Review Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 4 (2023) AMD Ryzen 7840U, 32GB, 1TB laptop review

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TLDR: This is the best laptop I’ve ever used so far in terms of specs and Linux compatibility, especially being the AMD Ryzen platform, so despite being pricey I’m very happy with it.

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REVIEW:

Specs:
  • Ryzen 7 Pro 7840U (Zen 4, 4 nm, codename Phoenix) CPU at 3 Ghz base and 5.1 Ghz boost clock.
  • 32 GB LPDDR5 (soldered) RAM at 6400 Mhz speed.
  • 1 TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD at peak 7 GBps read/write.
  • 14 inch 16:10 aspect ratio OLED matte 2880x1800 display at 400 nits.
  • Ports are 2 USB-A, 2 USB-C of which one is USB4 also used for charging. HDMI and Ethernet ports.
  • Qualcomm NFA725 Wi-Fi 6E chipset with BT 5.3.
  • Fingerprint reader is Goodix branded model.
  • 5 MP + IR webcam for facial recognition login with physical privacy shutter.
  • Battery is 52 Wh capacity Li-Po with a 65w compact USB-C charger.
This is the top-specced T14 (non S) customisable model except for the SSD which tops out at a 2 TB option. My preferred model was the P14s which tops out at 64 GB (also soldered with no upgrade option) but for whatever reason the Lenovo India website forced me to pick Windows pre-installed at ₹10k to ₹20k extra to be able to pick the OLED display option which was a deal breaker. Same restriction with the T14s model. I didn’t look at other T and P models though. So I settled for this T14 which is a good thing otherwise I might have splurged on the P14s.

CPU, RAM and SSD are top notch to say the least. Enough said?

There are plenty of specs+reviews online of the CPU. It’s the PRO edition which has “manageability” capabilities and the Microsoft Pluton security module in addition to discrete TPM2. Plus the 8 cores and 16 threads at 4nm and 15w to 30w power range.

The RAM is LPDDR5, though soldered with no extra slot for future upgrade options.

The replaceable SSD is a fast PCIe Gen 4 NVMe at about 7 GBps sequential read/write speeds when the laptop is powered but drops to about half that when on battery.

Display is excellent, especially being a low reflection matte OLED at 16:10 aspect ratio 2880x1800 resolution. Pretty much every other brand has a glossy type (like my ASUS ZenBook) and it’s quite annoying to me and took me a while to adjust to it. There’s some concern (FUD?) about permanent burn-in likelihood especially since I don’t use it for gaming or video/media consumption and time will tell if it’s unfounded. A plus point is the resolution and size DPI / PPI is just right for Linux desktops like GNOME and KDE to automatically pick 2x scaling factor (aka Hi-DPI mode) and the UI text and other elements are comfortably sized.

Keyboard options (for the customisable build) are US layout only (no Rupee symbol) with or without backlight and I picked without. Of course, you can simply pick an “English - India” keyboard layout in the OS settings and you get the Rupee symbol output when you press the Right-Alt + 4 key combination. The trackpad and TrackPoint (nub) are the typical ThinkPad format and work well.

Webcam option I picked is a 5 MP + IR for Windows Hello facial recognition. There is a Linux tool called Howdy which works with my Logitech BRIO that I have with my desktop PC and I have yet to try it with this laptop. See https://github.com/boltgolt/howdy

Fingerprint reader is a Goodix branded device on the power button and works out of the box with the Linux tool fprintd which typically comes preinstalled, especially with the GNOME (GDM) login screen for enrolling and authentication. It takes some effort to set up and use at the moment with KDE Plasma 5 (though version 6 should sort this out) and on my favourite distro elementary OS but it does work.

UEFI BIOS has pretty comprehensive options to configure although there’s some quirks like slow startup time and some (for now) hindrances trying to boot operating system ISOs off a USB stick with the ventoy.net multi-ISO-boot tool. Linux ISOs boot but for Windows 11 23H2 I had to write a dedicated USB stick for it to work.

Battery life given the 52 Wh capacity is around 6 hours (plus or minus 1 hour) with moderate usage (mostly web browsing, programming and the occasional compiles and software installations/updates. This is on Linux with current kernel version 6.6+ which is a slight improvement over the stock v6.2 that comes with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS based distros which I prefer like KDE Neon and elementary OS. I’ve installed the xanmod.org custom kernel “edge” series which is currently at v6.6.1. I tried openSUSE Tumbleweed which works very well. I observed that with the older v6.2 while it works the CPU would idle at 1600 Mhz and with v6.6 it goes down to 400 Mhz due to a new AMD P-State driver. It takes about just an hour to get fully charged from near empty with the 65w charger. Edit: battery drain on sleep is less than 2% per hour on linux kernel v6.6 xanmod.org optimised for Zen4.

Price as configured is around ₹ 1.35 lakh including nearly ₹5k ADP and after a 10% (max ₹10k) cashback offer that I’m expecting within 30 days as promised by customer care.

Delivery time was estimated to be 2 to 3 weeks and mine arrived in about 15 days. The customer care mentioned it was being shipped from their China factory to their Mumbai warehouse and then via Blue Dart courier to me in Pune. Side note that the courier falsely claimed I was not available to accept delivery and so I got it a day later. Blue Dart being Blue Dart.

