Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 Review

The ThinkPad E series is the most affordable family in Lenovo’s renowned ThinkPad laptop lineup. The 14-inch ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 reviewed here (starts at $627; $892 as tested) delivers the qualities that ThinkPads are known for without breaking that thousand-buck ceiling, including a first-class keyboard and long battery life. We also like that our review model has both a touch screen and a three-year warranty. The Asus ZenBook 14 OLED delivers a much livelier screen for general consumer buyers, but as a productivity-first platform, this ThinkPad earns our Editors’ Choice award for budget business laptops.

Design: Classic ThinkPad Quality

The ThinkPad E series delivers the everyday essentials; home users, college students, and small businesses trying not to spend more than necessary would do well with these models. Businesses requiring remote-management features like Intel vPro will need to step up to the ThinkPad L series (such as the Lenovo ThinkPad L15) or the top-of-the-line T series (see the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s). Those lines also provide more premium features. For just the basics, though, the E series will get you by just fine.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

My ThinkPad E14 review sample is black; Lenovo also sells it in Arctic Gray for a different taste. I’m a fan of the classic ThinkPad looks, so this test model checks my boxes. It’s of average size for a 14-incher, at 0.7 by 12.3 by 8.6 inches, and just misses our three-pound ultraportable cutoff at 3.11 pounds. The ZenBook 14 OLED (0.67 by 12.34 by 8.69 inches; 3.06 pounds) has almost identical proportions. The pricier Acer Swift Go 14 is only a tenth of an inch thinner (0.59 by 12.3 by 8.6 inches) but lighter, at 2.91 pounds.

This ThinkPad is impressively well built considering its budget status; Lenovo says it passes MIL-STD-810H standards for durability. The lid is aluminum while the chassis, though plastic, is reassuringly sturdy and resists flex well. My only naysay is that both the lid and chassis show fingerprints easily.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Port selection includes one Thunderbolt 4, one USB Type-C (10Gbps), one USB 2.0, an HDMI 2.1 video output, an Ethernet jack, and a 3.5mm audio combo jack. Thunderbolt 4 is surprising on a budget laptop and a big plus for connecting a multi-monitor docking station. Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6 are standard, though you have no option to upgrade to Wi-Fi 6E even on Lenovo’s customizable models in this family.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Using the Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 5: Keyboard, Screen, and Features

The keyboard is what always sells ThinkPads for me, and the ThinkPad E14 doesn’t miss a beat here. Its snappy and direct key feel helped me score near my personal best in the MonkeyType typing test, at 117 words per minute with 99% accuracy. The two-level white backlighting looks sharp; the layout is perfect (dedicated Home, End, Insert, and Delete keys are along the top, and the arrow keys are properly separated); and the top row has many useful shortcuts. The Fn and Ctrl keys at the lower left are swappable in the included Lenovo Vantage app. (First-time ThinkPad buyers ought to try it as-is!)

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

ThinkPads are the last bastion for the eraser-head pointing stick in the center of the keyboard. The ThinkPad E14’s implementation is as effective as any other ThinkPad’s, replete with three dedicated mouse buttons below the spacebar. The touchpad is narrow but a smooth operator, delivering silent and pleasant tactile clicks when the pad is pressed.

Audio quality is one of the ThinkPad E14’s weak points. I hear reasonable detail in the Scorpion’s “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” but the sound signature is stressed and lacks bass. The lack of bass is even more obvious in Daft Punk’s “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger.” Furthermore, the speakers barely get loud enough for personal listening, and distortion sets in after 80% volume. It’s just not an effective audio setup. With a budget business laptop, though, it’s hard to make a big deal out of the speakers when rocking out.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

A 1,920-by-1,200-pixel IPS screen is standard across ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 models; the only available upgrade is touch control (about $50 on customizable models), which my model has. Watching several new movie trailers and NFL game replays on YouTube, I find the screen is sufficiently bright—it couldn’t be called dim—though colors are somewhat washed out. Reds, especially, seem more orange than they should be. Lenovo only rates the screen for 45% NTSC gamut coverage; around 72% would have been ideal. However, remember that this is a budget laptop, and so its screen is fine for web surfing and Word documents.

The webcam over the display captures at 1080p resolution and includes a sliding privacy shutter on my test model, though the base ThinkPad E14 is saddled with just 720p. My unit doesn’t have the optional infrared sensor, but you can still skip typing passwords, thanks to the fingerprint reader that’s built into the power button.

