Lenovo's new 16-inch Wildcat Lake ThinkPad arrives in the US at a lower price than Panther Lake models

Lenovo has released a cheaper variant of the ThinkPad E16 Gen 4 with Intel's Core Series 3 "Wildcat Lake" processors in the US. Announced in July alongside the ThinkPad E14 Gen 8, the new 16-inch ThinkPad offers a more affordable alternative to the existing Intel Panther Lake and AMD Ryzen AI 400 variants, which are now widely available.

To put that into perspective, the new Wildcat Lake variant starts at $1,399 with a Core 5 320 processor, 16 GB of DDR5-5600 RAM, and a 512 GB PCIe 4.0 SSD. By comparison, the Panther Lake model starts at $1,619 with a Core Ultra 5 325, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of storage. The AMD variant costs $1,569 with a Ryzen AI 7 345 and the same amount of RAM and storage.

The lower price comes with some performance trade-off. Both the Panther Lake and AMD variants should deliver stronger CPU and graphics performance. The Wildcat Lake model also has only one SO-DIMM slot, while the other variants support dual-channel memory. That said, Lenovo offers additional configurations with the Core 7 350 and 16 GB, 24 GB, or 32 GB of RAM. The highest-tier model doubles the storage to 1 TB, though maxing out the specifications pushes the price to $2,259.

Upfront, the base model has a 16-inch IPS display with a 1920 x 1200 resolution, 400 nits of peak brightness, a 60 Hz refresh rate, and basic 45% NTSC color coverage. The ThinkPad E16 Gen 4 can also be configured with a 120 Hz touchscreen that supports a much wider 100% sRGB color volume.

Unlike the other budget-oriented ThinkPad L14 Gen 7, the ThinkPad E16 Gen 4 includes a fingerprint reader, a backlit keyboard with a number pad, and a 1080p webcam. Power comes from a 48 Wh battery, though the Wildcat Lake variant drops Wi-Fi 7 in favor of Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. Apart from a missing SD card reader, the laptop includes plenty of ports, including USB-C, USB-A, HDMI 2.1, a headphone jack, and RJ45.

Pricing and availability

In the US, the ThinkPad E16 Gen 4 with Intel Wildcat Lake processors is available to order directly from Lenovo. A configuration with Core 5 320, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB storage, and a 120 Hz screen is also listed on Amazon for $1,419, but is currently marked as out of stock. The new Wildcat Lake variant is also available in other countries like Australia, Hong Kong, and Singapore.