Positives:
  • Decent build quality overall - although not at the level of an ultrabook or a MacBook.
  • Unique keyboard look and feel - not like your typical chiclet format - white on black lettering.
  • Display is matte and not the typical reflective ones from other brands and not to underestimate the annoyance.
  • Surface texture feels like a car steering wheel wrapped in faux leather - slightly rubbery and non-slip.
  • Default 3 year on-site warranty with optional 3 year ADP aka Accidental Damage Protection.
  • Last and not the least is the near-perfect Linux compatibility which is to be expected from a ThinkPad T or P series but even more welcome on an AMD Ryzen platform.
Negatives:
  • The Ryzen AI acceleration module in the CPU is not (so far) supported on Linux with tentative prospects in the future too. AMD has an issue ticket on GitHub open for gathering feedback and interest levels for them to add support here: https://github.com/amd/RyzenAI-SW/issues/2
  • Keyboard layout overall isn’t perfect like how most HP laptops have it the way I like. There isn’t a dedicated vertical row of keys on the right side for Home, End, Page Up/Down etc which is nice to have for programming and other typing. The Function keys are smaller too compared to HP but at least they’re arranged in slightly separated groups of 4 so even though I need to look down at them it’s quick enough to locate and press the one you want. The “FN” and CTRL keys are in the opposite order (FN on the leftmost and CTRL to the right of it) but there is a BIOS option to “swap” them virtually.
  • Bootup time is slower than, say, an HP Intel platform laptop (like my old 11th gen Core i5 with a PCIe Gen 3 NVMe SSD) which boots from power on to the login screen in about 7 seconds flat. This laptop takes about 20 whole seconds for the login screen to appear (both Windows and Linux) with a full 7 seconds from power on to even the Lenovo logo to appear - must be due to memory and disk self tests (POST) even though I’ve select “fast boot” option in the BIOS.
Conclusion:

I’ve been waiting a few years (since the 4800U Zen 2 series) for a Ryzen laptop with decent specs and good Linux compatibility but choices (at least locally in India) were lacking until now.

I briefly installed Windows 11 23H2 (it didn’t detect the wifi during install) but quickly wiped it to try various Linux distros which pretty much all worked near perfect out of the box.

I think the ThinkPad (T and P series with Ryzen) makes for an excellent option for (a company to provide its) software developers to work on Linux unless they prefer a MacBook which perhaps costs about twice as much for similar specs. Of course ThinkPads have been legendary for their Linux compatibility except they’ve usually been Intel based.

I also prefer the Ryzen platform over current Intel offerings mainly due to superior efficiency and performance (at least performance per watt) and am not a fan of the hybrid P-core / E-core / Thread Director nonsense that Intel is peddling.

Looking forward to a few upcoming years of pleasant ownership experience!

PS: I’ll try to update this main post as far as possible with additions or corrections based on any questions or comments in this thread.
 
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Price difference was maybe 1k or so IIRC. I rarely ever find the need and feel the keys are more "flimsy" to allow space for the backlight to be visible from the edges of each key but I could just be imagining it.
 
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On lenovo's there are two battery saving options as practically comes with every laptop.
  • Windows battery saver that you get by clicking on the battery.
  • Battery saving toggle by lenovo, which you select by doing FN+Q, it switches between three modes.
I think the lenovo battery saver have a lot more low level control than the windows one, cause I also see those three modes in bios.

Both of these in combination gives the best possible run time on x64.
 
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shree4231 said:
man, linux battery life is still bad, when apple is giving 18hr battery life, this is very bad value.
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It's just a rough estimate but it looks like I was getting average 6 hours with kernel v6.2 and an extra hour moving to v6.6

Note that this is a 52 Wh capacity battery compared with my smaller 13 inch zenbook which has 68 Wh and I get approx 8 to 9 hours with Ryzen 6800U.

I'm not motivated to reinstall windows and see what improvement there is but typically better than linux, yes.

But yeah nothing beats even my former M1 pro MacBook pro simply mind boggling battery life.
 
shree4231 said:
man, linux battery life is still bad, when apple is giving 18hr battery life, this is very bad value.
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AMD is touted for efficiency this generation but they have definitely messed things up at firmware or driver level on mobile devices. For same devices with Intel or AMD options (talking about H rather than U series here), AMD usually has much worse battery life, mostly because Intel has much better scheduling that utilises the E-cores better based on workload.
 
*ahem* its ThinkChad /s but yeah can't wait until Arm hits mainstream CPUs that's when we will get that battery life. I have been wanting to get one too just for Linux since the legion series don't have the level of Linux support that Lenovo gives to ThinkPad.

