Lenovo’s 2019 laptop lineup includes two new low-cost models with 14 inch displays that are aimed at the education and enterprise markets. The Lenovo 14e Chromebook and Lenovo 14w Windows laptop both have starting prices below $300 and both are available with up to 8GB of RAM and up to a 1080p touchscreen display.
They’re also both powered by AMD processors… and interestingly Lenovo opted for the new low-power chips that AMD launched for Chromebooks in January.
The Lenovo 14e Chromebook features a 6 watt AMDÂ A4-9120C CPU, and the Lenovo 14w is the first Windows computer I’m aware of to sport an AMD A6-9220C processor.
Both the Windows and Chrome OS models measure 12.9″ x 8.9″ x 0.7″, but there a few differences in the two laptops, aside from the processor and operating system.
Lenovo 14w
- 128GB eMMC or 256GB SSD options
- 1 USB-C port
- 2 USB 3.1 ports
- HDMI
- microSD card reader
- 3.4 pounds
- $299 starting price
Lenovo 14e Chromebook
- Up to 64GB of eMMC storage
- 2 USB-C ports
- 2 USB 3.1 ports
- microSD card reader
- 3.3 pounds
- $279 starting price
The specs looked too good to be true, until you see the CPU. The A6-9220C is one of AMD’s “lingering” ancient CPUs. For one reason or another, AMD is still making CPUs for cheap laptops using their Excavator microarchitecture. Excavator is not only 2 generations old, and predates Zen microarchitecture, but even at the time of its launch it was very much outdated compared to Intel’s offerings. My guess is that this will perform similar to some of the Cherrytrail Atom x5 and x7 CPUs.
That’s a really sad chip from AMD. 2 cores, 2 threads 1 MB l2 cache.
Agreed, but what else do you expect for $280 and 6 W?
The Chromebook option doesn’t look too bad. I’m happy to see there are fairly thin bezels too. Up to 8gb or RAM looks good too – especially for those who want to run some Linux software.