Latest Convertible Laptops: Dell, HP, and Lenovo Offerings Compared

Dell Inspiron 2-in-1 7445 Review: Speedy, Sturdy Convertible in Need of a Brighter Screen

Dell's convertible Inspiron straddles the line between budget and midrange. The AMD-based Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 starts at $730, and our test system offers significant upgrades and still rings in at a reasonable $950. Both configurations can frequently be found at Dell with a $200 discount. It delivers the performance and build quality that you'd expect from a midrange laptop, but there's one item that's unmistakably budget level. And it's a big one -- the display. The 14-inch display offers a modern and roomy 16:10 aspect ratio and sufficient 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution, but it's very dim. It's a basic, 250-nit panel common to entry-level laptops, and it didn't test much higher than its rated brightness. If it had a brighter display, I could make a broader recommendation for the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 as an affordable and well-built two-in-one for students. The dim display, however, leads me to my first geographically specific laptop recommendation: the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 is suitable only for students who attend a northern school, as I did, where most of the academic year is cold and gray. Students at an SEC school or elsewhere in the south, where you spend most of your time outdoors or in sun-filled classrooms, will need a brighter display. The Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 line is based on AMD processors from the chipmaker's "Hawk Point" Ryzen 8040 series released at the end of 2023 alongside Intel's "Meteor Lake" Core Ultra chips. Since then, competition has stiffened among laptop AI processors, with Qualcomm releasing its Snapdragon X laptop chips earlier this summer. And looking ahead, we expect to see a flood of laptops this fall with AMD's own "Strix Point" Ryzen AI 300 series and Intel's Lunar Lake line that promise greater application, graphics, AI and battery performance. The baseline $730 Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 configuration has an AMD Ryzen 5 8640HS CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. Our $950 test system bumps you up to a Ryzen 7 8840HS processor while doubling the RAM to 16GB and the SSD to 1TB. Dell also sells an Intel-based Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7440 that starts at $1,148. The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 starts at £599 in the UK and AU$999 in Australia. Based on AMD's Zen 4 architecture, our test system's Ryzen 7 8840HS is a 28-watt chip with eight cores and 16 threads. It has a base frequency of 3.3GHz and a boost speed of up to 5.1GHz. It's AMD's second-gen AI chip with an NPU for on-device AI acceleration. The NPU is capable of 16 TOPS, with the CPU maxing out at 38 TOPS in total, which is just shy of Microsoft's minimum 40-TOPS threshold for its Copilot Plus PC platform. (See our TOPS explainer for more information about this metric for measuring AI performance.) While the Ryzen 7 8840HS isn't the most recent AI chip you can find in a laptop, it does afford the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 some but not all of the same AI features you'll find on a Copilot Plus PC. The Inspiron 14 offers Windows Studio Effects of blurred backgrounds and automatic framing for video calls but not the portrait light effect or creative filters. It uses the Image Creator tool in Paint but not the Photos app for generating images with text prompts. It also has the Live Captions feature for real-time captions -- including English translations of 44 foreign languages -- of the audio playing on the laptop. The Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 was competitive on CNET Labs' benchmarks with Intel Core Ultra laptops and the Microsoft Surface Pro 11, which is the first convertible laptop we've tested with a Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite X processor. Its single-core performance on Geekbench 6 outpaced that of the Core Ultra-based HP Spectre x360 14 and Microsoft Surface Pro 11, although each of these systems had better multicore scores because they each have more physical cores than the Inspiron 14's Ryzen 7 8840HS chip. The Inspiron 14 also edged the HP Spectre x360 14 on PCMark 10, which offers an overall assessment of a computer's performance, including web browsing, video conferencing, photo editing and video editing. (PCMark 10 is not compatible with Snapdragon-based laptops, which is why you won't see a PCMark score for the Surface Pro 11 in the charts below.) The Inspiron 14's graphics performance was unremarkable but in line with the other systems here that have integrated GPUs from Intel or Qualcomm. Perhaps its least impressive result came on our battery life test, where it trailed the pack by a considerable amount. Still, it lasted more than 9 hours on our online streaming battery drain test, which ought to be enough to get you through a day at work or school without needing to recharge. First, the bad news. The display is a basic 250-nit panel commonly found on budget laptops. It looks