After mixed office became the norm, the PC market ushered in a large wave of purchase and renewal demand. This is both an opportunity and a test for the PC industry. After all, with the change of application scenarios, user needs have also been adjusted, such as frequent switching of the working environment requires PCs to have faster response speed, and more and more online meetings require clearer cameras, microphones and so on.
Driven by new demand, PC manufacturers have also adjusted and innovated their products to seize rare opportunities.
Not long ago, IDC released the "Top Ten Forecasts of China's PC Market in 2022" and also mentioned that it is expected that the Chinese PC market will maintain a year-on-year increase in 2022, and the compound growth rate of the PC market in the next five years will be 4.0%. Among them, the five-year compound growth rate of the commercial market will reach 3.7%, and the continuous expansion of mobile office demand will lead the growth of the commercial market.
It is worth noting that not only business people and white-collar workers are in demand for a new generation of productivity tools, but also driven by factors such as digital transformation, large and medium-sized enterprises are also accelerating the digital process and upgrading IT infrastructure to provide a more flexible business model. Therefore, in the next few years, PCs, especially commercial products for mobile office, will be promising.
What I want to introduce this time is a mainstream thin and light commercial notebook created by Lenovo for industry customers, workplace white-collar workers, business owners and other users with mobile office needs - Lenovo K14 Gen 1 (hereinafter referred to as Lenovo K14).
As a leader in the PC market, Lenovo has been deeply rooted in both consumer and commercial fields for many years, and has sufficient strength in multiple dimensions such as products, ecology and services. Years of experience have also made Lenovo more responsive in gaining insight into market demand for product innovation. In addition to the traditional advantages of commercial use such as efficient productivity, safety and reliability, Lenovo K14 also brings more new features that meet the current market demand, such as a more portable body, convenient and fast ease of use, flexible internal and external expansion, and after-sales service for enterprise industry customers.
Diversified customizable configuration is also one of the advantages of Lenovo K14, which can be equipped with Intel 11th generation Core or AMD Ryzen™ 5000 series processors, while memory, storage, battery, screen, keyboard, system, etc. can be purchased on demand.
The Lenovo K14 in this review is equipped with an 11th-generation Core i5-1135G7 processor, with 8GB of RAM, 512GB of SSD, and pre-installed Windows 11.
A light and portable body that is low-key and a little personality
As a mainstream thin and light commercial book, lenovo K14 appearance also adopts a simple design loved by business people and white-collar workers.
However, the classic understated black body still hides some personalized embellishments. The A-side of the fuselage is printed with a unique texture, which makes the feel more delicate and does not leave fingerprint sweat stains.
There is also a Lenovo logo that enhances the brand's sense.
Lenovo K14 fuselage A side can also choose alloy material, not only with high strength, strong and durable, but also has a delicate matte feel and is also not easy to leave fingerprints, highlighting the restrained elegance.
With two different material bodies, it meets the differentiated needs of users for texture and perception.
In addition to the simple design, in order to meet the increasing mobile office needs of users, Lenovo K14 has also made great efforts in thin and light. For example, lenovo K14 with a narrow bezel design, its 14-inch full HD screen screen accounted for 88%, which can enhance the sense of visual substitution, allow users to focus more on the screen content, but also effectively reduce the size of the fuselage, more convenient to put into the backpack, satchel, or support on the arms, legs to use.
The Lenovo K14 body ensures ruggedness while reducing its weight to 1.45kg. Although there is still some gap compared with many extremely thin and light books weighing about 1kg, it is quite large compared to the portability of old notebooks in the hands of some users, not to mention that a small high-power USB C charger can be selected to further reduce the weight of the equipment carried when traveling.
In addition, although lenovo K14 is thin to 17.1mm, there is no compromise in the interface configuration, which is also one of the advantages of the extreme thin and light book, which is convenient for daily office use, and will be described in detail later.
Lenovo K14 features a wedge-shaped design on the side, which is not only easier to pick up the notebook from the desktop, but also provides a slimmer visual look.
Detailed, safe and easy to use
Although business office has always been the most important application scenario of notebooks, today, when hybrid office has become the norm, the "old guy" as a notebook has also had new demands. In the office scene, in addition to efficient productivity, it is not only necessary to be thin and portable, safe and reliable, but also to have excellent ease of use when the application is quickly switched.
Safety and reliability is one of the reasons why white-collar workers and corporate customers have long relied on commercial books, and it is also a feature that commercial books have received more and more attention in the process of digitization and informatization. To this end, Lenovo K14 is guaranteed through both "inside and outside" aspects.
Outside, the Lenovo K14 fuselage is rugged and durable, whether it is squeezed by a human flow on the commute road, or a bump in daily use, there is no need to worry about damage. Lenovo K14 also adopts a PPC physical anti-peeping camera that can eliminate secretly recording, optional fingerprint recognition integrated in the power button, anti-splash backlit keyboard, and enhanced WPA3 security settings, adding multiple protections to the privacy and security of devices and data.
