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## ThinkPad L15 Gen 2 AMD Review

DutchEllie on July 4, 2021 at 10:04 AM

Last updated: July 4, 2021 at 10:18 AM

"Fine, I will do it myself then!"

Right, since apparently none seems to want to review this laptop, I guess I shall have to do it myself in that case. The ThinkPad L15 Gen 2 AMD (20X7000QMH) is a rather new laptop (at the time of writing). It was released in most of the world at around May 2021, according to the Lenovo PSREF service. It was announced virtually silently, with almost no publicity at all! The only references to this product that I could find were an entry in a generic product database somewhere and a question on the Dutch site Tweakers (Forum post) and that was it, aside from Lenovo's own website of course. This surprised me, but I quickly found that the old model of this same laptop had almost zero publicity as well. I honestly wonder why that is. I would expect professional reviewers to pick up on a product launch like this. Even now, two months later there are no reviews for this laptop. There is an entry on the Laptopmedia website about it, but no review. That's why I will do it myself then. This review will not be a long, detailed review with testing and everything. Rather it will be a simple sum of topics, ending in a verdict. Let us start.

#### The laptop in general

The Lenovo ThinkPad L15 Gen 2 is finely built. It uses high quality plastic, and it does it well! Rather than trying to imitate Apple (and compromising on using actual metal) the ThinkPad series has been using high quality plastic for housing since absolutely forever. I praise this design and would prefer this over almost everything. The plastic is high quality everywhere, it is almost soft to the touch and it feels very nice. The design is what one would expect from a ThinkPad. The laptop feels sturdy and high-quality. Lenovo clearly has an almost unmatched experience in making laptops like this and it shows. Despite this being an entry level laptop, it feels like it should be several hundred euros more expensive.

#### The keyboard

The keyboard is again, what you would expect from a ThinkPad. It uses basically the same keyboard module as all other ThinkPads. The layout is good, with countless reviews for other ThinkPad models praising it. The keys are ever so slightly slanted too, making the typing experience easy and comfortable. It has a backlit function too, but it is almost never needed, not even in the dark. My old laptop (some Lenovo Legion) has a backlit keyboard as well, but really even in broad daylight needs it backlight to be on all the time. A weird quirk of this keyboard however is its Control and Function key are switched on the layout for some reason. The Function key is on the edge, where normally the Control key would reside. This is fixable in software fortunately. Lenovo's Vantage software (for Windows only) provides a simple switch to switch the functions of these buttons around. Oh and of course it has its signature TouchPoint between the G, H and B keys. It is a joy to use, especially while typing and quickly having to move your cursor around.

#### The screen

The screen is a place where Lenovo seems to be able to save the money on this laptop, but this is not a bad thing. The screen is easily bright enough in indoor conditions and you have the ability to use it outside, just not very well :). I have read the color accuracy on the previous model was not good. I do not know about this myself, but I don't do any color sensitive work, so I would not know any way. My model did not come with a touchscreen, but Lenovo's PSREF database makes me believe there are models out there that do, I just had no option to get it.

#### Performance

My model came packed with an AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U with Radeon Graphics and 16GB of memory. This is not a dedicated GPU, rather a built-in one. It is not very good for gaming. Do not get this laptop if what you plan on playing involves more advanced graphics than Sid Meier's Civilization VI. It can game, don't get me wrong. Just don't expect to play anything more than Rimworld or Civ VI. The Ryzen 7 Pro is a very capable CPU. It has 8 cores and 16 threads and consumes only about 15 Watts at peak! You can easily blaze through every task a normal laptop should be able to do. Browsing, text editing, coding and compiling, it will do it all.

#### Battery life

This is what drove my decision to buy a new laptop in the first place. I am not exaggerating when I say my old Lenovo Legion would go from 100% to 30% in about 10 minutes. It speds up too, to the point where you could actually count down with its percentage from around 50%. At 30% it would die. Needless to say, I needed a new laptop. The ThinkPad advertised a battery life of an insane 14 hours. It does not make 14 hours, not even with the screen at half brightness. However, it does regularly make around 6/7 hours. It is funny to see the difference too in the advertising from Lenovo between the AMD and Intel models of this same laptop. Intel gets a considerably lower score, around 7.5 hours. If the real battery life is really 50% of what is advertised, I urge you to not buy the Intel model. No one would do that anyway, since it is more expensive too.

#### Summary and conclusion

The Lenovo ThinkPad L15 Gen 2 AMD is a very well-built laptop. It has a great keyboard that is easy to type on, just like other ThinkPads. The screen is good for indoors and a little hard to see outdoors, but be real here, how often do YOU expect to get outside, you hermit. When it comes to performance this laptop holds up great in every task that is not gaming. It can game, but it is not made for that. Battery life is very good at around 6/7 hours when doing regular work.
I definitely recommend this laptop. At around 900 euros now, it's fairly priced. I did get a pretty good deal however. That model is now gone from the website, but my model came in 140 euros cheaper than the regular option, with the only difference being I would have to install my own OS. It did not come with Windows 10 Pro pre-installed. Saving 140 euros for the price of spending 10 minutes myself to install and definitely genuinely activate Windows myself, sign me up! Sadly this model is gone from the site now. Don't see why they even offered it in the first place then, but I am not complaining! On top of this incredible save, I was able to put a gracious student discount as well. I paid a total of €730,15 for this machine. That, frankly, is ridiculously cheap. However, to say this machine is expensive without the model difference and discount would be a lie. If you are looking for a good laptop to use for the next 10 years this is your chance.

#### Random thoughts

To expand on the last phrase of the summary and conclusion, I would like to rant a bit. Feel free to not read this, the review is over. Too often do I see people who buy a midrange laptop, something like an HP with some Intel i5 and 8GB of memory. They buy it for school, or for work, or just as an everyday computer to use at home occasionally. The problem is the expectations they have for the money they spend. For €500 you can not get a laptop that will last a long time. Not now, not ever. A family member will come to me with an old laptop and ask me to please speed it up again. I had such an encounter recently. They brought the laptop in and it was... an experience. If I remember correctly, it had something like 4GB of DDR2 memory, running on an old AMD CPU. I reinstalled Windows, a process which took several hours. Once it was installed, it was as slow as it was when I started. I could not install Linux, but not even that would have saved it. In the end I told them to buy an SSD and give it to me, I would install it in the laptop and reinstall Windows on that. That worked, but I wonder for how long still. It is surprising the laptop is not dead yet. Is this really what people are willing to deal with? Do people actually accept that is how computers are supposed to run?