor and the ThinkPad T14s our review unit remained pleasantly quiet overall. It peaked at just 32.8 dB(A) during our stress test, which was a pleasant surprise. Fan noise frequency was also very pleasant overall and not at all annoying even after long periods of time. We found no evidence of coil whine on our review unit.
Temperature
Overall, the ThinkPad L14’s temperatures around the keyboard area were better than its L490 predecessor’s with Whiskey Lake that tended to reach up to 46 °C in the top right corner. In comparison, our AMD-powered review unit peaked at 43 °C. Unfortunately, temperatures around the palm rests are around 7 °C higher than on the L490. The L14’s hot spot is located at the bottom rear where it peaked at around 50 °C – too hot for lap use.
Power consumption very quickly settled at 25 W during our stress test resulting in around 2.8 GHz and around 890 MHz for CPU and GPU, respectively.
Energy Management – AMD Is Power Hungry
Power Consumption
Compared to its predecessor, power consumption increased by around 13 %. At maximum load it drew 50.6 W through its 65 W power supply. Our comparison table also reveals that Lenovo’s AMD-powered notebooks on average tend to have a higher power consumption than their Intel-equipped counterparts.
Battery Life
Compared to its Whiskey Lake-equipped predecessor the AMD Ryzen 5-powered L14 ran about an hour longer under full load but shorter during video playback in return. In this particular test, the L14 landed in last place of its comparison group.
Verdict – A Breath of Fresh Air thanks to AMD
Lenovo did an overall very good job with the ThinkPad L14, which continues to emphasize Lenovo’s traditional strengths such as its sturdy high-quality case, its pleasant-to-use keyboard, straightforward maintenance, and an interesting collection of ports and connectivity including a smart card reader as well as a docking port for business users.
On the other hand, Lenovo missed its opportunity to improve upon the L490’s weaknesses, such as for example the dim display or its overall poor speakers that lack both volume and bass. Lenovo’s choice of display panel is a sore point in particular, and we would have wished for a wiser choice.
The most important achievement for the L-series is the introduction of AMD’s Ryzen 5 4500U. In our reviews of the ThinkPad E14 and T14 the AMD SKUs proved to perform much better than the Intel SKUs, and the same holds true with the L14 as well. AMD is simply better.
There was no noticeable throttling and thus no drop in performance during our CineBench loop. In contrast, Intel CPUs tend to lose a lot of performance after the first run due to performance throttling. The price you pay for this increase in performance is a slightly higher power consumption as well as higher surface temperatures at the bottom under maximum load. The GPU’s comparatively poor performance can be easily remedied by adding a second RAM module.
AMD brings a breath of fresh air to Lenovo’s ThinkPad series, and changes the traditional rules. Intel’s dominance is about to falter as AMD not only offers lower prices but also a significant performance boost. Thus, we have no choice but to once again highly recommend the AMD SKU over its Intel counterpart.
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