AMD is touted for efficiency this generation but they have definitely messed things up at firmware or driver level on mobile devices. For same devices with Intel or AMD options (talking about H rather than U series here), AMD usually has much worse battery life, mostly because Intel has much better scheduling that utilises the E-cores better based on workload.\
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AMD is only good until 45W which is their max TDP for mobile GPUs and even the new 7745HX has a max TDP of 75W but in general, they are way more efficient, meanwhile my 12700H sometimes draws 135W under really high loads (e.g. Cyberpunk Path Tracing), Intel atleast on Windows and in gaming laptops space dont offer good battery life, but their performance is on the level of Desktop Processors. The E-Cores 's main benefit is not power efficiency but rather they are space-efficient in the sense, that you can stuff more cores and they'll scale better in tasks which can benefit from additional cores in contrast to Apple's design which prioritizes low power consumption for that battery life. Intel on the other hand just went all in on Performance.
 
altair21 said:
*ahem* its ThinkChad /s but yeah can't wait until Arm hits mainstream CPUs that's when we will get that battery life. I have been wanting to get one too just for Linux since the legion series don't have the level of Linux support that Lenovo gives to ThinkPad.


AMD is only good until 45W which is their max TDP for mobile GPUs and even the new 7745HX has a max TDP of 75W but in general, they are way more efficient, meanwhile my 12700H sometimes draws 135W under really high loads (e.g. Cyberpunk Path Tracing), Intel atleast on Windows and in gaming laptops space dont offer good battery life, but their performance is on the level of Desktop Processors. The E-Cores 's main benefit is not power efficiency but rather they are space-efficient in the sense, that you can stuff more cores and they'll scale better in tasks which can benefit from additional cores in contrast to Apple's design which prioritizes low power consumption for that battery life. Intel on the other hand just went all in on Performance.
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I haven't seen it first hand but came across repeated posts where AMD has really bad battery life on the mobile H series compared to Intel. On top of that they struggled for months to release proper drivers for the 780M and as per some discussions there is an inherent flaw in AMD's design which has also led to shortage of 7040 series APUs, especially for laptops. As a result of which they are sticking to Zen 4 and RDNA 3 for the next-gen APU as well, which will just be a design rectification of the current series.
 
t3chg33k said:
I haven't seen it first hand but came across repeated posts where AMD has really bad battery life on the mobile H series compared to Intel. On top of that they struggled for months to release proper drivers for the 780M and as per some discussions there is an inherent flaw in AMD's design which has also led to shortage of 7040 series APUs, especially for laptops. As a result of which they are sticking to Zen 4 and RDNA 3 for the next-gen APU as well, which will just be a design rectification of the current series.
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You probably know more about the shortages but I think you have got Intel and AMD swapped when it comes to battery life, Intel has always been worse than AMD in terms of battery and the release of the P/E cores arch only made it worse.
 
I agree that the Ryzen 7 M is much better than the Intel i7 M. I had the Ryzen 7 earlier and I liked the portability of it. It was great as a secondary portable device in addition to my desktop.

Unfortunately I ended up buying the P14s Intel i7 due to a hefty discount and after 2 years, I hate it. I had the previous T series as well and that seemed better.

These ultrabooks have underpowered processors and get ultra hot when you keep them running at heavy loads for a sustained period. And I guess the power efficiency features start to underclock the processor.
Please invest in a cooling fan asap for this laptop.

I got the touchscreen version which proves nifty for Zoom calls and multitasking. The backlit version has proved very useful when working with dim lights/night time.
 
mithya said:
I agree that the Ryzen 7 M is much better than the Intel i7 M. I had the Ryzen 7 earlier and I liked the portability of it. It was great as a secondary portable device in addition to my desktop.

Unfortunately I ended up buying the P14s Intel i7 due to a hefty discount and after 2 years, I hate it. I had the previous T series as well and that seemed better.

These ultrabooks have underpowered processors and get ultra hot when you keep them running at heavy loads for a sustained period. And I guess the power efficiency features start to underclock the processor.
Please invest in a cooling fan asap for this laptop.

I got the touchscreen version which proves nifty for Zoom calls and multitasking. The backlit version has proved very useful when working with dim lights/night time.
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With AMD doing nothing with the 8000 series APU, Intel's Meteor Lake with Arc graphics on the Intel 4 node seems to be a better value proposition for performance and efficiency as per initial reviews.

Competition is good and it seems Intel will be a good option for thin laptops in 2024, after quite some years.
 
TinTinSnowy said:
@t3chg33k What is a good review to read on Meteor Lake? I'm seeing mixed reviews and opinions. Not sure if it's really an improve or more of a sidegrade.
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CPU wise, the P-cores are a bit of a downgrade as clock speeds are lower on the new node, even if IPC is same or slightly better. The E-core IPC is much better and the new LP-E core will probably help with low power tasks. Intel's Thread Director improvements to workload distribution with future firmware updates will probably improve things down the line.

It seems this generation is more efficiency focused as E-cores are now default instead of P-cores and more of the power budget is dedicated to the Arc graphics. It basically goes toe to toe with Zen 4 and RDNA 3 overall, which is a good thing.

Meteor Lake will certainly lose to 13th gen in almost all single core or same thread CPU benchmarks due to the lower frequency but will score double in GPU ones, with much better efficiency.

I suppose we will have to wait for official reviews from outlets like Anandtech to get an accurate picture as Intel has only shared 2 laptops with different media outlets who have also tested them differently.
 
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