dim and has poor color accuracy. In testing, it hit a peak brightness of 265 nits, which is a bit higher than its rating but not by any appreciable margin. And its color performance was equally underwhelming. In my tests with a Spyder X Elite colorimeter, it covered only 64% of the sRGB gamut and 48% of the AdobeRGB and P3 color spaces. The display's wide viewing angles prevent it from looking totally washed out and dull. I could sit in front of the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 and work for long stretches with the text looking clear. Images were more of a mixed bag, with details quickly lost in the darkest and lightest areas. Under artificial light, the display was easily visible, but I had the brightness slider maxed out at all times. Again, the wide viewing angles helped keep text and images visible. When I ventured outside or in my sunny breakfast nook, however, even the wide viewing angles couldn't prevent the display from looking dim and dark. If only Dell had outfitted the system with an average 300- or 350-nit display, the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 would be a more widely useful convertible. Now, the good news. The Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 may have a budget-level display, but it looks the part of a mainstream two-in-one. It boasts an all-aluminum body and feels well constructed. Its chassis has a solid feeling with little flex. Along with the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 solid build, however, comes a heavier-than-average weight. The Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 tips the scales at 3.7 pounds, which is a half pound (or more) heavier than other 14-inch convertibles. The HP Spectre x360 14 weighs 3.2 pounds, and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 8 is even lighter at 3.1 pounds. Dell offers two color options for the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445: midnight blue and ice blue. We received the former, and it looks sharp. It's a deep, dark blue with a metallic sheen. Judging by Dell's site, the ice blue color looks like a silvery light blue that also looks pretty nice. Both colors offer an appreciated twist on the standard black, gray or silver color options that are far too common. In addition to the color, I like the gently rounded edges and corners of the Inspiron 14's keyboard deck and covering behind the display; they lend the machine a polished look and make it comfortable to hold when it's closed. The softly sloped front edge also makes it comfortable to rest your wrists against when typing. In contrast, the display bezels are raised and create a lip against the glass of the display. This little lip makes the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445 a bit uncomfortable to use in tablet mode. I wish the bezels sat flush against the display to create a seamless transition from display glass to display bezel. The keyboard is excellent. The firm keyboard deck aids the typing experience, but the keys themselves offer a plush but firm response with just the right amount of travel. And it's one of the quietest keyboards I've ever used. The touchpad is average. It feels a bit undersized, and the mechanical click response is too firm and with too much travel. The speakers, too, are merely average. They have enough oomph to fill a small room, but bass response is missing, which is typical of stereo laptop sound. They suffice for video calls and watching YouTube videos, but you'll want to use headphones or a Bluetooth speaker for music. The 1080p webcam delivers crisp, properly exposed images and also has a physical privacy shutter. It lacks an IR sensor for facial recognition logins, but the power button at the top right of the keyboard doubles as a fingerprint reader, so the system isn't completely devoid of biometrics for easy, secure logins. The ports also offer a bit of good and bad news. This time, I'll start with the good. You get a pair of USB-A and a pair of USB-C ports, which is an ample and varied selection. There's also an SD card reader, which is usually offered only on pricier content-creation machines these days, and an HDMI port. Now, the bad. The USB-C ports are not USB4 but USB 3.2 Gen 2 delivering only a fraction of the transfer speed of USB4 -- 10Gbps versus 40Gbps. The HDMI port is also behind the times. It's an HDMI 1.4 port, which supports a maximum resolution of 1080p. Thankfully, the USB-C ports offer DisplayPort 1.4 connectivity, which can output to two 4K displays at 60Hz or a single 8K display at 60Hz or a 4K display at 120Hz. The dim display isn't enough to kill my enthusiasm for the Inspiron 14 2-in-1 7445, which offers a solid, all-metal chassis and competitive performance for its class. I'm much more forgiving of the panel's limited brightness, however, when Dell's revolving discount lands on it and drops the price to $750. Because at that price, it's expected the system will offer a mix of mainstream and budget features and design elements. And with a decidedly mainstream design and performance, I'm then willing to give a bit on the display, which is dim but aided by wide viewing angles to make it one of the better entry-level, 250-nit displays I've seen.

