Note: This article was first published on 2 October 2019.
Work hard, play hard
The Lenovo ThinkBook 13s is a notebook for work and play.
The ThinkBook is Lenovo’s new line of notebooks that melds the features of traditional business notebooks with regular consumer notebooks. In doing so, it addresses two concerns. It offers businesses the ability to get an enterprise-class notebook without the high price tags commonly associated with Lenovo’s revered ThinkPad notebooks. It also shakes off notions that business notebooks are good for work use alone and are not capable of entertainment.
Lenovo is offering the ThinkBook in two display sizes: 13.3 and 14 inches. The unit that I have is the smaller one with a 13.3-inch display. But before we proceed with the review, here are the key specifications and price of the test system:
- Intel Core i5-8265U processor
- 8GB DDR4 memory
- 512GB M.2 PCIe SSD
- 13.3-inch Full HD IPS display (non-touch)
- AMD Radeon 540X 2GB GDDR5
- 307.6 x 216.4 x 15.9mm
- 1.4kg
- S$1,599
Two things that stand out immediately is the presence of a discrete graphics chip and the price relative to the specs on offer. It’s not often that you see a business notebook with discrete graphics, even if it’s a slightly dated Radeon RX 540X GPU that’s based on AMD’s older fourth-generation GCN architecture. Elsewhere, it has a fairly modern quad-core processor, a decent amount of memory, and a good amount of fast SSD storage. It’s also quite thin and not too heavy. On paper at least, this looks like a notebook that offers quite a lot for not very much money.
The keyboard and trackpad are both immensely usable, although the latter is a little narrow.
And it’s not like they skimped too much on parts either. The body is all aluminium and feels solidly put together. The design is nondescript but unoffensive, the keyboard has a sensible conventional layout and it's also spill-resistant and pleasant to use. The trackpad, though on the small side (10.5 x 6.3cm), is accurate and responsive. There’s even a fingerprint reader for quick and secure logins.
The display is easily the notebook's weakest aspect. Note that the webcam above has a physical privacy shutter.
My only complaints are with the display. Despite supporting Dolby Vision HDR technology, it isn’t quite as sharp, bright, or punchy as I would have liked. Also, it doesn't support touch inputs and the bottom bezel is especially thick.
From left to right, we have the Slim Tip connector for power, a HDMI 1.4 port, a USB-C port (USB 3.1 Gen 2), and a 3.5mm audio jack.
On the opposite side, we have two USB-A ports (USB 3.1 Gen 1).
As for ports, you get two USB-A ports that support USB 3.1 Gen 1 and a single USB-C port that supports USB 3.1 Gen 2. There’s also an HDMI 1.4 port. Sadly, there’s no Thunderbolt 3 support, memory card reader, or SmartCard reader. But what really gets me is that the USB-C port cannot be used to charge the notebook. The ThinkBook S13 relies solely on a “slim-tip” connector for charging.
The ThinkBook 13s relies on a slim tip connector charging. Fortunately, the power adapter is compact.
Finally, there are some business-centric security features such as Fast Identity Online (FIDO) authentication support, TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module), and a physical privacy shutter for the webcam.
How does it perform?
The ThinkBook 13s is one of the few notebooks to feature AMD graphics.
Thanks to its capable mid-range Core i5-8265U processor and speedy PCIe SSD, the Lenovo ThinkBook 13s performed admirably in our benchmarking tests. Also, its discrete graphics chip meant it was significantly faster than notebooks which had to rely solely on Intel’s integrated graphics solution. That said, the Radeon 540X was clearly not a match for notebooks with NVIDIA graphics. The MSI Prestige and Razer Blade Stealth, which are both powered by the NVIDIA MX150 GPU, racked up significantly better scores on 3DMark and Tomb Raider. Still, the important takeaway is that the ThinkBook 13s should be able to run mainstream games fairly well even at Full-HD resolution as long as you turn the graphics settings down.
Also, it's worth mentioning that the discrete GPU wasn't activated when I first ran Tomb Raider. For some reason, the integrated GPU was used which resulted in scores that were much less than I anticipated. Fortunately, this can be easily fixed by installing the Radeon Software from AMD.
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How long can its battery last?
We used PCMark 10’s new built-in battery benchmark to evaluate the Lenovo ThinkBook 13s’ battery life. Since we only started using this benchmark recently, we are still building up results, hence the shorter list of comparison notebooks. We tested the notebooks on the Modern Office and Gaming workloads. The first simulates regular daily use with web browsing, word processing, and video conferencing workloads. The Gaming workload is self-explanatory and represents a worst-case scenario of how long the notebook will last if it was taxed to the maximum.
At any rate, the ThinkBook 13s’ battery life — at over 5 hours long in Modern Office and nearly 1.5 hours in Gaming — was decent bearing in mind that it has the smallest battery at just 45Wh. Even the Spectre x360’s battery capacity is over a third larger. Looking at the power consumption figures, we can see that it's slightly higher than its rivals ― possibly because of its discrete graphics chip. But overall, its power consumption wasn’t too high.
Moving to the Portability Index, which takes into account battery life, dimensions, and weight, we can see that ThinkBook 13s recorded the lowest scores. But then, we have to remember that it’s up against notebooks with far larger batteries. Furthermore, the ASUS VivoBook S14 and LG gram 14 are two notebooks that were designed with extreme portability and long battery lives in mind. If it's any consolation, the ThinkBook 13s has fast charging capabilities and can reach an 80% charge from zero in just an hour.
Final Thoughts
Despite the price, the ThinkBook 13s has an all-aluminium construction.
There is an increasing emphasis on business notebooks that straddles the line between work and play and the Lenovo ThinkBook series is one of the more affordable options. All things considered, it’s a decent attempt by Lenovo and one that actually offers quite a lot of value considering it has basic business security features and decent performance in both productivity and gaming benchmarks. Build quality is also high and there are no glaring faults to speak of save for its lacklustre display and lack of Thunderbolt 3 support, memory card reader, and USB-C charging.
The recommended retail price for the configuration tested is S$1,599 but it seems like Lenovo often runs promotions on its online store and you can easily get it for less. At the time of writing, there’s an e-coupon that you can apply that brings the price down to S$1,487.
If you require security features like the TPM, the ThinkBook 13s is well worth a closer look.
While it sounds enticing, there are cheaper alternatives. ASUS’ ZenBook 14 UX431 and Acer’s Swift 3 Premium have comparable configurations with discrete NVIDIA graphics and they are priced at S$1,398 and S$1,198 respectively. What they lack, insofar as specifications are concerned, are the security features of the ThinkBook 13s like the TPM chip and webcam privacy shutter. If these security features are important to you, then the choice is clear. The Lenovo ThinkBook 13s is a compelling option given its price, features, and specifications. For everyone else who just wants a notebook for general computing purposes and light gaming, know that there are other alternatives worth checking out.
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