Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 review: A safe pair of hands that will last for days

Lenovo's ThinkPad T series has long been considered a steady pair of hands in the laptop market. You know what you're getting with Lenovo's high-end enterprise model, and we assumed at first glance that the same would have been true for the new Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen6. But in truth, this AI-infused laptop – Lenovo's first in this series to feature the new Arm-based Qualcomm chip and a 45-TOPS NPU – has plenty of surprises hidden up its sleeve.

Starting at £1,600, this laptop comes with the same matted combi-metal exterior you would expect and a lightweight frame that makes it ideal for working on the move. While not as flashy as some of the highest-end ultraportables we've seen, there's plenty on offer for professionals seeking a machine to work dependably and handle significant workloads.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Design and display

ThinkPads aren't always the most visually striking laptops, but with the new ThinkPad T14s, Lennovo has softened the harder elements of previous models in the enterprise-focused family. The bezels are much narrower too and the edges are a little rounder. The laptop has also imported the webcam bump seen in a few other previous models -- we don't love this as it does feel there is an overhang but on the flip side, it lets you open the laptop much easier.

Weighing just 2.72lbs (1.24kg), the chassis makes this laptop light enough to carry around with you with ease – comprising a blend of carbon fiber, magnesium and aluminum. The matted black finish that coats its exterior also lends the palm rest a pleasant rubbery feel that makes it comfortable to use for long durations. That said, the chassis is prone to smudging and may need regular wipedowns. There is a risk of compromising on a "premium" feel with a chassis so lightweight and sometimes plastic-feeling, but it's more than good enough from a pragmatic perspective.

The display fitted in our review unit was a 1080p LCD screen with a 1,920 x 1,200-pixel resolution and a standard 60Hz refresh rate – so nothing particularly special, and actually a lower pixel-per-inch ratio than many alternatives, meaning less sharp. There is a 2.8K OLED version of the ThinkPad T14s available, for any professionals intent on working with graphics, but this base unit is more than enough for day-to-day workloads. If we had any major complaints it would be that the screen brightness is underwhelming. While the manufacturer claims it can reach 400 nits, our experience suggests it might dip beneath this figure. It's not a dim screen, but there are much brighter ones out there.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Specs and performance

Where Lenovo's new AI laptop excels is performance – registering outstanding scores in our internal benchmarking. First, though, it's worth recapping on what you get under the hood. As with many of new AI PCs in the current generation, the ThinkPad T14s includes a trio of Qualcomm chips including the Snapdragon X Elite CPU, Adreno GPU, and Hexagon NPU. The manufacturer partnered these chips with 32GB RAM and a decent 1TB SSD.

In testing with Geekbench 6, the laptop generated astonishing scores of 2,448 for single-threaded performance and 14,563 for multi-threaded performance. By way of comparison, the excellent Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 – fitted with the same components – registered just shy of these figures with 2,334 and 13,246. These numbers are also on par with the previous generation of Apple's custom silicon – so we would certainly back this Lenovo laptop to handle plenty of heavy-duty tasks. Likewise, graphics performance is very strong, with the ThinkPad T14s scoring 20,493 versus 19,022 in the Surface. It's also worth mentioning that copying data to and from this machine is relatively speedy too, with CrystalDiskMark scores of 6,180.53 MB/s for reads and 4,811.84 MB/s for writes.

But the absolute crowning achievement of this laptop is a monstrous 26hrs 9mins battery life – which we registered in our standard looped video playback test. This is more than three full working days of battery life, and it's also fitted with a rapid charge feature that reloads 80% of charge within an hour.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Features

The ThinkPad's keyboard features a number of changes on its predecessor, including markings to help people find the right keys as well as swapping the Cntrl and Fn keys around so they're aligned with other devices. These welcome quality-of-life improvements add to an already great typing experience, with muted keys that have a nice amount of feedback alongside a deep travel distance.

The touchpad, on the other hand, is fairly small and a bit fiddly to use – especially given the additional left-click and right-click buttons underneath the spacebar. Ideally, we'd have ditched this for more room to move the mouse cursor or scroll.

We were, however, impressed with a healthy number of ports including HDMI as well as two USB-A and two USB-C ports. The device also benefits from a ThinkShutter camera privacy switch, as well as a fingerprint sensor located to the right of the keyboard.

The biggest appeal of the machine, however, is the inclusion of an NPU which opens the door to plenty of AI software features. Right now, Studio Effects is perhaps the most effective and can give you full control over your camera setup when working remotely and tuning into meetings. Live captions, too, is useful in the way it can translate up to 44 languages to English regardless of the content you are listening to. It's early days for AI PCs, but we expect plenty more apps and services to become available in the coming months and years.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Is it worth it?

There's plenty to love about the Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 – from its immense power to long-lasting battery life. While there are a couple of minor downsides to picking this up, including the lack of detail in the display as well as the unsightly chassis, its build quality and lightness more than make up for it. It also features narrower bezels than older ThinkPad devices and is available in an OLED configuration – which means these minor bugbears are easy to resolve. For a starting retail price of £1,600, it's a great piece of enterprise machinery that will help you unlock higher levels of productivity in a package that may, in previous generations, cost so much more.

Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6: Specifications