HP OmniBook X 14 Review

The debut wave of Copilot+ PCs -- laptops with the latest AI-ready processors -- has landed, and the HP OmniBook X 14 (starts at $999.99; $1,049.99 as tested) is one of the first through our doors. Like the latest Microsoft Surface Laptop and Surface Pro we've reviewed, the OmniBook offers a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor, built-in Copilot AI Windows features, and exceptional 30-hour battery life. The slim build, sharp touch screen, and good connectivity (it's a pleasure to see a USB Type-A port on such a thin system) are big pluses for an ultraportable with punchy enough performance to back it up. The screen's a little dim, and the design's a little plain, but you'll find a lot to like for the price. The Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Touch (UM3406) keeps our Editors' Choice slot among ultraportable as an even better value, but the OmniBook is a compelling alternative if you're eager for an entry-level Copilot+PC. Design: Slim, Simple Portability From a design standpoint, the OmniBook is a highly basic-looking ultraportable. That's not necessarily a bad thing -- this is a general-use productivity laptop, so it should blend in anywhere -- but we just don't have much to discuss on the visual front. You get an all-gray, simply designed chassis with a reflective silver HP logo on the lid and little other adornment. The metal exterior feels sturdy enough (HP says the laptop has passed 19 MIL-STD torture tests). The OmniBook doesn't give off a particularly premium feel, but it's superior to some flimsier plastic builds, especially for the price. The chassis uses several recycled materials, including 50% recycled aluminum, 50% recycled plastic in the keycaps, and a small percentage of ocean-bound plastic in the speaker box, which we're always glad to see. Portability is a major plus, landing a hair under the ultraportable line (2.97 pounds) while measuring 0.56 by 12.3 by 8.8 inches (HWD). The HP doesn't quite match the luxe look of the Dell XPS 14, but that machine (in part thanks to a discrete GPU) is also nearly a pound heavier, not to mention more expensive. Others, like the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (Q425) (2.82 pounds and 0.59 inch thick) and the 2024 Microsoft Surface Laptop (2.96 pounds and 0.69 inch thick), are much closer to the OmniBook. The rest of the build is unremarkable. I'd describe the backlit keyboard and touchpad as adequate, neither standout nor subpar. The keys have comfortable travel and feedback, while the touchpad is responsive enough. A dedicated Copilot key on the keyboard brings up Microsoft's AI assistant. You'll also note a blue helix icon on the right side of the palm reset, denoting this as an "AI ready" PC at a glance. The 14-inch display is a highlight mainly for its resolution. You'll usually find full HD or 1080p resolution at this price, but the OmniBook provides a sharper 2.2K (2,240-by-1,400-pixel) touch panel. Again, the screen isn't the brightest (it's rated for 300 nits, which is right where it landed in our testing), nor is its IPS tech a match for the brilliant, vivid colors of OLED, but it's more than adequate. HP continues to lead the way in webcam support with a 5-megapixel camera centered above the display. The webcam supports Windows Hello face recognition and provides a manual privacy shutter. The video quality is pretty sharp, and it handles low lighting better than others I've tested. The laptop also supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth for internet and wireless accessories, respectively. The left edge holds two USB Type-C ports (one 10Gbps and one 40Gbps) for physical connections, while the right side has a USB Type-A port (with a drop-down jaw since the laptop is so thin) plus a headphone jack. That's no more than the essentials -- with no HDMI port, you'll need a USB-C DisplayPort dongle to connect an external monitor -- but many machines this size ditch the USB-A port, so maintaining both types is a plus. The AC adapter has a USB-C connector. Using the HP OmniBook X 14: The Copilot Feature Set Copilot+ PCs will become commonplace through the rest of 2024 and beyond, so they won't require continued explanation forever, but given the recency of the launch, it's worth filling in for now. We went much deeper in our first Copilot+ PC review, the 2024 Microsoft Surface Laptop, so read that review if you want the full details on Copilot, NPUs, and Snapdragon. What do you need to know? To qualify as a Copilot+ PC, a laptop has to meet a set of requirements, namely a processor with a neural processing unit (NPU) that can run AI workloads locally rather than in the cloud. These laptops come with a local version of Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant that lets you ask questions, find information, change settings, and more. Copilot+ systems also come with built-in Windows features, including videoconferencing enhancements, image generation