Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen 6 review: getting down to business

It was with a bang earlier this year that a new generation of ARM64 laptop processors from seasoned chipmaker Qualcomm entered the computer market proper. With its Snapdragon X Elite and Plus models, the company had one goal in mind: usurp the dominance of X86.

That is to say, it wanted to dethrone Intel and AMD, to build a head of steam in the adoption of ARM64 apps by developers and to gain a slice of the ever lucrative laptop market. All lofty goals, and which had been attempted several times since 2018 to little effect

What made a difference this year was two-fold, the benchmarks results and the partners brought on board. Qualcomm’s new processors sent eyebrows skyward as they achieved benchmarking results far in excess of those of its previous chips, and this in turn helped to build excitement, and support from a host of manufacturers, Lenovo included.

Enter the Thinkpad T14s Gen 6, a machine at the spear tip of a new wave of Windows machines intended to help revive a flagging market. It has 32GB of RAM, up to 1TB of storage, up to a 2.8k OLED display and so much more, all underpinned by the Snapdragon X Elite processor.

With the promise of 17 hours of battery life and blazing performance, the T14s is a statement of intent: forget about your old machine that can only last seven hours while wheezing, here is the future (and so is, potentially, a fundamental update of our list of the best laptops for graphic design).

A lot is promised, especially by Qualcomm, but as ever with a processor architecture change, there’s a few casualties along the way. Does the T14s do enough to justify a switch from team red and team blue?

Read on for our full review.

Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen 6: Key specifications

Design and build

There are few more storied brands in the laptop game than the Thinkbook, it has a look which has changed little since the days of IBM, decades in even the little trackpoint ‘nub’ stays stubbornly in place.

What change and variety in the line does exist is with weight and size, with the ‘s’ line as seen here intended to be the lightest, more svelte offering compared to the full-fat original.

As is to be expected, the T14s Gen 6 is therefore both portable and thin. At 1.2kg, when coming from a heavier gaming machine, the difference has to be felt to be believed. Sling this in a backpack or a laptop bag and you’ll be easily able to forget it is there, a boon for those with long commutes and back problems.

It’s thin too - though not on the scale of a MacBook Air. There’s no ‘wedge’ shape, its 16.9mm thickness is consistent across the whole of the machine, which means there’s space enough for some well-considered I/O.

There are two USB-A ports which work at up to 5Gbps, two USB-C ports which support Thunderbolt 4, an HDMI 2.1 slot and a 3.5mm headphone/mic combo jack. It isn’t as much as the biggest gaming machines can muster, but for the average user’s workflow, it provides a wealth of versatility that Macs can only dream of.

The generous profile also gives ample room for a standout inclusion: the keyboard. Using it across the course of a week and thousands of words, I found it was nothing less than a treat to type on. It has full-sized Space and Enter keys, a good amount of travel, nice clicky feedback, and the slightly depressed faces of the keys help considerably when touch typing. What’s more, it’s backlit too. If your workflow involves typing out long documents or emails, this is a standout option.

Beyond the keyboard, the T14s feels robust too, as might be expected given its build materials of carbon fibre, magnesium and aluminium. As is true for many devices in the Thinkpad lineup, it comes with a degree of durability, having undergone MIL-

STD 810H testing. This should mean in theory that it can withstand everyday spills and drops with ease.

Though I didn’t get to test that point, in practice it has no flex in its design and inspires confidence as a consequence. This is a laptop which will fit in anywhere in life, in the office, at home, on a train, and is built to take the knocks that come with such extensive potential use cases.

As for the display, it proved to be something of a high point too. At just over 1080p it hasn’t got the highest resolution, but for most purposes at 14 inches, 1080p+ will be enough. If you do need more resolution from your display, spending a little more can get you a 2.8k option. That will come in OLED too, as opposed to the standard LCD panel others will receive. My review unit came with an LCD panel in tow, and I found it to be generally capable. It got bright enough for some work outdoors and it has pleasant, vibrant colour reproduction. Given that it is IPS, viewing angles were also a strong suit.

There are three options regarding the panel, one has 45% NTSC coverage, and a step up gets you 100% sRGB coverage, so if you need absolute colour accuracy, it’s recommended you should spring for the more expensive option.

Features

As with many new Windows 11 PCs, the T14s comes with a dedicated ‘Copilot’ button on the keyboard. The utility of this for you will depend on how much you use AI features in your day to day.

You can use it to generate images, searches, and really any prompt you can think of will work, but whether AI is so important to you that it deserves a dedicated physical button is something only you can answer. In my use, the button mostly remained untouched.

One advantage of the ARM64 processor is an on-chip Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which promises to allow real-time AI applications, a portion of the chip dedicated to processing these requests.

What this manifests as currently is slightly gimmicky, such as the ‘Studio Effects’ option that promises to create video call filters in real-time. Currently, the features that are present feel like a solution in search of a problem.

With time, more features such as the controversial ‘Recall’ function will be added, but for the moment it is just an option to add a little flavour to the user experience, as opposed to a selling point in itself.

