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Adam Patrick Murray / IDG
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At a glance
Lenovo ThinkPad L480
$1,007.10
Do you see it
At
Lenovo
contents
Lenovo ThinkPad L480: Basic Specifications
Lenovo ThinkPad L480: Performance
Should you buy the Lenovo ThinkPad L480?
show more
The Lenovo ThinkPad L480 grants you a basic membership in the ThinkPad Club. Even if you consider Lenovo's premium fees for its slimmer, more powerful models like the . can not afford
ThinkPad X1 Carbon (6th Gen)
, you get at least an excellent keyboard and a sturdy construction.
The ThinkPad L480 offers generous connectivity as well as decent performance and battery life. Beneath it, Lenovo's straightforward Vantage software ensures that everything is buzzing. But this entry-level business notebook doesn't offer much more, and one might wonder whether Lenovo has one for the display Corner has saved too much.
Lenovo ThinkPad L480: Basic Specifications
Let's start with an overview of the ThinkPad L480's specs, focusing on our review sample but also pointing out other options where available.
Advertisement:
14-inch (1920 x 1080) IPS technology (as tested) non-touch; optional 14-inch (1920 x 1080) touch and 14-inch (1366 x 768) non-touch
Processor:
1.6GHz Intel Core i5-8250U (as tested) (Kaby Lake R);i5-8350U, i5-7200U
Graphic:
IntelHD620
Storage:
4GB-32GB DDR4 (2400MHz) (8GB as tested)
Storage:
256-512 GB NVMe PCIe SSD (256 GB as tested); 500 GB 7200 rpm hard drive
Security:
dTPM 2.0, fingerprint reader
Ports:
USB 3.1 (2, 1 always connected), USB-C (2, Power/DisplayPort/Data), 4-in-1 microSD, HDMI, Gigabit Ethernet (RJ-45), Headphone/Mic, Lock slot
Wireless:
Intel 8265-802.11ac (2x2), Bluetooth 4.1
cameras:
720p HD (front); optional IR camera (with Windows Hello); no rear camera
Battery:
45Wh
Operating system:
Windows 10 Pro
Dimensions:
13.9 x 9.3 x 0.87 in (22.5mm)
weights:
3.6 pounds (notebook), 4.22 pounds (notebook + charger), measured
Optional accessories:
ThinkPad USB 3.0 Ultra Dock
Remove non-product link
($199.99)
Price:
$1,119.00
Price-wise, the ThinkPad L480 we reviewed is more of a moving target. Lenovo offered a $895 "web rebate" for the L480 at the start of the review, but the price jumped to more than $1,000 at the time of publication .
The generous number of ports is worth noting, as it will likely save you from lugging around extra dongles - and it's worth something. Lenovo also held back in a few places: There's a sealed Ethernet Gen 2 socket, which prevents use
Lenovo's 90W Pro Dock
.Lenovo also installed a WWAN slot for a SIM chip, but it was blocked.
Adam Patrick Murray / IDG
The Lenovo ThinkPad L480 offers a wealth of ports.
While the L480's thickness leaves room for all those ports, it also makes the laptop feel a bit dated. At 4.22 pounds for the notebook and charger, the extra weight is noticeable but not obnoxious; that and the form factor probably calls for some kind of backpack On the plus side, the L480 is solidly built with no wobbles to be found. It's MIL-STD 810G certified for robustness. There's a small flex in the center of the keyboard that's noticeable under hard pressure, but doesn't affect typing .Lenovo bundles a one-year deposit warranty with the L480; drop/leak/electrical protection is an additional cost of $33.15.
Adam Patrick Murray / IDG
Thicker notebook construction allows for robust side-mounted cooling.
It was a bit of a shock to receive a non-touchscreen laptop, although touch is obviously not required to use Windows. You have the option of buying a touch-enabled L480 from Lenovo, but apparently not as an optional upgrade; you'll have to get a dedicated one instead Buy a high-end configuration that costs $300 more as of this writing. That's annoying and a lot of money for just a touchscreen.
The L480's display is a rock bottom. It puts out an anemic 196 nits, far short of the 260 we found comfortable for our battery rundown test. This makes the L480 comfortable to use indoors, but natural light will spoil the display quickly wash out of the L480. Worse, the default setting was 40 Hertz instead of a comfortable 60 Hz refresh rate.
ThinkPad keyboards prefer wide, roomy landing pads for your fingers and comfortable key travel. They're excellent, and the L480 offers more of the same. Comparing the last few
ThinkPad X1 Carbon (6th Gen)
compared to the L480, the L480 felt a little less resilient, but not uncomfortable.
The L480 includes the iconic red trackpoint between the keys and dedicated mouse buttons above the trackpad. Lenovo has dedicated a generous 4 x 2.75 inches of space to the L480's trackpad, making it one of the largest we've seen. It does feel something, though more plasticky than others in the ThinkPad lineup and only responsive on the bottom half. If you're looking for areas where Lenovo cuts corners, here's another one.
Adam Patrick Murray / IDG
This should be a familiar keyboard layout for ThinkPad owners. Note the large trackpad.
As a budget business notebook, don't expect much from the L480's dual downward-firing speakers. The bottom end is pretty muddy, and the highs aren't much to say either. Plugging in headphones mitigates a lot of that, although I can tell the difference wasn't as impressed with the audio quality as I am at times. However, Dolby Audio can be enabled, which alleviates some of the shortcomings.
