ThinkPad Neo 14: Lenovo launches new China-exclusive 14 inch ThinkPad

ThinkPad is a brand that primarily comes from Japan and the United States of America - when Lenovo acquired IBM's PC division in 2005, the Chinese company took in the employees from Japan and the USA who worked on ThinkPad laptops before, and still work on them today.

Still: Lenovo is mostly a Chinese company. And while most ThinkPad laptops are developed outside mainland China, the ThinkPad E series, budget models for small business, represents an exception.

So with the "China ThinkPad" already being an established thing, it is no surprise that Lenovo would also release a "China-exclusive ThinkPad". That seems to be the case with the new Lenovo ThinkPad Neo 14, a product formerly code-named "ThinkPad E14 Pro".

As the name suggests, the ThinkPad Neo 14 is a 14 inch laptop, with a 2.2K 16:10 screen. In terms of design, this ThinkPad laptop is a lot different from the recent ThinkPad E series: It adopts a more classical "top base" hinge design. With the hinges on top of the screen, this frees up the back of the device for placing the fan exhausts and ports there - in case of the ThinkPad Neo 14, the single USB A and HDMI port are placed on the rear.

This design is quite similar to that of the Lenovo ThinkBook 14p, although unlike the ThinkBook, the ThinkPad features the ThinkPad keyboard and TrackPoint. Also, the ThinkPad Neo 14 uses Intel Alder-Lake H CPUs and can optionally be equipped with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2050. The chassis is made out of either black or silver aluminum, and the battery has a capacity of 57 Wh. RAM is soldered, as it is LPDDR5 memory - up to 32 GB are available.

The ThinkPad Neo 14 is available in China now, starting at roughly $1,150. Whether or not it will ever appear outside of China is unclear.