ThinkPad Z13: Lenovo's first Premium ThinkPad with AMD Ryzen 6000 has arrived

Since the year 2011, the ThinkPad X1 series has unquestionably occupied the position of the premium tier of ThinkPad laptops. However, AMD options are nowhere to be found among the X1 ThinkPads. Apparently, Intel is co-developing, which means that models like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano are powered exclusively by Intel CPUs.

To counter this, AMD has seemingly said "lets do what Intel is doing" - in collaboration with Lenovo, the ThinkPad Z series was developed as a new, AMD exclusive high end series. Now, the first model of the ThinkPad Z series has arrived in our labs, the compact Lenovo ThinkPad Z13.

To differentiate it from the X1 series, Lenovo has created an entire new design language for the ThinkPad Z series, which aims to attract users who would not be interested in ThinkPads normally. This includes design features like a revised keyboard layout, different materials for the chassis like polished Aluminum edges, and a new haptic touchpad design without dedicated buttons for the classic ThinkPad TrackPoint. Will will examine all of this closely in our review.

At the heart of the ThinkPad Z13 lie the CPUs of the Ryzen 6000 series, in this case, the Ryzen Pro models, as Lenovo is maintaining the enterprise focus. Our review sample contains the AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 6650U, which is the entry level CPU for the ThinkPad Z13. In the first benchmark that we performed, the ThinkPad Z13 manages to beat the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 and the Apple MacBook Air M2, but it fails to get past the Dell XPS 13 Plus (available over at Amazon.com, affiliate link).

Our comprehensive review with many additional benchmarks of the Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 will be released in the coming week.