in Paint, and a few other tricks. The video call improvements are collectively called Studio Effects. For one, background blur while you're on camera is offloaded to the NPU, freeing the CPU to process more active tasks. Virtual background blur is nothing new, so we have to restrain our praise somewhat, but the NPU taking over to improve general performance is a plus. Auto framing (which keeps you centered if you move around while on camera) does a decent job with significant adjustments, though I found the eye tracking feature didn't work well. The image generation tool in Paint is a fun novelty but its use cases are fairly limited, while the contentious Recall usage history has not rolled out yet. We haven't found these features essential in any system so far, and I'd only call some truly helpful (namely a couple of Studio Effects features). More built-in features will come, Copilot will improve, and many standalone applications will add their own AI enhancements. This is only a draw for early adopters and AI enthusiasts. If you know your favorite software (notably the Adobe creative suite) plans to add a killer AI feature that will make your life easier, buying one of these laptops becomes all the more appealing. Components and Configuration: X Elite at a Fair Price NPUs of a certain power ceiling (measured in TOPS or trillions of operations per second) are a must for a Copilot+ PC, and right now Qualcomm's Snapdragon X processors are the only available chips that qualify. Intel and AMD will launch Copilot-qualified AI processors later this year, but at launch time, all Copilot+ PCs rely on Snapdragon X Elite or X Plus silicon. Another layer to this is that Qualcomm builds its chips on Arm architecture rather than the x86 platform used by Intel and AMD, which is the default for Windows machines. Arm has seen compatibility and performance issues with Windows in past attempts, but this time around, Qualcomm and Microsoft have made long strides on both fronts. Applications that don't yet have native Arm versions run via Microsoft's new Prism emulation tool, and in our first round of testing we've generally found swift performance and few issues launching or running programs. The OmniBook X is powered by the Snapdragon X Elite, specifically the X1E-78-100 version. It's a slight step down from the X1E-80-100 chip we tested in the Surface Laptop, a 12-core chip with a 3.4GHz clock speed lacking the dual-boost capability of the 80 and 84 models. Its NPU is rated at 45 TOPS, the same as other flavors of the X Elite. Alongside that processor, our Windows 11 Home test unit had 16GB of memory and a 1TB solid-state drive, plus the 2,240-by-1,400-pixel touch screen and Qualcomm Adreno integrated graphics. (A $999.99 base model has a 512GB SSD.) Considering its specs, our system's $1,049.99 price (on sale from $1,199.99) is quite reasonable. Testing the HP OmniBook X 14: Snapdragon X Rears Its Head Now, let's get into the testing. The OmniBook was one of our initial machines benchmarked alongside the Surface Laptop and Surface Pro, so we'd already put it through its paces before this review. Some of our usual performance benchmarks, notably UL's PCMark 10 and 3DMark Night Raid and Time Spy, were among the few x86-not-Arm apps that balked at running. Our Adobe Photoshop testing utility also wouldn't install, so we supplemented our other benchmarks with some different CPU and graphics tests, plus some AI tests. The lineup of comparison systems includes two other Snapdragons, Microsoft's Surface Laptop and the soon-to-be-reviewed HP EliteBook Ultra G1q AI; an AMD Ryzen 7 AI alternative in the Acer Swift Go 14; as well as laptops with Intel Core Ultra 7 AI processors, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 2-in-1 and Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Q425. These are equivalently sized and priced laptops, with some variations. The EliteBook has the same chip as the OmniBook, the Surface has the step-up X Elite chip, and the other systems use existing Intel and AMD processors with NPUs -- but not those that qualify as Copilot+ PCs, which will come later this year. Productivity and Content Creation Tests Our first group of tests represents workloads such as content creation, office productivity, and raw CPU speeds. Our go-to overall productivity and storage test, PCMark 10, is not yet Snapdragon-compatible, so we focused on core-crushing media tasks. We used the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 (instead of our usual release 1.4, since 1.8 has both Arm and x86 versions) to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution. We also included two legacy tests: Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses the 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. Those two tests are part of our standard test suite, but we added Cinebench 2024 (which includes an Arm-optimized installer) and Geekbench 6.3 (which is better optimized for Arm) to test the Snapdragon