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This review first appeared in issue 353 of PC Pro.
Despite its competitive price – the range starts at £649 inc VAT for a Core i3-1315U/8GB/256GB spec with Windows 11 Home – the E14 Gen 5 is everything a ThinkPad is expected to be. This graphite black laptop has the chrome ThinkPad logo on its aluminum lid, complete with the red-lit dotted “i” that gives it a hint of business elegance.
I tested the version with a polycarbonate/ABS cover, but you can choose aluminum. This adds nothing to the price and only 20g to the weight, and the latter is one of this laptop’s most attractive features: 1.4kg with the 47Wh battery, 1.5kg with the 57Wh option. However, with the bigger battery in place, the laptop only survived 7hrs 48mins in our web-surfing test. With this spec, we expected something over nine hours.
The power drain doesn’t come from Lenovo squeezing every last drop out of the supplied Core i7-1355U CPU. Although the E14 Gen 5 never missed a beat in my daily usage, the benchmarks don’t lie: Lenovo’s own ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 scored 8,979 in Geekbench 6.2’s multicore test to the E14’s 8,000. Similarly, in our Handbrake test, the E14 took 10mins 57secs to convert our sample 4K video to 1080p compared to 9mins 5secs for the X1.
Both machines have 16GB of RAM and, while the X1 has the advantage of LPDDR5 memory, it’s all soldered onto the motherboard. Here, 8GB is soldered on but there’s an 8GB DIMM that can be replaced by a 32GB module. You can also swap out the supplied 512GB SSD, a short but speedy M.2 2242 unit, or specify a 1TB model for an extra £60 when ordering.
The E14 continues Lenovo’s tradition of excellent keyboards, with snappy, deep-travel, chiclet-style keys, the trademark red TrackPoint and plenty of spacing. I loved typing on it and managed 91 words per minute in the 10FastFingers.com test with 97% accuracy, compared to my average of 88wpm with 91% accuracy. A smooth and centrally located touchpad adds to its attractions.
As ever with budget laptops, Lenovo has made a sacrifice with the screen. This is no wide-gamut affair, covering 65% of the sRGB space and 46% of DCI-P3. However, it’s strong in other areas: peak brightness of 374cd/m2 is actually 74cd/m2 more than Lenovo claims, while an average Delta E of 0.3 confirms excellent colour accuracy. It’s anti-glare, too, so great for office work, while a 1,920 x 1,200 resolution looks sharp over the 14in diagonal.
A webcam perches above the screen, and it’s worth choosing the 1080p unit in my machine over the 720p option (at a cost of £20). It produced excellent video in good lighting, and even coped in low-light conditions. Autofocus and tracking were speedy, while using Windows Hello proved a breeze.
The dual mics did a fine job of focusing on my voice while keeping background noise to a minimum, and I was similarly pleased with the speakers.
Music emerged with discernible depth, mid-tones and highs. Take Megan Thee Stallion’s “Her”. The house music bassline hit hard, with no distortion even at the highest volume. Despite being lightweight and pretty slim – 19mm at the front, 22.7mm at the rear – Lenovo includes a generous number of ports. The left side packs two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a USB-A port, an HDMI out and a combo audio jack. The right features a USB-A port, gigabit Ethernet and a nano Kensington lock. The latter adds to an impressive roster of security features, with a physical cover on the webcam, a self-healing BIOS and the option of a fingerprint reader (£10) built into the power button.
Our price includes all these options, including Windows 11 Pro, but one of the great things about Lenovo’s approach is that you can customize it. For example, switching to a Core i5-1335U saves £200. You might prefer to spend some of this to extend the one year of on-site cover to three years; this has a list price of £210, but Lenovo frequently offers generous discounts.
So while battery life disappoints and we have criticisms of the screen and its outright speed, the E14 Gen 5 adds up to a strong choice for businesses on a budget. And even if you do cut it down to its most basic specs, it will exude professionalism for years to come.
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