ThinkBook is Lenovo’s laptop brand for small-business entrepreneurs who can’t afford (or at least, justify) elite enterprise ThinkPads, and the first ThinkBook 13s reviewed by PC Labs, in August 2019, looked the part. It was a perfectly nice 13.3-inch ultraportable with an unremarkable 8th Generation Intel Core i5 processor and a ditto full HD display. The ThinkBook 13s Gen 2 (starts at $870; $1,009 as tested), however, belies its budget status. Not only does it jump to an 11th Generation Core i5 with the latest Intel Evo bells and whistles, but it also has a downright flashy higher-resolution (2,560-by-1,600-pixel) touch screen with a 16:10 (rather than more familiar) 16:9 aspect ratio. It still fits below premium-priced ultraportables like the Dell XPS 13 in our hierarchy of top laptops at its screen size, but the ThinkBook 13s Gen 2 is a first-class value and an extremely likable little notebook.
A Think-Family Feud
For shoppers choosing between famous ThinkPad matte-black and the ThinkBook’s two-tone gray, Lenovo is its own chief competitor, since there are no fewer than three terrific ThinkPad ultraportables: the 14-inch X1 Carbon, the 13-inch X1 Nano, and—closest of all to today’s subject—the 13.3-inch ThinkPad X13, whose price as tested in October 2020 was within $5 of our ThinkBook 13s Gen 2. The X13 has a faster AMD Ryzen 5 Pro CPU and an arguably nicer keyboard; the ThinkBook has twice the RAM, a sharper screen, and a Thunderbolt 4/USB4 port.
Our ThinkBook 13s Gen 2 test unit, $1,009 from online sellers, has the same Core i5-1135G7 processor, 256GB NVMe solid-state drive, and Windows 10 Pro as the $870 base model, but it adds a touch screen and boosts the main system memory from 8GB to 16GB. A $1,111 model at Lenovo.com may be an even better deal; it enhances our system with a Core i7 chip and a 512GB SSD.
At 0.59 by 11.8 by 8.3 inches, the aluminum-clad ThinkBook is a bit bulkier than another competitor with a 16:10 display, the more expensive Razer Book 13, but a little lighter (2.78 versus 3.09 pounds). The Asus ZenBook 13 is about the same size (0.55 by 12 by 8 inches) but lighter still at 2.36 pounds. There’s no flex if you grasp the Lenovo’s screen corners or press the keyboard deck.
The screen bezels are thin, though the top border makes room for a 720p webcam with a sliding security shutter. The power button doubles as a fingerprint reader for Windows Hello logins. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth are standard. Two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, one always on, join a security-cable locking notch on the right edge.
On the left you’ll find the HDMI port that snooty ultraportables like the XPS 13 omit, so you needn’t fuss with a DisplayPort adapter to connect an external monitor. There’s also an audio jack and a USB4 port with Thunderbolt 4 capability, though the power adapter uses it so you can’t use USB-C or Thunderbolt peripherals while the system is plugged in.
Catching the HP Bug
While high-end ThinkPad keyboards are the envy of the industry, ThinkBook keyboards don’t impress me quite as much. The ThinkBook 13s Gen 2 lacks dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys, making you team the Fn key with the cursor arrows to trigger those functions.
Also, the latter are arranged in a clumsy, HP-style row instead of the proper inverted T. On the positive side, the backlit keyboard has a snappy typing feel and top-row controls that include keys to place and end conference calls. The buttonless touchpad isn’t very big, but it glides smoothly, with a comfortable click action.
The screen aspect ratio means a bit less scrolling as you peruse text or web pages. The offbeat resolution makes fine details attractively sharp, while IPS technology ensures wide viewing angles. Brightness and contrast are good, if not exceptional, and colors are vivid and well-saturated. (Lenovo says the panel covers 100% of the sRGB gamut.) White backgrounds are crisp and not dingy.
The webcam, though, is your average low-resolution affair, capturing colorful if slightly dim images with minimal static. The fingerprint reader works fine, letting you turn on the laptop and log in with one press. Bottom-mounted speakers produce sound that’s more than loud enough but suffers from boom or echo when cranked up; there’s not much bass but you can hear overlapping tracks clearly. Dolby Audio software offers music, movie, game, and voice presets and an equalizer.
Bloatware is minimal. A Lenovo Vantage utility centralizes system updates, performance tuning, and Wi-Fi security (as well as ads for a $30 annual tuneup service). Another utility, Glance by Mirametrix, uses the webcam to follow your gaze and help switch among apps if you’re using an external display. A McAfee anti-malware trial, meanwhile, expires quickly and nags you constantly.
Testing the ThinkBook 13s Gen 2: Ultraportables Can Be Ultracompetitive
For our benchmark charts, I matched the ThinkBook 13s Gen 2 against the abovementioned Razer Book 13, Asus ZenBook 13, and Lenovo ThinkPad X13, as well as the Acer Swift 3. You can see their basic specs in the table below.
Productivity and Media Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet wrestling, web browsing, and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system’s boot drive. Both yield a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better. (See more about how we test laptops.)
All five of these lightweights topped the 4,000 points that indicate excellent productivity in PCMark 10, so they’re a great fit for Microsoft Office or Google Docs. Their speedy SSDs breezed through PCMark 8’s storage exercise.
Next is Maxon’s CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing benchmark, in which we put a stopwatch on systems as they transcode a brief movie from 4K resolution down to 1080p. It, too, is a tough test for multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs; lower times are better.
The ThinkBook’s Core i5-1135G7 mobile CPU is a quad-core, 2.4GHz (4.2GHz turbo) chip that’s a bit of an overachiever. Despite competing with Core i7s here, it more or less tied for second place in both tests, trailing the six-core Ryzen 5 Pro of the ThinkPad X13.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and add up the total (lower times are better). The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters.
The AMD-based ThinkPad faltered slightly while the ThinkBook managed a solid middle-of-the-pack finish. Its top-quality, better-than-1080p-resolution display is a plus for image editing, but its lack of an SD or microSD card slot for importing photos is a minus.
Graphics Tests
We test Windows systems’ relative graphics muscle with two gaming simulations, 3DMark and Superposition. The first has two DirectX 11 subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, suitable for mainstream PCs with integrated graphics and higher-end gaming rigs respectively. The second uses the Unigine engine to render and pan through a detailed 3D scene at two resolution and image quality settings with results measured in frames per second (fps); 30fps is usually considered a fair target for smooth animation while avid gamers prefer 60fps or higher.
Intel’s Iris Xe integrated graphics are a clear improvement on their predecessors, but still nowhere near a match for the discrete GPUs of true gaming laptops. None of these productivity-oriented portables is really suited to playing games, though casual or browser-based titles might be okay.
Battery Rundown Test
After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test. (We also turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop into airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the Blender Foundation short film Tears of SteelTears of Steel—with screen brightness set at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent until the system quits.
A strong silver medal for the ThinkBook, which should easily get you through a full day of work or school plus an evening of Netflix or other streaming entertainment. Remember when we thought ourselves lucky to get five or six hours away from an AC outlet? No, I don’t miss those days either.
Verdict: Think on This Deal
Our Editors’ Choice award holders among ultraportables include the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and Nano, the Dell XPS 13, and the Razer Book 13. The ThinkBook 13s Gen 2 doesn’t quite rise to their level, but it costs less, and it’s a thoroughly capable, convenient productivity partner. If you’d like something a little different and a little snazzier than a conventional compact, it’s well worth checking out.
