Yes, Amazon Prime day is next week (see our overview of early deals), but Amazon isn’t the only company currently running sales. Lenovo is having a sale on its ThinkBook laptops, with the option to pick up an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor and AMD’s integrated Radeon 680M graphics for under $1,000, something we haven’t seen before.
Lenovo’s ThinkBook 13S Gen 4 features the Ryzen 7 chip from the 6000 series, 16 gigabytes of RAM (soldered), a 512 GB SSD and a 13-inch IPS display for $862 ($209 off)† To see this discount at checkout, you need to enter two promo codes: SUPERTHINKJULI and BFIJTHINK OFFER†
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Why we like the ThinkBook 13S
Photo: Lenovo
The ThinkBook line, Lenovo’s cheaper alternative to its iconic ThinkPadslooks a bit like a Dell XPS or MacBook, but it beats both when it comes to ports. You get a USB-C 4.0 port (which doubles as a charging port), a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, a USB-A port, an HDMI 2.0 port, and a headphone jack. There is also a fingerprint reader.
We didn’t test this particular model, but we liked last year’s version (we tested it with the Intel chip). The Ryzen 7 chip in the Gen 4 is AMD’s most powerful option for laptops and should be able to handle anything you throw at it. It lacks a discrete graphics card, but the integrated Radeon 680M graphics card is enough for most people (if you’re looking for a video editing machine, look elsewhere). AMD’s 6000 series Ryzen chips are also known for their improved battery life. Lenovo claims 11 hours, but that’s under ideal conditions; count eight to nine hours.
The keyboard is on the flat side, closer to the MacBook experience than a ThinkPad, but still quite comfortable to type on. The laptop is about the weight of a MacBook Air, so it’s pretty easy to lug around. The only place where this ThinkBook cuts corners is the screen, a 13-inch, 1,920 x 1,200-pixel anti-glare IPS panel. It’s not the brightest at 300 nits, but I still prefer a lower-resolution anti-glare panel over a higher-resolution glossy panel, and the 16:10 screen ratio gives you some extra vertical screen real estate.
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