One net positive is the focus on sustainability which has been pursued by Lenovo. Depending on the part, the T14s is constructed with up to 90% recycled materials, which is a win for the environment, and the public too.

Performance

A lot of marketing dollars were thrown by Qualcomm at the launch of its X Elite and Plus processors. The intent was to dispel a worry, by journalists and the public, that these chips weren’t ready for the mainstream.

Now that we have the actual product to test, the reality is quite interesting, a real mixed bag. Right off the bat one thing is clear, the X Elite is a powerful and efficient processor, but with caveats.

Starting with benchmarks, on performance mode, running Cinebench it achieved a single-core score that was just 10 points behind that of Apple’s M1 Ultra chip, and a multi-core score of 699, 100 points behind the M1 Max. Given the price being charged, that’s not quite the showing that would have been nice to see, but remembering this is the first generation of a new chip line, things will only get better with time.

Issues creep in with other benchmarks, with many just refusing point blank to run, like 3DMark. PCMark 10 refused to launch tests, as did Pugetbench Premiere Pro. Pugetbench Photoshop delivered a score of 7042, powering through most of the test without issue. That the Photoshop element worked and not Premiere Pro is likely down to compatibility, Photoshop now has native support for ARM64 processors, while Premiere Pro has a version in the works which has yet to be released.

Running a video encoding test on Handbrake, the T14s managed to work through a 10-minute-long 4k file to 1080p in 11 minutes, which is a decent showing, though not as quickly as rivals can manage.

Part of the issue is compatibility, there just aren’t a lot of native apps for Windows on Arm, however, another part is how VRAM is handled. For some programmes, no VRAM is detected, leading to refusals to launch and other issues, despite my review unit having 32GB of RAM to spare.

Thus the issues are software-based for the most part, which raises a chicken-and-egg issue. The public won’t buy these laptops if the software support isn’t there, but the software support might not come if there isn’t the user base to justify it.

Subjectively, as you might expect, just using the laptop for normal functions, like web browsing, working through files, word processing, and light Photoshop work, it flew through most tasks. This is a fast machine, it’s the lack of software support which lets it down. Compared to the average Mac, which had a four-year head start in the ARM transition, it’s a little unfortunate.

As an aside, though this isn’t intended to be a gaming machine, it really isn’t a gaming machine. Where games do launch or even install (definitely not a guarantee), they often exhibit issues while running. Stellaris wouldn’t launch, Cyberpunk 2077 ran at a solid 21fps in 720p mode, while Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition also refused to launch. If you wish to game with this machine, expect a lottery when it comes to support, sometimes you’ll have luck, and often you won’t.

With time, this situation may improve, but any device can only be sold as it is, as opposed to what it might be. As things stand, if you have a largely web-based workflow, the T14s will work well for you. If that isn’t the case, you’d be best to carefully research whether the programmes you need work, and if not whether there’s an acceptable alternative. The future may be bright for Windows on Arm, but for the moment work is still needed.

There’s one clear advantage that Arm has over X86: power efficiency. The Lenovo promises long battery life by its design, and it’s something typically that x86 hasn’t been able to keep up with. That trend continues here - doing light work on the machine, over the course of a week I only needed to recharge it twice. That’s with the proviso that my work was web-based and didn’t consist of gaming - play and game and you’ll be able to drain it just as quickly as any other machine.

On average that meant around 20 hours of work before I needed to plug in, which is nearly a record performance. If you’re a commuter or a frequent flyer, this machine will be a godsend.

Benchmark scoring

Price

The Lenovo Thinkpad T14s Gen 6 is a premium machine and is priced as such. Starting at £1,810, the base model sold directly from Lenovo includes 32GB of RAM (soldered), 512GB of storage, a 1080p+ non-touch IPS 60Hz display and a three-year warranty.

Spending a little more and going up to £2,050, you’ll get a 2.8K OLED panel with a 120Hz refresh rate, 1TB of storage and Windows 11 Pro as opposed to Home, whether the extra £200 will be worth it is up to you.

For the price, there’s hordes of competition, from other Snapdragon machines, as well as Macbooks, AMD options and Intel options. For £2,000, you can get a 14-inch Macbook Pro with 18GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, or from Asus a ProArt PX13, which sports an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of storage, a high res OLED panel and even an NVIDIA GTX 4060, with no compatibility issues.

Who is it for?

The Thinkpad line of laptops tends to sit in an interesting space. It’s positioned as being for those who ‘work’ and who are ‘productive’ as opposed to a single person or class of people. So the kind of person who might benefit from a Snapdragon T14s is a little hard to clarify.

If you are someone for whom the workday begins and ends with Chrome tabs and Teams, who writes a lot, who needs great battery life and a very portable form factor and who only engages occasionally in heavier work, it’ll be a reliable and capable companion.

However, should you have more demanding use cases, if you are a video editor, an artist, a developer, a gamer, there’s plenty of options across the rest of the market which will fit your needs and more at this very generous price point.

Buy it if...

• Battery life is your main priority
• You have a light-touch workflow
• You need a great keyboard

Don't buy it if...

• You need specialist apps
• You need a dedicated GPU
• You want a flexible laptop