Inside, many users may not see it, but solid workmanship and effective heat dissipation design are the key to Lenovo K14's ability to release stable and efficient productivity for a long time, avoiding the discomfort caused by stuttering when you preach the program, report work, and participate in online meetings.
Lenovo K14 is equipped with a cooling fan and a large diameter heat pipe to ensure CPU heat dissipation, while many heat exhaust plates can be seen on the inside of its D-side protective case to assist in rapid heat dissipation.
Not only that, but the memory of the Lenovo K14 is also protected by a shield. And as a thin and light notebook, Lenovo K14 does not use on-board memory, which provides convenience for subsequent upgrades and expansions.
Safety and reliability is a hard indicator that qualified commercial must cross the line, and the ease of use of the optimized experience is the "real kung fu" that users praise. To this end, Lenovo K14 has carved out the details.
For example, in the design of the A-side embellishment, easy to grasp the wedge-shaped side, or integrated fingerprint recognition of the power button to achieve a key boot login quick wake-up, optional backlit keyboard in the low light emergency or night overtime to improve the input efficiency and so on.
In addition, the "door handle" design of the camera area of Lenovo K14 allows users to open the screen more easily, with the 180 ° opening and closing design, it can easily share the screen content in video conferencing, brainstorming and other scenarios. Of course, if lenovo K14 can support one-handed opening and closing, it is even more icing on the cake.
It can be said that these details will gradually show their advantages with use, perhaps they are not remarkable, but every time you deal with lenovo K14, it is they that make some operation easier.
Complete interfaces for productivity
Even without booting, you can see the difference between Lenovo K14 as a professional commercial book and a conventional thin and light book through the interface.
In order to pursue better portability, a large number of notebooks choose to start with the interface in the process of "slimming down", simplifying to only providing USB C and headphone interfaces. Although this kind of design can make the fuselage a few points thinner, it may bring many inconveniences when going out for daily office and business trips.
For example, the projector in the conference room, the monitor on the desk may use the HDMI interface, the keyboard and mouse peripherals used daily need USB A, and even the U disk and mobile hard disk handed over by colleagues may also need USB A to complete the data transmission. If the computer interface is incomplete, you need to find a docking station or adapter, which will inevitably affect office efficiency.
Because of this, in the process of pursuing portability, commercial ben is more in the material, fuselage design efforts, rather than abandoning the interface.
On the left side of the Lenovo K14 fuselage, there are USB C Gen2 (support charging, DP), USB A, HDMI, USBC Gen1, and headset integrated interface.
On the right side of the fuselage, there is a USB A Gen1, Gigabit RJ 45 network cable interface, and a computer lock hole.
If USB A+ USB C+ HDMI is already on top of the "standard" of conventional thin and light books, then equipping a Gigabit wired network port is undoubtedly a "plus".
For a large number of professionals, the network cable seems to have become a thing of the past, and the well-covered Wi-Fi and even the cellular connection have been able to better meet the network connection needs of daily use.
However, it is undeniable that wired networks are still superior in terms of stability, latency, and even speed, which is crucial for users in medical, financial, government, education, services and other industries. After all, network caton, it may not only be the quality of service that may be affected.
Therefore, Lenovo K14 provides Gigabit wired networks with Wi-Fi 6, providing users and enterprises with more comprehensive connectivity options. In other words, lenovo K14's complete interface configuration is not only a reliable boost to improve work efficiency, but also brings a heavy guarantee to avoid helplessness when needed.
Customized and diversified configurations on demand
The richer the product range and the more configuration specifications, the more accurately the user can choose a product with the most cost performance according to the needs when purchasing. This is especially true for enterprise procurement, and the customized services provided by manufacturers can avoid the problems of "excess or insufficient" caused by the immutable procurement of enterprises, so as to more accurately control the cost of IT equipment procurement and obtain the best input-output ratio.
This is also the importance of Lenovo K14 to provide diversified configurations. Whether it is processor, memory, storage, or system, keyboard, fingerprint recognition, etc. can be purchased according to demand. For example, for the sales staff in the company, portability, long battery life, and rapid response are more important, then you can choose the version of SSD + large battery; For departments with image editing and creative needs, you can choose the 11th generation Core i7 or Ryzen™ R7, with up to 32GB DDR4 3200MHz memory and larger storage to ensure sufficient performance, as well as local space for storing large files and materials.
It is worth mentioning that the memory and storage of Lenovo K14 also support user expansion, so after completing the procurement, enterprises can still continue to "customize" the hardware combination, coupled with stable and reliable product quality, from the perspective of long-term investment, it can also reduce IT procurement and replacement costs.
