Lenovo V Gen 4 15.6" Review

The Lenovo V15 Gen 4 offers a great 1TB SSD and decent Ryzen 7 power for $600, but it's hamstrung by only 8GB of RAM and a small battery. It scores a mediocre 59/100 in our testing. Only worth buying if your computing needs are extremely light and you really need the storage.

The Lenovo V15 Gen 4 is a solid, no-frills workhorse for basic tasks. It's built to handle office work, web browsing, and streaming without breaking a sweat or your budget. At around $600, you're getting a decent AMD Ryzen 7 chip and a full terabyte of storage, which is a lot of space for the price. But you're also making some clear compromises to hit that price point, and they're worth looking at before you click buy.

The AMD Ryzen 7 7730U is a capable 8-core chip that lands right in the middle of the pack for CPU performance. It's perfectly fine for daily productivity and multitasking. The integrated Radeon graphics are okay for casual use, but don't expect to game on this. The real standout is the 1TB NVMe SSD, which is in the 78th percentile for storage and makes the whole system feel snappy. The big letdown is the RAM. At just 8GB, it's in the bottom 10th percentile, and that's going to be the first thing that holds you back if you try to do too much at once.

At $600, the value proposition is a mixed bag. You get a ton of fast storage and a competent processor, which is great. But they saved money where it hurts: the paltry 8GB of RAM and the tiny 38Wh battery. For the same money, you can often find competitors with 16GB of RAM, which is a smarter long-term investment. This feels like a machine built to a price, not to last.

Stacked up, the choices get interesting. The ASUS Zenbook Duo costs more but gives you a revolutionary dual-screen setup for multitasking. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is a premium business machine with better build and support. But for a direct $600 competitor, look at the IdeaPad series or an Acer Swift. They often pack 16GB of RAM and better screens for similar cash. This V15 wins on pure storage space but loses on almost everything else compared to those.

Skip this if you're a student, a multi-tabber, or anyone who plans to keep a laptop for more than a year. The 8GB RAM ceiling is just too low. Also, if you need portability, the weak battery means you're always hunting for an outlet. Look for a model with 16GB RAM and a battery over 50Wh instead.

Buy this if your needs are super basic and you absolutely need that 1TB of storage right now. It's a fine laptop for light office work, web browsing, and media consumption as long as you're plugged in. But for anyone else, the RAM and battery are deal-breakers. You'll outgrow the 8GB limit fast, and being tethered to an outlet defeats the purpose of a laptop for many people.