One controversial design change: Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 7 vs T14 Gen 6 photo comparison

If you ask some people, ThinkPads do not really have a design - they are just black boxes, would the naysayers tell you. However, Lenovo would probably disagree, as the evidently invest a lot of money into refining the design of their legendary business laptop line every few years. Lenovo even has a special term for "redesign": They call it "clean sheet", a name which comes from the fact that the new design starts with a clean sheet of paper and is not simply an update of a previous model.

Such a case is the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen 7 which we recently reviewed. This model brings a completely new design, after the previous ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 and ThinkPad T14 Gen 6 both shared the same design language. The T14 G7 changes things up in a lot of ways, and we were able to directly compare it with the older T14 Gen 6.

The changes are numerous: For one, Lenovo has redesigned the entire display lid area, with a new wide bar hinge, slightly smaller screen bezels (1 mm less on the sides) and a flat display cover - the one of the T14 Gen 6 had a slight bulge. These changes will not be controversial, but one change will be for sure: Rounded screen covers have become the new standard on the Lenovo ThinkPad T series.

As for the base, the new ThinkPad T14 Gen 7 is around 1 mm thicker, but it keeps the same chamfered design for the base, so it does not really look thicker. The holes of the speakers are a bit smaller than before, and there are less ventilation holes on the base. Of course, the big visual change here is the adoption of a new, centered keyboard font.

Which one do you prefer: The new ThinkPad with rounded corners and centered key printing, or the old ThinkPad, with normal corners and the old ISO standard key printing style?