Key Takeaways
1. Maintenance choices for consumer laptops are mainly limited to SSD upgrades due to soldered RAM on motherboards.
2. The new Lenovo ThinkPad E14 G7 features SO-DIMM slots, allowing RAM upgrades up to 128GB with Arrow Lake processors.
3. The E14 G7 includes an extra M.2 2280 slot for secondary SSD, enhancing storage options.
4. Upcoming models with Lunar Lake processors will not support RAM upgrades or additional SSD slots due to integrated memory.
5. Battery capacity and cooling performance are expected to remain unchanged in the Lunar Lake variant.
When discussing consumer laptops, it’s generally understood that maintenance choices are mostly restricted to the SSD. This is because the memory is frequently soldered directly onto the motherboard or integrated into the processor, as seen with Intel’s recent Lunar Lake processors. This pattern has also extended to business laptops in the past few years, providing some benefits since SO-DIMM modules take up less room on the motherboard. Lenovo’s ThinkPad line has models that feature either 8GB or 16GB of soldered RAM along with an additional SO-DIMM slot for memory upgrades.
A Shift in Trend
The new ThinkPad E14 G7, which is one of Lenovo’s more budget-friendly office options, has turned this trend upside down. Specifically, the Intel setup with the latest Arrow Lake processors comes with SO-DIMM slots. This advancement allows the RAM to be increased to as much as 128GB in certain configurations. Additionally, the E14 G7 is well-provided for in terms of SSD capacity. Besides the shorter M.2 2242 slot filled by the default SSD, there’s another complete M.2 2280 slot available for a secondary solid-state drive.
Variants and Limitations
Nonetheless, this feature isn’t available across all versions of the ThinkPad E14 G7. In a few weeks, another model utilizing Lunar Lake processors will be released alongside the Arrow Lake version we reviewed. As the memory is integrated into the processor, the upgrade option will be lost. Moreover, that variant will not feature an extra SSD slot, as it comes with just a single M.2 2280 slot. The battery capacity also won’t be increased, and we don’t anticipate any notable enhancements in cooling performance due to the lower power limits of the Lunar Lake CPUs, meaning there may be a lot of unutilized space. We expect to evaluate that version in a few weeks.
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