Made-in-Japan laptops with up to 32 GB RAM and Panther Lake CPUs break cover

Alongside the Lavie X14 laptop, NEC Lavie has also introduced two more lightweight laptops - the S13 and the N13. As the name might suggest, both happen to be 13 inchers, and are primarily aimed at moderately intensive productivity workloads.

The N13 is powered by up to an Intel Core 7 350 CPU paired with up to 32 GB of LPDDR5X RAM. The Core 7 CPU is far from a benchmark champion, featuring a 6-core, 6-thread setup consisting of 2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. 

According to synthetic benchmarks, the 15 W CPU is only a few percentage points faster than the AMD Ryzen AI 5 430 APU found in many entry-level laptops. In simpler terms, the Lavie N13 laptop should only be good enough for lightweight-to-moderately intensive workloads.

In fact, a roughly 25% slower Core 5 320-equipped variant is also available for folks who generally don't have any serious performance requirements.

The Lavie S13 laptop, on the other hand, features two CPU options: the 6-core Core Ultra 5 322 and the 8-core Core Ultra 7 355. The Core Ultra 7 variant is quite capable, managing a 47% lead over the Core Ultra 5 322 variant in Cinebench 2024. The starting can also be executed without 32 GB of LPDDR5x RAM. 

Compared to the Core 7 350 CPU in the N13 laptop, the Core Ultra 7 is a whopping 43% faster. Clearly, the Core Ultra 7 SKU is much better suited for intensive productivity workloads, including opening heavy spreadsheets, serious multitasking, and the occasional video and photo editing.

Not only is the Lavie S13 laptop much more powerful than the N13, but the S13 is also noticeably lighter, coming in at just 1,088 g, or roughly 2.4 lbs. The N13, on the other hand, weighs in at roughly 1,177 grams, or around 2.6 lbs.

The I/O on offer onboard the two laptops have been detailed below:

Lavie N13

• Dual USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C
• Dual USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A
• HDMI
• 3.5 mm audio jack
• MicroSD slot
• WiFi 6E

Lavie S13

• Triple USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C
• 3.5 mm headphone jack
• Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4

The Lavie S13 laptop features a 76.1 Wh battery, a 12.9-mm thin chassis, up to 1 TB of PCIe-based solid-state storage, a 46/49-TOPS NPU for the Core Ultra 5/Core Ultra 7 variants, dual 2 W stereo speakers, and a 1920 x 1200 IPS display with unspecified brightness and color accuracy.

On the other hand, the Lavie N13 laptop, features a smaller 54 Wh battery, a 15 mm-thick chassis, a 13.3-inch IPS display with a resolution of 1920 by 1200 and optional touch support, and up to 1 TB of PCIe-based flash storage.

Pricing and availability

Both laptops are quite pricey, with the base variant of the N13 with the Core 5 320 CPU, 16 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB SSD priced at ¥279,840 or roughly $1,774. The S13, on the other hand starts at ¥299,860 for the Core Ultra 5 322-equipped SKU with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB storage.

NEC does not sell its Lavie-branded products outside of Japan, and the same is likely to be true for the N13 and S13 laptops as well. Interested customers can always go the import route, if they really fancy a made-in-Japan laptop with healthy specs.