Better screens, please: This one thing about this popular business laptop still needs work

Screens have never been the strong point of the ThinkPad brand. Historically, mainstream models like the 14-inch T series laptops of the T400 series used low res, low color gamut and low brightness TN and IPS screens. The first kind-of decent IPS screens appeared around 2015, and only with the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 did higher resolution than Full-HD (1,920 x 1,080) finally appear, with a WQHD screen (2,560 x 1,440).

Still, to this day, the standard screens of the ThinkPad T series are not good. WUXGA (1,920 x 1,200) resolution panels with a low color gamut are still around, even if the brightness is more adequate nowadays. At least, there are high quality OLED screens with a 2.8K resolution (2,880 x 1,800) with HDR, high color gamut coverage and a fast refresh rate, though they are not always available.

Case in point: The Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 with Intel Lunar Lake we recently reviewed. This configuration, for some reason, is not being offered with an OLED screen by Lenovo, which means it is limited to WUXGA IPS screens. While that alone is maybe not great, but also not terrible, the problem is the remaining selection of screens:

• WUXGA (1,920 x 1,200), IPS, 400 cd/m², 45 % NTSC, 60 Hz
• WUXGA (1,920 x 1,200), IPS, 400 cd/m², 45 % NTSC, Touch, 60 Hz
• WUXGA (1,920 x 1,200), IPS, 500 cd/m², 100 % sRGB, Low Power, 60 Hz
• WUXGA (1,920 x 1,200), IPS, 500 cd/m², 100 & sRGB, Touch, ePrivacy, 60 Hz

Our review unit of the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 Intel (available on Amazon) uses the Low Power panel, which is the only panel really worth buying for non-institutional customers. The two base panels with 45 % NTSC are merely there to make the base model cheaper, and the ePrivacy feature is not something you need outside the corporate world, so no one outside large corporate customers should buy these.

This leaves the Low Power panel. Unfortunately, while it has a nice screen brightness, it still leaves things to be desired: It is a slow panel, which high response rate and just a 60 Hz refresh rate. While 60 Hz is fine for an office laptop, if people buy this as their personal PC, they should get something better nowadays.

Some laptop manufacturers offer 90 Hz IPS WUXGA displays nowadays, and we think it is high time Lenovo does so, too! After all, the T series is not at all a cheap laptop series, and the base panels still exist to keep the starting price low.