Lenovo ThinkBook 14" standard-laptop-computers Grigio 2020

A storage monster with a dinosaur brain. Buy it for the 2TB SSD and 32GB RAM, not for speed.

The storage is the star here. A 2TB NVMe PCIe SSD lands in the 94th percentile, which means it's faster than almost everything else we've tested. Boot times and file transfers will feel snappy. The 32GB of DDR4 RAM is also solid, sitting well above average. But that i7-8565U is a real letdown. It's a 4-core chip from 2018, and it shows. The AMD Radeon 540X with 2GB of VRAM is also pretty weak, landing in the middle of the pack at best. Don't expect to do any serious gaming or video editing on this thing.

Against something like the Apple MacBook Pro M4 Pro, this ThinkBook gets absolutely demolished in CPU performance. The M4 Pro is in a completely different league. The ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 offers way better gaming performance with a modern GPU, though it's heavier and pricier. The MSI Prestige 13 Evo is a better ultrabook choice if you want something light with a modern processor, though you'll sacrifice the massive storage. Honestly, the ThinkBook 14s only makes sense if you're a Linux user who needs tons of local storage and doesn't care about raw compute speed.

This is where it gets tricky. US prices range from USD 1,250 to USD 1,500, and the best deal we found is on Newegg at the lower end. But even at USD 1,250, you're paying a premium for storage and RAM while getting a CPU that's nearly seven years old. In Europe, the spread is even wider, from EUR 1,950 to EUR 2,424, which is frankly absurd for this hardware. The best EUR deal is also on Newegg's EU listings. Unless you absolutely need 2TB of storage and 32GB of RAM in a Linux laptop, this is a tough sell.

The Lenovo ThinkBook 14s is a weird mix of old and new. You get a massive 2TB NVMe SSD and 32GB of RAM, which is genuinely impressive for a business ultrabook, but it's all strapped to an Intel Core i7-8565U from 2018. That CPU sits in the 9th percentile of our database, which is a polite way of saying it's one of the slowest chips we've tested in this category. The one thing to know? This is a storage and RAM monster with a processor that belongs in a museum.

If you're looking for a fast, modern laptop for everyday work or creative tasks, this isn't it. Go get a MacBook Air M3 or a ThinkPad with a Ryzen 7 instead. You'll get way better performance for the same money, even if you have to settle for less storage.

This is a niche product for a niche buyer. If you're a developer or sysadmin who wants a Linux laptop with 2TB of storage and 32GB of RAM, and you don't mind a slow CPU, it's fine. But for everyone else, there are much better options at this price. The ancient processor and dim screen are hard to overlook. We'd only recommend this if you find it heavily discounted or if the storage and RAM combo is exactly what you need.