X Elite machines. The OmniBook lagged behind in a couple of tests, but by and large it proved to be a quick laptop that hung with the rest of the pack. When you look at the as-configured price of the Surface Laptop we tested, the HP is a much less expensive way to get an X Elite chip and this level of performance. While you have to keep an eye on app compatibility, even tests that ran via emulation didn't perform too poorly, and the overall speed for daily productivity and media editing was quick. AI Tests The following benchmarks are laser-focused on these systems' AI performance (though it's only fair to note this kind of testing is in its infancy). First up is UL's Procyon AI Computer Vision Benchmark, which leverages several AI inference engines executing everyday machine-vision tasks using various popular neural networks. The tests were run using integer operations under respective platform runtime SDK models: Qualcomm SNPE for the X Elites and Intel OpenVINO for the others. The numbers from this test largely speak for themselves if you compare the X Elite systems against one another. We wouldn't directly compare them with the x86 machines here, for which the benchmark required us to run the test separately on CPU, GPU, and NPU. Meanwhile, Geekbench's new cross-platform ML test simulates real-world machine learning tasks to gauge overall AI workload performance, leaning on the CPU, GPU, and NPU. We ran this test in its CPU and DirectML (which leverages the GPU, in this case integrated) inference back-end options. Graphics Tests For our initial round of testing, we were somewhat limited as to available graphics benchmarks, so UL's latest 3DMark is the only test represented. However, at least two of the company's benchmarks are ready for Arm-based systems. First is 3DMark Wild Life and its Extreme variant. These tests, run at the Unlimited preset, are compatible with laptops and smartphones, using the Vulkan graphics API at 1440p resolution to measure GPU speeds. The Extreme version ups the resolution to 2160p or 4K, further stressing the graphics chips. Second is Steel Nomad, another new 3DMark test that works with Arm CPUs. Steel Nomad and its Light variant test focus on APIs more commonly used for game development, like DirectX 12 and Metal, to produce insights more closely aligned with how games can expect to perform on the system, with an increased focus on geometry and particle effects. None of these tests is ray-traced. Higher scores are better. The Snapdragon laptops were in lockstep on most of these tests (the Surface dropped off on Wild Life), and they interestingly swapped leads with the Intel and AMD systems. Regardless, all of these systems' integrated graphics have a limited ceiling for gaming-style graphics; discrete GPUs from Nvidia and AMD blow them all out of the water, though they're rare in laptops this small. You probably know who you are if your professional workload requires a GPU. For everyone else, the OmniBook and the others are capable of light tasks and entry-level gaming. Battery and Display Tests We test laptops' 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, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off before the test. 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). Qualcomm has been touting the efficiency of its Snapdragon CPUs, and it's hard to argue with the results. Arm systems have consistently scored well in our battery rundown test -- it was one of the few clear advantages of the SQ3-based Surface Pro -- and the OmniBook X 14's stamina is simply on another level for a Windows machine. Thirty hours is quite literally more than all-day battery life, and while more demanding tasks will run the battery down faster, you can clearly make it through a full day of work or school without worry. Again, the HP's display quality is OK, with middling color coverage and passable brightness. The 50% brightness setting is perhaps too dark for everyday use in a normally lit room, though. You'll want to crank it up. Verdict: A Deal on Snapdragon We've covered the Snapdragon, Arm, and Copilot angles extensively by now, with varying degrees of enthusiasm in our conclusions, so let's focus on the HP OmniBook X 14 itself. All Copilot+ PCs will have shared traits, but we like what this HP brings to the table. The design isn't the most exciting, but it's hard not to be impressed at its performance, portability, battery life, and better-than-1080p display, especially at its current sale price. The OmniBook is still not the very best bargain around; the Editors' Choice award-winning Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Touch (UM3406) is a lovely deal (as are many of Asus' other Zenbooks, like the Q425 mentioned above), and we don't think the Copilot+ PC feature set is a must-have as of today. But if you're itching to join the first generation of AI PCs, and keen to try out Windows on Arm in its latest iteration, the OmniBook X 14 is a great way to go.

