Lenovo ThinkPad 16" E16 Gen 2 Black 2024 Review

The Lenovo ThinkPad E16 Gen 2 is a no-nonsense 16-inch business laptop with a stellar keyboard, solid Ryzen 7 performance, and surprising battery life. It's not for gaming or color work, but for office productivity it's a top value pick. You can get it around $879, which is a steal for a Windows 11 Pro machine with this build quality. If you want a durable workhorse and can live with a mediocre display, you'll love it.

Lenovo's ThinkPad E16 Gen 2 sits in that sweet spot where business practicality meets a budget that doesn't make your finance department wince. It's a 16-inch laptop built for spreadsheets, Zoom calls, and all-day typing, not for rendering 3D models or fragging noobs. The spec sheet here is sensible: an AMD Ryzen 7 7735U with eight cores, 16GB of DDR5 memory, a 512GB SSD, and a 1920x1200 touchscreen. No discrete GPU, no 4K OLED, just the stuff most office workers actually need.

And that's really the story here. Lenovo aimed this squarely at professionals who want a big screen, a fantastic keyboard, and enough ports to avoid dongle life. The ThinkPad E series has always been about getting that classic ThinkPad durability and typing experience at a lower price than the T or X series. With the Gen 2, you're getting a laptop that feels substantial and reliable, with MIL-STD testing and a keyboard backlight thrown in, all while running Windows 11 Pro out of the box. It's not trying to be the thinnest or the flashiest, and that's fine.

Our database shows this machine lands in the 92nd percentile for social proof, which means people who own it really like it. The user sentiment score sits at 85 out of 100, and after combing through hundreds of customer reviews, the consensus is clear: buyers feel they got a lot of laptop for the money. Of course, there are trade-offs. The integrated Radeon graphics are a weak spot, and the display isn't exactly vibrant. But if you're the kind of person who lives in Outlook and Excel, you'll probably be very happy.

The Ryzen 7 7735U is a Zen 3+ chip with RDNA 2 integrated graphics, and for the kind of work this laptop is built for, it's more than capable. In our CPU rankings, it lands around the 67th percentile, not quite top-tier but well above average for business notebooks. That means it'll chew through dozens of browser tabs, heavy PowerPoint decks, and even light photo editing without breaking a sweat. The 16GB of DDR5 RAM helps a lot here, although it's placed right at the middle of the pack compared to other laptops we've tested, so don't expect to run multiple virtual machines simultaneously without some slowdown.

The real bottleneck, as you'd guess, is the integrated Radeon 680M graphics. Our GPU rankings put this configuration in the 18th percentile overall, which is polite code for 'you won't be gaming on this thing.' That's not a surprise, given the business focus, but it's worth stating clearly. Gaming performance benchmarks would land around 14 out of 100 in our internal scoring, so stick to Solitaire and light browser games. On the flip side, the 512GB SSD falls into the 39th percentile, which is mediocre. It's an NVMe drive, so boot times and app launches are snappy, but storage capacity is on the lower side for a work machine these days. You might find yourself eyeing an external drive before long.

Official pricing for this configuration is a bit of a moving target since Lenovo runs discounts constantly, but you can typically snag the E16 Gen 2 around $879 from sensible retailers. We've seen some listings as absurd as $28,250, which is either a typo or someone selling a gold-plated version we weren't sent. Ignore that. For around nine hundred bucks, you're getting a business laptop with a solid CPU, decent build quality, Windows 11 Pro, and that legendary ThinkPad keyboard. Compared to an HP ZBook or a Dell Latitude with similar specs, you'd easily spend $300 more, so the value here is excellent. Just don't confuse this with a premium ultrabook; you're paying for durability and productivity, not a milled aluminum chassis or a dazzling OLED panel.

Stack the E16 against the HP ZBook Ultra G1a and you'll see the immediate trade-off: the ZBook offers a better screen and a more premium shell, but it'll cost you significantly more for comparable RAM and CPU. The MSI Prestige PRE13EVOA2088 is another competitor that aims at business users but leans more toward content creators with often superior displays, though it lacks the ThinkPad's keyboard comfort and port variety. If you're even considering a MacBook Pro M5 Pro, you're looking at a completely different price bracket and a machine that will run circles around the E16 in performance and display quality, but you'll sacrifice the ThinkPad's repairability and that sweet numeric keypad.

For someone who needs a large screen and doesn't mind a bit of heft, the E16 Gen 2 is a standout value. The Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro is thinner and lighter with a gorgeous OLED, but its port selection is Spartan and the keyboard isn't in the same league. And the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14? That's a gaming laptop in a compact body, and while its dedicated GPU would laugh at the E16's graphics, it's a poor fit for pure office productivity and costs more. The ThinkPad E16 Gen 2 succeeds by being boring in the best way: it does office work incredibly well and doesn't charge you for flashy extras you don't need.

Gamers and creative pros should steer clear. The integrated Radeon 680M graphics rank in the bottom fifth of our database, and the 45% NTSC screen makes color grading or design work a chore. If you want a large laptop for video editing or 3D rendering, consider the MSI Prestige with a discrete GPU, or a ZBook with a better display.

Frequent travelers who prize featherweight thinness will also be happier with something like the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro, which is significantly lighter and has a stunning OLED screen. The ThinkPad E16 Gen 2 is built more for desk-to-conference-room durability than for someone who works on the subway, and at 1.81kg, you'll definitely feel it in a messenger bag all day.

If your job involves typing thousands of words a day, staring at spreadsheets, or hopping between video calls, the ThinkPad E16 Gen 2 is one of the most sensible purchases you can make. The keyboard is the star here, with deep travel and a layout that includes a number pad, and it's backed by a chassis that feels like it could survive a drop down a flight of stairs. Battery life from that small 47Wh pack is surprisingly good, with many owners reporting they get through an eight-hour day without hunting for an outlet.

But this isn't a laptop for everyone. The display's 45% NTSC color gamut means your design team will hate it, and the integrated graphics are a non-starter for any kind of 3D modeling, video rendering, or modern gaming. If you need a machine that can double as a casual gaming rig or a creative workstation, you'll need to look at something with a discrete GPU, like the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 or a higher-end Dell XPS. For pure business grunt, though, the E16 Gen 2 is hard to fault at this price.