My review configuration includes Windows 11 Pro (not Home, like most laptops in this price range) and a three-year warranty instead of the one-year industry norm. Virtually no unwanted software is installed, either. The main app is Lenovo Vantage, which shows device health, support access, system updates, and settings. It lets you limit the battery-charge percentage to prolong the battery’s longevity and assign a macro to the F12 key.

Testing the Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 5: Just Enough Oomph for the Job

The $892 ThinkPad E14 Gen 5 we’ve tested is a preconfigured model (specifically, 21JK0053US), featuring an Intel Core i7-1355U processor (10 cores, up to 5.0GHz turbo), Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB solid-state drive.

The $627 customizable base model on Lenovo.com is borderline underpowered, with a Core i3-1315U CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, a non-touch screen, no backlit keyboard, and just a 720p webcam. My model’s Core i7-1355U is the top CPU, though most of you would be fine with the Core i5-1335U. The real reason to fork over extra for the Core i7 is for its slightly faster integrated graphics. I’d also like to note our review model has a 47-watt-hour battery; the 57Whr battery available on customizable models ought to extend battery life by around 20%.

The ThinkPad E14 can be upgraded, too: You’ll find one open SO-DIMM slot (8GB is soldered to the motherboard) and, in a rare move for a laptop this size and price class, a second M.2 SSD slot.

Our comparison systems are mostly consumer-grade laptops, due to a lack of budget-priced business laptops at this size and form factor. The 2024 Acer Swift Go 14 ($999) leads it off with an Intel “Meteor Lake” Core Ultra CPU and Intel’s Arc integrated graphics. The AMD-powered Asus ZenBook 14 OLED ($869) and HP Pavilion Plus 14 (often available under $1,000) are up next. I also included the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i 14, which features a 2-in-1 screen design for similar money ($899). These systems all use integrated graphics and, excluding the Acer, a 15-watt CPU that’s typical for this class.

Productivity and Content Creation Tests

We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.

Our other three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).

Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe’s famous image editor to rate a PC’s performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It’s an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The ThinkPad E14 scored about what we expected in PCMark 10’s main test; it simply had no chance of catching the eight-core HP or the Meteor Lake-equipped Acer. A minor bright note is that it did well in the storage subtest.

This ThinkPad struggled to keep pace in the CPU tests, especially in the long-running Cinebench and HandBrake, which suggest its Core i7 CPU might be throttling more than expected or impacted by poorer cooling than the comparison systems. Though those tests aren’t reflective of what this laptop would be practically tasked with, they still highlight that this ThinkPad isn’t a high performer, even in our Core i7 model. It was more in line with the Core i5 IdeaPad in many of these tests.

Graphics and Gaming Tests

We test the graphics inside all laptops and desktops with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark: Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).

To further measure GPUs, we also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests, which are rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions, exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.

The ThinkPad E14’s prospects didn’t change much in these 3D tests. Its Iris Xe integrated graphics are enough for light-duty tasks only; gaming would only be possible with a streaming service like GeForce Now, if you’d even want that out of a business laptop. The IdeaPad beat the ThinkPad’s numbers here, and the Acer’s Arc integrated GPU was untouchable.

Battery and Display Tests

We test each laptop and tablet’s battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We ensure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

To gauge display performance, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen’s color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

As they say, it’s not how you start but how you finish, and the ThinkPad E14’s battery lasted more than an hour longer than the next-longest-lasting IdeaPad. Nearly 12 hours of unplugged life from a budget laptop is impressive. (Remember, it could last even longer if equipped with the larger battery.)

The ThinkPad E14’s screen, however, is about average for a budget laptop, reasonably bright but shy on color, covering less than half of the DCI-P3 gamut. Then again, this is a business-focused laptop, and not an expensive one at that.

Verdict: A Commendable Budget Business Laptop

The ThinkPad E14 Gen 5’s sturdy build quality, excellent inputs, and long battery life uphold the ThinkPad tradition to make for an ideal productivity platform. It even surprises with premium features, like Thunderbolt 4, a 1080p webcam, and support for two internal storage drives.

You’ll find a few dents in its armor, namely weak speakers and a screen that’s somewhat washed out, but those are ultimately forgivable given its pricing and intended usage. The Asus ZenBook 14 OLED provides a superior screen for entertainment, but for everything else, this ThinkPad is a commendable value and earns our Editors’ Choice award for budget business laptops.