Lenovo ThinkBook 13x Gen 4 Review

Should a small business invest in a small business laptop? Lenovo's ThinkBook line is priced and positioned below its famous corporate-fleet ThinkPads, targeting small-office entrepreneurs, and the ThinkBook 13x Gen 4 (starts at $1,580; $1,640 as tested) is one of the most petite in the series with a 13.5-inch touch screen. The ThinkBook is a classy, well-built lightweight with an original extra -- a lamp that sticks to the top of the screen to illuminate you for video calls in dim rooms. But we wish it had a couple more ports and cost a few hundred less. Configuration and Design: Square to Be Hip You shouldn't confuse the ThinkBook 13x, whose 13.5-inch display has a 3:2 aspect ratio (2,880-by-1,920-pixel resolution), with the ThinkBook 13s, which has a 13.3-inch screen with a 16:10 ratio. Lenovo says the 13x's squarer panel gives it more viewing area than a 14-inch laptop with a 16:9 aspect ratio, helped by vanishingly thin bezels that yield an impressive 97% screen-to-body ratio. The IPS screen allows dynamic switching between 60Hz and 120Hz refresh rates, and it meets the VESA DisplayHDR 400 and Dolby Vision specs. Except for Windows 11 Pro instead of Home (a $60 upgrade), our test unit -- model 21KR000QUS -- matched the $1,580 base model at Lenovo's online configurator, with an Intel Core Ultra 5 125H processor, 16GB of memory, a 512GB NVMe solid-state drive, and the near-3K touch screen backed by Intel Arc integrated graphics. Doubling the storage adds $89, while jumping up to a beefy Core Ultra 9 185H CPU is $432 (and enables a $119 upgrade to 32GB of RAM). Wrapped in an attractive dual-tone Luna Gray aluminum unibody, the ThinkBook 13x measures 0.5 by 11.6 by 8.1 inches and weighs 2.7 pounds. That's a bit more compact than another business laptop with a 13.5-inch, 3:2-aspect-ratio display, the HP Dragonfly G4 (0.65 by 11.7 by 8.7 inches), but the HP is lighter at 2.22 pounds. Another of our favorite ultraportables, the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Touch UM3406, has a 14-inch 16:10 screen; it's 0.59 by 12.3 by 8.7 inches and 2.82 pounds. With the laptop's IR face-recognition webcam and a fingerprint reader built into the power button, you can skip typing passwords with Windows Hello. The webcam can sense your presence or absence to unlock or lock the system, pause video playback, or even play, rewind, and fast-forward videos if you wave at it. The screen can adjust both brightness and color as your environment changes. Uncharacteristically for Lenovo but in keeping with recent Apple and Dell laptops, the ThinkBook 13x skimps on ports, providing only an audio jack and three USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports (one at left and two at right). You'll find a tiny side shutter switch for the webcam, but if you want to plug in a USB-A flash drive or other peripheral or an HDMI monitor, you're out of luck without a dongle. Lenovo included Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 6E radios to handle wireless communications. Using the Lenovo ThinkBook 13x Gen 4: A 'Magical' Rectangular Ring Light A magnetic strip and row of pogo pins atop the screen lid let you clip on what Lenovo calls a Magic Bay Light, a roughly 1-by-4.5-inch LED lamp that a provided Lenovo Smart Meeting app enables you to change from auto brightness to a dimmer or blindingly bright manual mode. (Lenovo has previewed other Magic Bay accessories ranging from a 4K webcam to a wacky prototype aromatherapy diffuser, but the light is the only one now available.) The lamp definitely improves your colleagues' view of you in dark environments, and it can even show a temporary avatar or still (optionally watermarked "Not a real-time video") if you need to step away briefly. I can attest, however, that it shows as two garish reflecting bars if you wear glasses. Also, if you set Windows Camera or another video app to the required "Lenovo Virtual Camera" instead of "Front-facing camera," the 1080p webcam becomes a 720p webcam. The 13x supports Windows Camera's recently added AI Studio Effects, including background blur and auto framing. Lenovo Smart Meeting goes further by optionally softening skin tone and adding a green-screen background image option. The webcam's images and videos are colorful and sharp, with minimal static. We're fans of tall 3:2 aspect ratio screens for reading web pages and Word documents, and the ThinkBook's is a pleasure to work with -- exceptionally bright, with rich, saturated colors. Its contrast is high, and viewing angles are wide, though the touch glass catches some