Lenovo ThinkPad 14" T470S Black Review

At 1.3kg, the T470S is one of the most portable laptops in our database, landing in the 84th percentile for compactness. But its CPU sits in just the 15th percentile—fine for documents, terrible for anything demanding. With a $209 price spread, we'd only consider this under $350. A lightweight warrior for light loads.

The ThinkPad T470S lands where you'd expect a 6th-gen refurb: solid build and ports, but low-end specs for modern work. In our database, its Core i5-6300U sits in the 15th percentile for CPU performance, and the 8GB of RAM is in the 5th percentile. That means it'll handle Word and browsing fine, but don't expect much beyond that. On the flip side, the compact chassis and port selection punch above the price, with a weight of just 1.3kg and an 82nd-percentile port score.

The 14-inch FHD IPS screen is middling at 250 nits and a 33rd percentile screen score, but for spreadsheets it gets the job done. Buyers rate it 4.5 out of 5, praising its battery life and lightweight design for school work. It's a machine that knows its lane.

This laptop's heart is an Intel Core i5-6300U, a dual-core chip from 2015 that benchmarks well below average. It's in the 15th percentile for CPU performance in our database, so don't expect it to keep up with even budget modern laptops. Multitasking with more than a handful of Chrome tabs and a document will strain that 8GB of DDR4, which ranks in the bottom 5th percentile. The Intel HD 520 integrated graphics technically score in the 97th percentile, but that's a quirk of comparing mostly integrated GPUs—it won't play any modern games. Storage is a 256GB SSD, which is small (18th percentile) but enough for a lightweight OS and some docs. Overall speed feels snappy for basic tasks thanks to the SSD, but any heavy lifting will hit a wall fast.

At $303, the T470S is one of the cheapest ways into a ThinkPad with a 1080p IPS display and a sub-3-pound body. That's a solid value for students or anyone needing a secondary typing machine. If you pay the upper end of $512, though, you're overpaying—you can find newer refurbished models with 8th-gen quad-core CPUs for similar money. The $209 price spread between vendors means shopping around is a must. Newegg's refurb listing at the low end is the smart play.

Put the T470S next to a modern Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro and the performance chasm is vast—the Galaxy Book5's Snapdragon chip is in a completely different universe. But then, you're spending over $1,000. More relevantly, a used MacBook Air from 2020 with an M1 can be had for around $500 and absolutely crushes the T470S in every metric except maybe ports. If you need Windows and a durable chassis, the HP OmniBook X Flip is a newer pick, but again it's many times the price. Even the Microsoft Surface Laptop Copilot+ PC would be a massive upgrade, but the T470S only makes sense if you're absolutely capped at $300 and need a reliable typing machine with Ethernet and Thunderbolt.

Anyone who needs to run more than a handful of browser tabs or any modern software should skip the T470S. The CPU and RAM are simply too old to keep up. If you want to play games, the integrated Intel HD 520 scores 18.3 out of 100 for gaming, which is abysmal. Even for photo editing or video calls with background blur, you'll hit a wall. Spend a bit more on a newer refurbished laptop with at least an 8th-gen Intel or Ryzen 4000 series chip.

The ThinkPad T470S is a compromise that works if you need a portable, well-built laptop for basic tasks and have a tight budget. The 1.3kg weight, excellent port selection, and legendary keyboard make it a joy for writing and browsing. But the Core i5-6300U and 8GB of RAM will frustrate anyone trying to run modern software or multitask heavily. At $303, it's a decent student beater; at $512, it's a bad buy. Stick to the low end and you'll get your money's worth.