Yes, Amazon Prime The day is next week (see our early deals roundup), but Amazon isn’t the only company making the sale right now. Lenovo is selling its ThinkBook laptops for a chance to pick up an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U processor and AMD’s integrated Radeon 680M graphics for under $1,000, something we’ve never seen before.
Lenovo ThinkBook 13S Gen 4 with a 6000-series Ryzen 7 chip, 16 GB RAM (soldered), 512 GB SSD, and a 13-inch IPS screen for $862 ($209 off). To view this discount at checkout, you will need to enter two promo codes: I miss July and BFIJTHINKOFFER.
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Why we love the ThinkBook 13S
Photo: Lenovo
The ThinkBook line is Lenovo’s low-cost alternative to its iconic ThinkPad, which looks a bit like a Dell XPS or a MacBook, but trumps 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’s also a fingerprint reader.
We haven’t tested this particular model, but we did like last year’s version (we tested it with an Intel chip). The Ryzen 7 chip in Gen 4 is AMD’s most powerful laptop option and should be able to handle anything you throw at it. It doesn’t have discrete graphics, but the integrated Radeon 680M graphics should be enough for most people (if you’re looking for video editing gear, look elsewhere). AMD’s 6000-series Ryzen chips are also known for their longer battery life. Lenovo claims 11 hours, but that’s under ideal conditions; expect eight to nine hours.
The keyboard is flat, closer to the MacBook experience than the ThinkPad, but still comfortable to type on. This laptop weighs about the same as a MacBook Air, so it’s easy to carry around. The only area where the ThinkBook cuts corners is the screen, which is a 13-inch, 1,920-by-1,200-pixel anti-glare IPS panel. It’s not the brightest at 300 nits, but I still prefer the lower resolution anti-glare panel to the higher resolution shiny panel, and the 16:10 screen ratio gives you some extra vertical screen real estate .
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