The Lenovo ThinkBook 14 G4 is a business-class notebook that can be used for some very light gaming, and no, I am not talking about Solitare. The ThinkBook 14 G4 is part of Lenovo’s 12th Gen Intel CPU range of business notebooks. The unit I had for review had an i5-1235U(it has 10 cores, 12 threads) CPU in it that can boost up to 4.4Ghz from its base clock of 3.3Ghz.
Now the 12th Gen CPUs from Intel support DDR4 and DDR5 however, with the ThinkBook 14 G4, Lenovo opted to go with DDR4 Dual channel ram. The ThinkBook 14 G4 comes standard with 8GB of DDR4 3200Mhz that’s soldered directly to the logic board. This is a bare minimum when it comes to most operating systems. To mitigate this Lenovo made it possible to install one DDR4 32GB module, this would push your total amount of RAM up to 40GB of DDR4 ram.
When it comes to storage the ThinkBook 14 G4 has two M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots and in the loan unit I had, it had a 512GB PCIe 4.0 M.2 installed. So when booting up the unit it only takes a few seconds to go into Windows 11(it also had Win11 Pro installed). Here is the second user upgradable part on this notebook, you can install another M.2 drive(it supports up to 1TB M.2’s).
What I liked about the ThinkBook 14 G4 is that it still has a card reader, great for getting pics of your SD cards when you are on a shoot. I won’t recommend doing your Photoshop editing with the base unit, maybe once you have more RAM installed.
On the ThinkBook 14 G4, you get an FHD 14″ screen that does about 45% of the NTSC spectrum. Not the greatest for photo editing. It does, however, come with an Anti Glare coating on the screen. Lenovo went with an aluminium base and top for the ThinkBook 14, whereas most other notebooks in this price range use a plastic coating. You would also think due to the aluminium it would be a heavy unit, this is not the case as it comes in just under 2Kg(excluding the power brick).
When it comes to connectivity on the ThinkBook 14 G4, you can look forward to Wi-Fi 6 on the wireless side and a Gigabit Lan physical connection. Bluetooth 5.1 rounds out wireless connection. The ThinkBook 14 also has two USB 3.2 Type A and one Type C connection(this is also your charge point) and it also has Thunderbolt 4 connection. Both the Thunderbolt and Type-C connection supports outputting Video in the form of DisplayPort 1.4.
Speaking of Power, the ThinkBook 14 comes with a 65W USB-C power brick and has a 45Wh integrated battery(so only replace it after your warranty is up). I was able to use the ThinkBook 14 during load-shedding, but only if I stayed to look at YouTube, browse the net and answer emails as gaming(at medium) brings down the battery on the unit.
Speaking of gaming I was able to play some League of Legends, but I had to change my setting to medium as the ThinkBook 14 G4 only has an Intel Xe(AKA Intel UHD Graphics) integrated on the CPU. I didn’t try anything more consuming than LOL as this unit is not made for gaming.
Overall I think the Lenovo ThinkBook 14 G4 does an excellent job when it comes to being a business notebook. Coming in at R21059.00 it is not that expensive, it is even cheaper at some other online stores. I was happy to see that you can upgrade the RAM and M.2 drives on the unit, as 8GB of RAM is just the bare minimum you would need(I can already see the IT guy in pain). I would have liked to see a slightly longer Warranty period for this price.