room lights. The screen's details are sharp, with no pixelation around the edges of letters. Its white backgrounds are clean instead of dingy or grayish. Dolby Access software (also available within the Lenovo Vantage app that controls other system settings and Wi-Fi security) provides dynamic, music, movie, game, and voice modes and an equalizer for fine-tuning the laptop's four Harman Kardon speakers. The sound is loud enough, with better-than-average bass, with a little boom or echo at the top volume. Vocals and instrumentals are crisp through the speakers, and it's easy to make out overlapping tracks. As with all too many laptops, the ThinkBook's backlit keyboard starts with two strikes against it -- you must pair the Fn and cursor arrow keys in the absence of dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys, not to mention those arrows that are arranged in an awkward HP-style row instead of the correct inverted T (half-height up and down arrows stacked between full-size left and right). The keyboard has a shallow but snappy typing feel; it was easy to maintain a rapid pace. The buttonless touchpad glides and taps smoothly but has a tinny click. Considering Lenovo's track record for keyboards and touchpads, this is slightly below the level of quality we've come to expect. Testing the Lenovo ThinkBook 13x Gen 4: Above-Average Aptitude For our benchmark comparison charts, we pitted the ThinkBook 13x Gen 4 against two abovementioned Editors' Choice award winners: The HP Dragonfly G4 is more expensive ($2,279 as tested) and the Asus Zenbook 14 OLED Touch UM3406 much less so ($849.99 as tested). The MSI Commercial 14 is another small-business slimline ($1,129 as tested). Finally, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano Gen 3 is the ThinkPad family's closest match to this ThinkBook -- almost identically priced ($1,624 as tested) with a 13-inch, 2,160-by-1,350-pixel IPS screen. Productivity 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 includes a storage subtest for the primary drive. Three other 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 5.5 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. We also 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. It uses Adobe's famous image editor, Creative Cloud version 22, 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, from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters. The ThinkBook placed honorably in the middle of the pack in most tests. However, all five lightweights easily cleared the 4,000 points in PCMark 10 that indicate decent everyday productivity for the Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace suites. With the first higher-wattage Core Ultra 5 125H rather than 125U we've seen, the ThinkBook performed well in our CPU benchmarks, though the Asus and MSI produced better scores yet. Graphics Tests We test Windows PCs' graphics 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). We also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses low-level routines like texturing and high-level ones like game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests are rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions. The more frames per second (fps), the better. The 13x slugged it out with the Zenbook for the lead here, though neither Intel's nor AMD's integrated graphics are a patch on the discrete GPUs of serious gaming notebooks. You won't play the latest shoot-'em-ups or perform CAD or CGI rendering on these ultraportables, but you'll be fine for casual media work and video streaming. Battery and Display Tests We test each laptop'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 make sure 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). Lenovo says the ThinkBook 13x has the largest battery of any 13-inch laptop, and it showed, with all-day battery life in the sense of 24 hours rather than working hours. It also showed off the brightest screen in the group, though its color coverage -- while fine for productivity -- predictably fell short of the Asus' OLED panel. Verdict: A Fine Choice But Not a Slam Dunk The ThinkBook 13x Gen 4 lives up to its brand's small-business value proposition, undercutting the similarly screened HP Dragonfly G4 and delivering better performance and double the battery life of the ThinkPad X1 Nano. But that doesn't make it a bargain, with Asus and others selling ultraportables with superior OLED screens for hundreds less. Also, its lack of HDMI and USB-A ports is a pity. The 13x is a slick, capable laptop with Lenovo's excellent build quality, but it could use a price cut.