Lenovo ThinkPad T495s review: A solid AMD-powered business workhorse Review
Lenovo’s ThinkPad laptops have prolonged been popular with business end users, and the firm continues to grow the assortment. A new addition is the ThinkPad T495s, which is primarily based on AMD’s 2nd-generation Ryzen Professional processors. It can be intended to deliver a additional cost-effective choice to the company’s current Intel-primarily based types.
Lenovo Slim-Pad
You will need to continue to keep a close eye on Lenovo’s product figures, as there are two 14-inch AMD-primarily based ThinkPad laptops — the T495s reviewed right here, and the very comparable T495. The T495s costs about £100/$100 additional than the T495, but business travellers could perfectly take into consideration the more price to be a very worthwhile financial investment. That ‘s’ flags up the simple fact that the T495s is slimmer and lighter: it steps sixteen.1mm thick and weighs one.28kg, as opposed to 18mm and one.54kg for the T495.
Which is a superior pounds for a 14-inch laptop — it can be only a couple grams heavier than Apple’s thirteen-inch MacBook Air, which weighs one.25kg — and the ThinkPad’s smooth profile will unquestionably attractiveness to business end users who prefer a bigger monitor for viewing documents.
That claimed, it can be a small disappointing that Lenovo has limited the IPS monitor to FHD (one,920 x one,080) resolution (157.35dpi), mainly because a larger resolution option would make improved use of the monitor house. Even so, the image high-quality is very superior: the four hundred-nits anti-glare monitor is not the brightest we’ve at any time occur throughout, but its potent contrast generates a crisp, thorough image with a awesome color equilibrium that will work perfectly when viewing video clip. And, of study course, the 14-inch monitor will work perfectly for business presentations, or simply just number-crunching in spreadsheets. For an more £84 you can specify a variant of the monitor with a PrivacyGuard filter.
Our evaluate sample of the 14-inch ThinkPad T495s ran on a quad-core AMD Ryzen 5 Professional 3500U processor operating at 2.1GHz (up to 3.7GHz with Max Boost) with 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and integrated Radeon Vega 8 graphics.
Photographs: Lenovo
Design and style & options
The T495 has the basic ThinkPad look — a matte-black chassis and a crimson trackpoint in the center of the keyboard, as well as three chunky buttons at the leading of the trackpad. Trackpoint products are building a little something of a comeback at the minute, and they can unquestionably occur in handy for business travellers who are trying to work although sitting down in a cramped airline seat.
Even though this laptop’s layout is fairly conservative, we cannot fault its make high-quality. The T495s is very sturdily created, and the thin monitor panel — just 6mm thick — continue to feels organization more than enough to safeguard the glass monitor from the occasional bump when you are travelling. In accordance to Lenovo “the T495s is tested towards 12 army-quality needs and additional than 200 high-quality checks to make sure it runs in intense problems”.
The keyboard will be a delight for quick typists far too, with a awesome, organization travelling action on the keys, and a moulded, curved surface on every single vital that feels very snug and allows to guideline your fingers towards the centre of the vital.
It can be perfectly linked far too, with two USB-C and two USB-A (3.one) ports, HDMI for an exterior screen, and a 3.5mm microphone/headphone jack. There is certainly a fingerprint reader for more stability, and a proprietary Ethernet port for wired networks that will need an added adapter costing £20/$thirty. The T495s also involves a three-calendar year pieces-and-labour guarantee, which should really continue to keep your IT section satisfied.
Ports on the T495s include things like total-dimensions HDMI and a proprietary Ethernet connector that needs an RJ-45 dongle.
Graphic: Lenovo
Price tag & solutions
Lenovo’s AMD-primarily based ThinkPads are significantly additional cost-effective than their Intel-primarily based stablemates, and you can find an entry-amount configuration for the T495s operating Windows 10 Property for just £716.66 (ex.VAT, £859.ninety nine inc. VAT, or $one,154.thirty).
We tested the mid-assortment product that steps up to Windows 10 Professional sixty four. and costs £1,033.32 (ex. VAT, £1,239.ninety nine inc. VAT). It can be primarily based around a quad-core AMD Ryzen 5 Professional 3500U processor operating at 2.1GHz (up to 3.7GHz with Max Boost) with 16GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and integrated Radeon Vega 8 graphics.
SEE: twenty professional recommendations to make Windows 10 work the way you want (no cost PDF)
There are also a number of customisation solutions, like a leading-of-the-assortment Ryzen seven Professional 3700U processor, a 512GB SSD and Vega 10 graphics, which delivers the overall value to £1,333.32 (ex. VAT, £1,599.ninety nine inc. VAT). The solutions on Lenovo’s US web page are additional limited, despite the fact that a customised configuration that matches our evaluate unit arrives in at $one,407.70.
As stated, the monitor for all configurations is limited to just one,920 by one,080 resolution. If you will need a larger-resolution screen, you can expect to will need to look somewhere else.
Functionality
The authentic power of the T495s lies in affordability and portability, somewhat than uncooked functionality. Its Ryzen 5 Professional achieves scores of 887 (one core) and 2958 (multi-core) when operating the Geekbench 5 CPU examination, and 9980 in the Geekbench 5 Compute examination for graphics functionality. All those are relatively modest scores, despite the fact that the integrated Vega 8 graphics delivers additional respectable scores of 35.4fps in Cinebench R15, and 8fps in the graphically intensive Unigine Valley benchmark. The SSD cruises alongside smoothly far too, with read through and produce speeds of 3Gbps and one.6Gbps respectively.
This sort of functionality will be additional than enough for mainstream workloads involving productiveness software package these kinds of as Microsoft Office. You are going to get loads of work performed far too, as the laptop’s battery-saving mode permitted it to edge just earlier 9 hrs of wi-fi streaming on BBC iPlayer. For the document, Lenovo claims up to 14 hours’ life for the 57Wh battery.
Graphic: Lenovo
Conclusions
The ThinkPad T495s is not going to get any awards for uncooked computing horsepower, but it should really confirm a dependable platform for office environment software package, e-mail and world wide web browsing when you are on the highway. With a slim but robust layout and all-day battery life, it also has a additional competitive value tag than several of its Intel-primarily based rivals.
The latest AND Linked Information
Intel requires on AMD the only way it can
Lenovo ThinkPad T490s evaluate: A high-high-quality 14-inch business laptop with all-day battery life
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (7th Gen) evaluate: A leading-high-quality 14-inch business ultraportable, with superb stability options
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga (4th Gen) evaluate: Sleeker and lighter, but continue to superb
Greatest rugged laptops for business in 2020: Dell Latitude, Panasonic Toughbook, Lenovo ThinkPad, and additional
Study additional reviews
