Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 4 review: e-ink on tap

Lenovo offers just a single configuration of the ThinkBook Plus Gen 4, and it’s very expensive at $3,039. That gets you an Intel Core i7-1355U CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and both a 13.3-inch OLED display and a 12-inch color e-ink panel. This price will be hard to swallow for anyone who doesn’t see a very strong need for the 2-in-1’s e-ink display. The reviewer’s guide implies that more configurations are coming, including some with additional storage and potentially different processors, but I would have liked to see more options available at launch.

But it was disappointing. It demonstrated much more ghosting than other e-ink displays I’ve used, such as my main e-book reader, an Amazon Kindle Paperwhite, and the 2nd-gen ThinkBook Plus model. Even simply flipping the page in an e-book often left behind remnants of the previous page that were quite visible and made it difficult to read the new content. I set the panel’s anti-ghosting feature to refresh every 10 seconds, but that meant the display flashed annoyingly, and some ghosting often remained even after refreshes. Setting it to longer intervals made the flashing less bothersome, but then the ghosting lasted longer. It sometimes took several refreshes for the old content to completely disappear, and by that time the intervening content was often ghosted.

The e-ink screen has two modes: Reading provides higher clarity, better for reading and viewing other static images, while Dynamic has a higher refresh rate, but doesn’t look as crisp. Neither provided a great experience, though, especially compared to the gorgeous OLED display on the other side of the lid.

A dedicated interface does make the e-ink display easier to use, and the bundled active pen is useful for handwriting notes. But in practice, it’s just not that useful. I’m an avid reader, and I much prefer reading e-books. But the ghosting rendered the e-ink screen unusable for me. And even if it worked perfectly, its mainstream appeal would be limited. Your requirements must be specific to justify the ThinkBook Plus Gen 4’s extremely high price.

Thankfully, the 16:10 13.3-inch 2.8K OLED display is beautiful out of the box. It’s as colorful as all OLED displays and enjoys inky blacks as usual. I’d be far more likely to use this screen for reading e-books, except for late at night when I avoid blue light for better sleep patterns. It also supports the pen, and makes for a great inking experience.

According to my colorimeter, the OLED panel is just as good as others using the same technology. It’s bright at 383 nits, and has extremely wide colors at 100% of sRGB, 98% of AdobeRGB, and 99% of DCI-P3. That’s much better than the IPS average of 95% of sRGB and 75% of AdobeRGB. The colors are also extremely accurate, with a DeltaE of 0.67 (less than 1.0 is considered suitable for the most demanding creators). And contrast is high at 26,600:1, where most IPS panels are just above 1,000:1.

The display is great for all users, even creators, although the performance isn’t good enough for serious creative work. Media consumers and productivity users will be extremely pleased, though.

The ThinkBook Plus Gen 4 uses 13th-gen Intel U-series processors, which are 15-watt chips that are meant to balance productivity performance and efficiency. I reviewed the laptop with the Core i7-1355U, which in other laptops has provided good, but not great performance.

In our synthetic benchmarks, the ThinkBook performed as expected. You’ll want to use the performance mode to get the best speeds, but even in normal mode, it can handle your mainstream productivity tasks quietly and without overheating. You won’t want to game on this laptop, and creators will want to look elsewhere.

The low-power CPU didn’t do much to overcome the appetite of the high-resolution OLED display. Even with 56 watt-hours of battery, which is good for a 13-inch laptop, the ThinkBook Plus Gen 4 didn’t get spectacular battery life.

In our web-browsing test, the ThinkBook lasted just 5.25 hours, which is a few hours less than average. It managed just over eight hours in the PCMark 10 Applications battery test and 12.5 hours in our vide0-looping test, which is two hours less than average for both.

Theoretically, the e-ink screen shouldn’t be using power when it’s not being used and the backlight is turned off. But something is draining power faster than it should, and the ThinkBook won’t last you a full day of work.

There’s no doubt that the ThinkBook Plus Gen 4 is an innovative laptop. The color e-ink screen is intelligently integrated and, on paper, would offer value for anyone who can make use of its unique characteristics, while the swivel mechanism is a functional return to the past that makes sense in a modern context. The 2-in-1 also has a spectacular OLED display you can use instead of the e-ink panel, and both support an active pen for inking.

Unfortunately, the e-ink screen suffers from significant ghosting that for many users, if not most, renders it unusable. And it’s an incredibly expensive laptop, twice as expensive as other premium 13-inch laptops. The price will have to come down significantly for it to be of value to most small business users, let alone mainstream laptop buyers, even if the ghosting is resolved. Even someone like me, who would appreciate a color e-ink display for a variety of reasons, wouldn’t pay a premium of more than a couple of hundred dollars for a perfect implementation.

Editors’ Recommendations