Schenker Vision 14 laptop in review: Now also available with the GeForce RTX 3050 Ti

After opening the case, you can see the improved cooling with the second fan as well as the additional heat pipe. The welcome maintenance and upgrade options that include two SODIMM slots (max. 64 GB RAM) and two full-fledged M.2 2280 slots (1x PCIe 4.0 and 1x PCIe 3.0 x2) as well as the replaceable WLAN module are still present in the H35 model of the Vision 14.

Intel's Tiger Lake H35 CPUs are essentially regular Tiger Lake mobile processors with four cores (eight threads), but they just consume more power. However, we often see in our reviews that even the regular U-series CPUs (e.g., the Core i7-1165G7) run at more than 40 W at times during short load peaks. Compared to Intel's 45 W processors, which provide more CPU cores, the H35 CPUs use faster Iris Xe graphics adapters.

Therefore, most laptops use the H35 CPUs without a dedicated GPU, so that you also get some benefit from the faster iGPU. Combining these CPUs with a dedicated graphics card, on the other hand, actually doesn't make much sense because you sacrifice CPU performance in comparison to the 45 W CPUs and also cannot take full advantage of the fast Iris Xe GPU.

That being said, it would be unfair to blame Schenker itself since they depend on the available chips from Intel (AMD CPUs are not available due to supply bottlenecks). Sharing the same chipset as the Tiger Lake-U chips makes it comparatively easier to produce H35 chips. The Vision 14 is also available without the additional GeForce GPU, so this processor does make sense in that case. However, in our opinion, the same performance could have been achieved with a conventional Core i7-1165G7 or a Core i7-1185G7, if the latter had also been equipped with the liquid metal thermal compound and stronger cooling.

As was the case with the first review sample of the Vision 14, two basic profiles (Quiet and Performance) are once again available in the preinstalled Control Center along with three sub-profiles each, which we have listed in the table below:

We used the Performance Balanced profile in our previous review of the Vision 14, but the additional graphics card has caused the default settings to shift slightly. Using Performance Balanced, the CPU power is now limited to only 20 W after a few seconds (even when the GeForce GPU is not running), which even makes the CPU performance drop clearly below the level of the Core i7-1165G7 in the Vision 14 (about 12% lower in Cinebench R15 Multi under constant load).

Therefore, we used the Performance Enthusiast profile by default for our benchmarks and measurements, which offers a better balance of CPU and GPU performance. However, we'll also take a look at the effects of the other profiles in individual categories.

The Intel Core i7-11370H is based on the Tiger Lake generation and offers four cores (eight threads) that reach clock speeds of up to 4.8 GHz or 4.3 GHz when all four cores are active. Initially, the processor operates with up to 46 W in the multi-core benchmarks and then settles at 40 W.

These results are good in principle, but the CPU performance is unnecessarily slowed down by the low number of cores. In the end, the Vision 14 H35 isn't that far ahead of the Vision 14 with the Core i7-1165G7. Even the Schenker Vision 15, where the Core i7-1165G7 operates with comparable power limits (50/40 W), is only marginally slower. Nevertheless, Intel's quad-core CPU doesn't stand a chance against a modern AMD processor like the Ryzen 7 5800U in the ThinkBook 13s (which is run at considerably lower power limits here). In combination with the dedicated GeForce GPU, a throttled processor with six or eight cores (45 W class, e.g., the Core i5-11400H or Core i7-11800H) would have made more sense.

Performance is limited to 25 W on battery power, which results in a performance reduction of around 15% in the Multi test. Further benchmarks for the Core i7-11370H can be found in our CPU Benchmarks article.

The Vision 14 makes a very good general performance impression. There are practically no waiting times in practice, and all tasks are carried out without any delays. Our review sample can also place itself at the top of the comparison charts in the synthetic PCMark 10 test.

The Vision 14 offers two M.2 2280 SSD slots (1x PCIe 4.0, 1x PCIe 3.0 x2). By default, a Samsung 970 Evo with a storage capacity of 250 GB is installed, but there are numerous options to choose from in the configurator. For example, a Samsung 980 Pro with a storage capacity of 1 TB (865 GB free after the first start-up) is included in our review device for an additional charge of 157 Euros (~$175).

The 980 Pro can take advantage of the fast PCIe 4.0 interface, and it achieves very good transfer rates. The second slot is limited in terms of speed (PCIe 3.0 x2, ~1,750 MB/s max), but it's still very useful when it comes to easily expanding the storage capacity if needed.

Further SSD benchmarks are available here.