Lenovo ThinkPad T14 G4 AMD needs upgradable RAM

Lenovo offers many of its ThinkPad twice: Once with AMD CPUs and once with Intel processors. One would think that Lenovo keeps the differences between the two versions small to save on development costs. This however is not true. AMD and Intel ThinkPads are often slightly different.

One example: The Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 4 AMD, which we reviewed not too long ago, has completely soldered down memory. RAM upgrades by the user are thus not possible, this model is limited to 32 GB RAM. This is fast LPDDR5X memory, but the Intel variant is also available with DDR5 RAM. The advantage of the ThinkPad T14 G4 Intel is the presence of a single RAM slot, making this laptop upgradable. 

Efficiency is the reason why we recommend the AMD variant of the enterprise allrounder, despite the lack of upgradability. However: The Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 4 is not the only mobile PC with this CPU. The direct competition by HP also features the AMD Ryzen Pro 7 7840U - and different from the ThinkPad T14 Gen 4 AMD, the HP EliteBook 845 G10 has fully upgradable memory.

This makes it hard for us to recommend the ThinkPad over the EliteBook. For the next generation of the ThinkPad T series, Lenovo should switch back to upgradable memory - HP shows that it is possible, even for AMD laptops.