Powerful productivity
The Lenovo K14 in this review is equipped with an 11th-generation Core i5-1135G7 processor, with a clock frequency of 2.4GHz, 4 cores and 8 threads, and 8MB L3 cache; The memory is 8GB DDR4 single channel, the storage is 512GB NVMe PCIe, and the system is Windows 11.
Benchmark results are as follows.
Through testing, it can be seen that in terms of daily office, web browsing, etc., Lenovo K14 has sufficient productivity to provide an efficient use experience. And pre-installed new Windows 11, there are also practical tools to improve work efficiency, such as you can make full use of the screen's snug layout, multitasking is easier. At the same time, the simple and exquisite interface of Windows 11 also complements the simple Lenovo K14.
Not only that, but even in the face of content creation scenes that require higher performance, such as Photoshop design, retouching, or editing videos through Premiere Pro, Lenovo K14 has a fighting power. However, in the creation of video content, 1080P is naturally not difficult, but if you want to edit 4K content, you still need to use a proxy.
It is a pity that the evaluation model only has 8GB of single-channel memory, if it is equipped with 16GB dual-channel, then whether it is daily office, or content creation, multi-tasking, etc., the experience will be more smooth. It is also recommended that users with more heavy workloads to choose a medium to high configuration, at least 16GB of memory dual channel is necessary.
In terms of performance stability, through the test of the grill, the CPU power consumption of Lenovo K14 can be maintained at about 35W in a short period of time; After 1 hour of full load operation, the CPU power consumption can be stabilized at 28W. At the same time, in the high-load scenario, the C-side palm rest area of the fuselage and most of the D-side areas will not have a hot feeling.
As a thin and light commercial book that focuses on mobile office, the endurance of Lenovo K14 and the performance release in the unplugged scenario are also very important.
The 45Wh battery is not large in the same size of the notebook, but the battery life experience provided by lenovo K14 can still meet the daily outing, travel and office needs of users. Tested in the PCMark 10 modern office scenario (Wi-Fi connection, 40% screen brightness, best energy efficiency mode), the battery life is 8 hours and 18 minutes at full power. Even if you forget to bring the adapter to work or when you go out, you don't have to worry about the battery.
In addition, lenovo K14 also has a good performance release in the case of unplugged. Through the PCMark 10 test, in the case of unplugged, the performance of the Lenovo K14 declined by only about 10%; Adobe Photoshop performance slipped by about 13 percent, and Premiere Pro slipped by about 24 percent.
Therefore, with the power is not plugged in, it can also provide stable and reliable performance, and better ensure the user's work efficiency in the mobile office scenario.
Complete service to relieve worries
The reliable quality of lenovo K14 has reassured business people to use it as an efficient productivity tool, and can also reduce the burden on enterprise IT operations personnel. In addition, a series of after-sales services launched by Lenovo can also give users and enterprises a "reassuring pill".
Lenovo K14 optional services include quick repair service, basic warranty, accident protection, hard disk non-recycling, asset disposal and so on. For individual users, including 7x24 telephone support services, Yinuo flash repair services (next-day fault repair), and 3 years and 1 data rescue service, the premium service Express Edition can basically cope with possible accidents and avoid equipment problems and affect efficiency.
As for enterprise customers, considering the cost of operation and maintenance, you can consider the remaining services, with warranty on-site, accident protection and other services, to accelerate digital transformation, and add multiple hardware asset insurance. In addition, Lenovo K14 also chooses IWS limited global warranty service, even if it encounters problems such as equipment failure during cross-border and cross-border travel office, it can be solved in a more timely manner, giving people a sense of security of "knowing the past".
In order to enhance the office and travel experience, Lenovo also provides a wealth of accessories such as computer backpacks, wired/wireless mice, docking stations, adapter cables, brackets, and optical drives.
Write at the end
The simple and thin design and complete interface allow users to easily carry lenovo K14 through various scenarios of modern offices such as offices, conference rooms, cafes, airport high-speed rail stations, etc., with rich ease of use advantages, you can quickly switch to work mode.
As the core strength of commercial productivity, safety and reliability, Lenovo K14 also delivered a satisfactory answer. Rich and diversified configuration options to achieve "on-demand customization", whether it is enterprises or individuals can accurately choose and purchase, reduce the cost of procurement and replacement, and improve work efficiency with a new generation of productivity. Moreover, the high quality inherited by Lenovo for many years also allows Lenovo K14 to have a solid and reliable fuselage, stable and excellent heat dissipation, in-depth software and hardware security protection, and with Lenovo's complete after-sales service system, it relieves worries. Especially for enterprise procurement, from the long-term perspective, it can effectively control procurement costs, and can also reduce the impact of hardware problems on the progress of work or the service experience brought to customers.
All in all, Lenovo K14 is a noteworthy choice for industry users who have new needs in the workplace, or who are ready to upgrade office IT equipment to improve efficiency and strengthen the flexibility of business models.