TheLenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2is an ultracompact laptop in the vein of Dell’s XPS 13 that makes even most other compact laptops look a little on the big side. It also has performance to spare for the size, but that compact frame may be a bit too cramped for some potential buyers.
Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2
The Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2 is a great-looking compact laptop with more power than its small frame would have you think, but it may be too small for some people, and the price may have you thinking twice. Still, its AMD-powered integrated graphics outpace current Intel offerings.
Price and Availability
The ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2 is available in a few different configurations, and pricing starts at just over $1,300 on the Lenovo website. That gets you the base version with an AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 7540U CPU, 16GB RAM, a 256GB SSD, and a 1920 x 1200 LED display.
My review unit had higher specs, with an AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U CPU, 32GB RAM, and a 1TB SSD. This model also has a higher spec screen with an 2880 x 1800 OLED panel. This is considerably pricier, selling for $1929.69 at the time of this writing.
Instead of simple color options, the finish variants differ more from each other here. I’m looking at the ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2 in the Arctic Gray Recycled Aluminum option, which looks similar on the outside to many aluminum laptops. It’s also available in a much more novel Flax Fiber with Bronze Aluminum finish that uses a textured fabric on the top cover of the laptop.
Specifications
Compact Build and a Unique Design
At the top of this review, I compared the Z13 Gen 2 to the Dell XPS 13, and in terms of form factor, it’s close, though its screen is ever-so-slightly smaller at 13.3 inches to the XPS 13’s 13.4-inch display. That said, at least the version of the ThinkPad Z13 I’m reviewing is also somewhat inspired by Apple’s MacBook Air line with its sleek aluminum chassis.
Take a standard 8.5x11 piece of printer paper, and you’re pretty close to the footprint of the laptop, which is slightly longer and narrower at 11.6 inches long and 7.9 inches wide, and just a hair over half an inch thick. That said, thanks to that metal build, it weighs in at a comparatively hefty 2.7 pounds.
Fitting the 13.3-inch screen into that size couldn’t have been easy, as the bezels on either side of the screen are quite narrow, and the top bezel is only larger because it needs to fit the webcam as well. The keyboard runs nearly to the edge of the chassis as well, efficiently using the little space it has available.
The build is entirely aluminum, despite the distinctly ThinkPad-themed dark gray color around the keyboard and touchpad. This means you don’t need to worry about any flex in the chassis when typing, using the touchpad, or moving the laptop from surface to surface.
One area the laptop suffers is the port selection. You get a pair of USB-C ports—one on either side—and that’s all. One of these ports is used to plug in the charger, so more often than not, you’ve only got one USB-C port available.
Sharp Display and Robust Sound
While you can buy the ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2 with a 1080p LED display, it really begins to shine with the upgrade to the 2.8K OLED panel that shipped with my review unit. This is rated at 400 nits of brightness, and according to Lenovo, it offers 100% coverage of both the sRGB and P3 color spaces.
The brightness may not be as high as you can expect to see from some other OLED panels, but even outdoors, it’s still bright enough to see with significant sunlight. On the other hand, the blacks are as dark as OLED is typically known for, which makes for great contrast, and the display is impressively sharp.
With many laptops beginning to embrace the 14-inch screen size, 13.3-inch displays are becoming less common, and while you wouldn’t think this would be terribly noticeable, it is. I, personally, didn’t mind, but that extra space can be an important distinction if you’re frequently searching for every available bit of screen real estate.
Sound is often a non-factor in laptops of this size. While the Z13 Gen 2 isn’t going to blow you away, the sound is fuller than you’d expect for a laptop where it’s tough to imagine where the speakers even fit.
Comfortable Keyboard and an Impressive Touchpad
I’ve tested quite a few Lenovo laptops over the years, and aside from perhaps the ultra-budget models, I’ve always found them to have solid keyboards. That is definitely the case here, and while I don’t know what the actual travel is, the keys felt good to type on, and I never experienced any missed inputs.
Thanks to the aluminum chassis, there is no flex underneath the keyboard whatsoever. This works in turn with the overall key feel to make the typing experience on the ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2 a pleasant one.
