Lenovo launches affordable MacBook Neo rival with thin and light design

Lenovo has released a handful of Intel Wildcat Lake laptops in China, and the Lecoo Air 14 is among them. As the name suggests, the thin and lightweight design is one of the key highlights of the laptop. The company claims that it weighs under a kg, coming in at 990 grams (2.18lbs). Its chassis is said to measure as thin as 12.95mm (1.29cm).

Under the hood, this thin and light Lenovo laptop has the Intel Core 5 315, a lower mid-range processor from the Wildcat Lake lineup. Per early benchmarks, the processors from this series have what it takes to compete with the Apple A18 Pro found in the MacBook Neo. Even one of our tests on the Core 7 350 suggests the same.

This Wildcat Lake processor is paired with 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 512GB of storage on the base configuration. The memory is soldered, meaning that it's not upgradeable, but it's possible to expand the storage with a higher-capacity SSD (2TB Samsung 990 Pro curr. $389.99 on Amazon).

A 50Wh battery powers the components of the Lecoo Air 14, and Lenovo says that it can offer up to 16.8 hours of battery life. Of course, that rated runtime is considering office workloads only.

There's support for 100W PD on two of the three USB-C ports. These two also have DP 1.4, while the third Type-C port is for data only. They are all rated for 5Gbps transfer speed, and there's a 3.5mm audio jack as well.

Display-wise, there's not much interesting happening with this Lenovo laptop. The Lecoo Air 14 comes with a 14-inch display with a resolution of 1920x1200 pixels, a 60Hz refresh rate, and a 300 nits brightness rating. So, it's not exactly better than the screen equipped on the MacBook Neo, but the good part is that it has 100% sRGB coverage.

As for the price, Lenovo is offering the Lecoo Air 14 in 512GB and 1TB storage variants. The former costs CNY 4,088, around $603, making it more affordable than the Xiaoxin Air 13, which is also powered by an Intel Wildcat Lake processor. That said, this laptop is less likely to make a proper global debut, but it could get rebranded under the IdeaPad branding.