Lenovo V15 Gen 2 AMD test: Speed boost on an antique display

In the second generation of the V15, Lenovo equips the entry-level device with a powerful Ryzen 5 5500U hexa-core processor and RX Vega 7 iGPU from AMD. The office laptop is able to surpass the direct competitors in almost all points overall. If only there wasn't the TN display with bad viewing angles, pale colors, and low brightness. The model with the IPS display, which also has a 1920 x 1080 resolution, is practically unavailable.

The 1.64 kg (~3.6 lb), light device is now more compact than its predecessor, and its darker color is different than the light gray before. The keyboard is better than that of the competitors, and with a low stroke and clear pressure point, typing is comfortable, accurate, and fast. On the other hand, there is no keyboard illumination.

At almost 8 hours while surfing, the battery life is still good, despite the small 38-Wh battery. In addition, the entry-level office device always remains quiet and very cool. The case is robust and offers a good purchase to the fingers, but the display lid can be pressed down and also wobbles when you change the angle (maximum 180 degrees).

Our tested configuration is currently available in Germany for 514 Euros from Notebooksbilliger.de and has 8 GB of RAM (one RAM slot available) and a large and fast 512-GB M.2 2242 NVMe SSD in the PCIe 3 standard.

In terms of connections, there is now also USB-C, but without charging support and without DisplayPort. In addition, there is also a new Gbit Ethernet port. On the other hand, the SD card reader was dropped. As far as the other connections, there is 2x USB-A (1x USB 3.2 Gen 1), HDMI 1.4b, the audio port, and the proprietary charging port.

You can find additional details and numerous benchmark results in our review of the Lenovo V15 Gen 2 AMD.