Something I wasn’t expecting before I got my hands on the Z13 Gen 2 was the haptic touchpad. Unlike typical touchpads, this is a flat piece of glass with haptic motors underneath, just like in Apple’s MacBook line for the last several years. This makes for a more uniform response, regardless of where you press on the touchpad. It also allows for excellent accuracy.
That said, if you’re a fan of ThinkPads going back to the IBM days, you’ll be glad to know that the trusty TrackPoint pointer is still faithfully plopped in the middle of the keyboard. At the top of the touchpad, you’ll find a pair of small buttons that act as the buttons for the TrackPoint.
I’ve been a ThinkPad fan for years, so I immediately took to the TrackPoint, even though I was seriously impressed by the haptic touchpad. The good news is, if you’re not interested in using the TrackPoint, you can pretend it’s not there at all, and you’ll likely never have to think about it again.
Handy Software Without Much Bloat
As with the majority of Windows laptops sold these days, the Z13 Gen 2 runs Windows 11, though Lenovo has added a few interesting touches, with the most interesting having to do with the TrackPoint. Even if you never use this in your day-to-day, Lenovo has added a few options activated through tapping the red nub in the middle of your keyboard. Double-tap the TrackPoint and you’ll pull up a menu that provides you with access to options for both the microphone and various text-to-speech options.
While some Lenovo laptops come loaded with software you likely wouldn’t have installed yourself, that isn’t the case here. Instead, you get Lenovo Vantage, which helps you easily manage various settings, and Lenovo View, which offers numerous options for your webcam.
Neither of these pieces of software are entirely essential, but you’re not likely to be bothered by either of them, and you may even find some aspects of them more convenient than navigating through Windows settings on your own.
You also get Windows Hello support, via both the fingerprint reader built into the keyboard and via the webcam.
Solid Performance in a Small Package
While there are laptops these days that offer both AMD and Intel CPU options, the ThinkPad Z13 sticks to AMD. The advantages of this may be less concrete on the CPU front, but this laptop steps in front of quite a few competitors on the strength of the integrated GPU.
If you’re using the Z13 Gen 2 for typical productivity tasks, it will serve you well. For example, it scored 6,836 in our PCMark benchmark, putting it ahead of the Ryzen 9 PRO 7940HS-powered Lenovo ThinkPad Z16 Gen 2. Similarly, it achieved an Office Productivity score of 6,126 in our Procyon benchmark.
The GPU side is where the ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2 truly impressed. Its score in the 3DMark Night Raid benchmark for integrated graphics was 23,378, but more impressive were the gaming estimates. The 3DMark benchmark indicated a Fortnite frame rate of more than 175FPS Fortnite on Ultra settings at 1080p. Pushing things further, it even estimated frame rates of over 30FPS for Red Dead Redemption 2 at 1080p on Ultra settings.
Simply Average Battery Life
The ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2 features a 51.5Wh Lithium-Polymer battery. In my testing, it got around 10 hours of playtime playing a looping video at around 50% battery life. This isn’t poor by any means, but it’s strictly average battery life, and one of the least impressive aspects of the laptop.
That said, it does support Rapid Charge, which can power the battery up to as much as 80% in an hour of charge time. If you’re taking this laptop with you all day, this means you can get a decent charge in the time it takes for a coffee and a snack at your favorite coffee shop.
TheLenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2features solid performance for productivity and most daily computing tasks, and its AMD integrated graphics can even handle light gaming better than the Intel-powered competition. While the OLED screen isn’t the brightest I’ve seen, it’s still crisp and colorful, with inky blacks. The haptic touchpad is a great feature, and it’s nice to have the faithful TrackPoint available for old-school ThinkPad diehards.
Not everything is perfect here, like the pair of USB-C ports that recall the days of MacBooks after Apple decided to purge most of their other ports. There are workarounds for the small port count, but while the ultracompact size may be a boon for some, it’s going to be too small for others. Ultimately, this will come down to what you plan to use the laptop for.
If you need a laptop that can follow you anywhere you go that has the performance to get your work done and unwind with some light gaming afterward, the ThinkPad Z13 Gen 2 is a great option. Just make sure that the compact form factor is the right size for you.