Our review unit ships with Lenovo's fingerprint reader, which enables fast, Windows Hello-enabled logins. Lenovo says your printouts are stored in the reader's chip itself, rather than on the PC, making it more secure. The reader doesn't usually have my finger right away recognized, but a second tap mostly helped. The fingerprint reader replaces the depth camera available on pricier ThinkPads. (A depth camera is also optional on the L480.)
Adam Patrick Murray / IDG
Logging in with the fingerprint sensor seemed to take a little longer than other ThinkPad models, but recognition was flawless during our testing period.
Speaking of cameras, the L480 offers a decent HD front camera without the X1 Carbon's privacy-focused ThinkShutter. (This lets you manually slide a shutter over the camera to prevent suspected hackers from spying on you via your webcam.) There's no Windows Hello -Option for front camera and also no rear camera.
The included Vantage software cleverly manages upgrades for the L480 and can be used to configure the L480 to your liking Vantage software back again.
As with many other ThinkPads, the L480 supports USB-C charging and appears to use the same 65-watt charger as other ThinkPads that Lenovo sells.
Adam Patrick Murray / IDG
Lenovo ThinkPad L480: Performance
When it comes to performance, you probably don't need to worry if an 8th generation chip like the Kaby Lake-R processor that powers the L480 can handle basic tasks. As a business notebook, the L480 handles typical tasks Office tasks, web browsing and the like are quite adequate. The basic configuration of 8 GB of working memory is more than sufficient.
The only performance issue I noticed was a period of not responding to features like search when I'd just signed into multiple cloud services like OneDrive and OneNote that were trying to sync gigabytes of accumulated data at once Anything beyond sprite-based games or simple platformers will tax the system, but that's not why you're buying the L480 anyway.
With a basic business notebook like the ThinkPad L480, we approach the performance issue fairly simply. CPU performance is a priority, and many laptops (including the L480) have integrated graphics rather than discrete GPUs. We dealt with a group of 13- Inch and 14-inch laptops compared for similarities in CPU, GPU or price.
PCMark's trio of tests, including Work, Home and Creative, measure how the L480 and similar notebooks fare in everyday applications. The Work test uses spreadsheets and word processing to assess how the laptop fares in business. This is where the ThinkPad should go Use the L480 without scruples, and the 8 GB of RAM offers a comfortable memory cushion for large spreadsheets or numerous tabs.
Melissa Riofrio/IDG
Although the L480 ends up at the bottom of our laptop list, the grouping is pretty narrow.
Maxon's Cinebench renders a scene with all four cores and eight threads, giving it a healthy advantage over non-HyperThreading CPUs. The L480 runs through the rendering test at a healthy pace, a good sign that it handles similar real-world workloads can handle.
Melissa Riofrio/IDG
Another tight grouping of benchmark results, with the Lenovo L480 landing in the middle.
HandBrake also puts a strain on the CPU. This open-source transcoding tool is best thought of as a prolonged stress test for the system, as it converts an MKV movie file into a format suitable for playback on an Android tablet on a plane. Although using this as a benchmark, the fact that the L480 does its job in about an hour - less than the 90 or so minutes it takes to watch the movie - shows that transcoding is a practical task to be assigned to the L480 .
Melissa Riofrio/IDG
In our lengthy HandBrake conversion test, the Lenovo L480 performs quite well.
While we're not expecting the L480 to be a gaming machine, it's good to know how it'll handle it if you want to kick back at the end of the day. In this test from 3DMark running the Sky Diver benchmark , shows the L480's lack of a discrete GPU, but it performs moderately well
Melissa Riofrio/IDG
Any laptop with a discrete GPU will blow the Lenovo L480 away, as is the case here.
Battery life is the other measure of a notebook, especially a business device, that you can take with you on the go. While the L480 doesn't fare as well, you do get a decent eight hours of battery life in comparison. The relatively low luminosity of the L480's screen probably helps .
Melissa Riofrio/IDG
This is where we hoped the Lenovo L480 would do better, since the larger notebook form factor could accommodate a larger battery.
Should you buy the Lenovo ThinkPad L480?
Lenovo's L480 offers baseline capabilities for business users, and there's nothing fundamentally wrong with that. But the compromises Lenovo has made are harsh. The screen is mediocre, even before you factor in the lack of touch -- and Lenovo's high premium fees, if that capability is what you want. So-so battery life and multimedia features don't help much, but the typically excellent keyboard makes typing a pleasure.
In general, Lenovo's ThinkPad L480 feels like the business notebook that your IT department tells you to take to work and that you'll gratefully put aside at night for a more comfortable computing experience. While competent, you might be better off if you look at some of the other notebooks we've compared it to.
Note: If you buy something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Check out our
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for more details.
At a glance
Lenovo ThinkPad L480
$1,007.10
Do you see it
At
Lenovo
Lenovo's ThinkPad L480 is the entry-level member of the Thinkpad club of business notebooks, but its excellent keyboard cannot make up for the mediocre display and performance.
advantages
Excellent ThinkPad keyboard
A variety of port options
Durable construction
Disadvantages
Test model did not have a touch screen
Audio was muddy than it should be
Battery life is on the low end
computers
laptops
Lenovo
As senior editor of PCWorld, Mark focuses on Microsoft news and chip technology, among other things.
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