The Lenovo ThinkPad A285 (12.5-Inch) Review: Ryzen Pro Gets Down to Business
by Brett Howse on December 18, 2018 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Laptops
- AMD
- Lenovo
- ThinkPad
- Vega
- Ryzen
- Ryzen PRO
- Ryzen Mobile
- Vega Mobile
Design
The ThinkPad is an iconic look at this point, and Lenovo has done well to constantly update and refresh the design without losing that ThinkPad look. The matte black is exactly what people expect, along with the red LED dot over the i on the back. The ThinkPad A285 is basically the same chassis as the Lenovo ThinkPad X280, with the same dimensions, same weight, and same strong build.
Despite the 12.5-inch display being smaller than a 13.3-inch model, this model hasn’t gotten the slim bezel treatment yet, so it definitely looks a bit more dated than slimmed down bezels in the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, and therefore the footprint of the 12.5-inch A285 is not quite as small as you may think. Still, it is quite compact, and thin at 17.4 mm where it isn’t going to take up a lot of room in a bag.
Lenovo offers some of the best keyboards around on the ThinkPad lineup, and the A285 offers that same sculpted key feel that they do so well. The keys themselves have good travel, and offer just enough resistance to feel right. The keyboard offers a couple of levels of white backlighting, which contrasts well with the black keys with white letters. Lenovo reverses the Fn and Ctrl keys on all of their ThinkPad keyboards, but that’s only really an issue if you’re coming from a different brand. Luckily if you don’t want to unlearn your muscle memory, you can reverse them in software.
Lenovo utilizes the Microsoft Precision touchpad drivers, and the touchpad, while not as silky smooth as some of its competition, still offers great response, and seems to pick up multiple finger inputs with no issues. For those that prefer the TrackPoint, that is available as well, and would be sorely missed if Lenovo ever decides to do away with it.
The left side offers the two USB-C ports, with one integrated into the docking connection, which also offers the native Ethernet dongle attachment. The USB-A ports are split between both sides, with the right side offering the always-on version. There’s of course a 3.5 mm headset jack, and HDMI on the left. If you order a model with a smart card reader, that would be located on the right. On the rear is a microSD storage expansion slot.
There’s been an unfortunate tendency for AMD’s processors to find their way into value devices, but the ThinkPad A285 breaks that pattern, as it's basically the same chassis as their Intel-based X280, just with different internals. The result is a well-built, premium business device which happens to offer AMD's Ryzen Pro. So IT administrators will love it because it's as classic a ThinkPad as they come, while enthusiasts will be keen to see what AMD can do in a business-grade laptop.
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Evil Underlord - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link
It seems odd not to compare with the Thinkpad X280, esp. given how often the review notes the shared chassis.Brett Howse - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
We haven't reviewed the X280.Masospaghetti - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link
Any idea if this laptop is set up to use dual channel RAM? For the GPU performance to be so poor it looks like it's in single channel mode. The Acer Swift is set up with dual channel for comparison.I know the E series laptops can be configured either way depending on the physical RAM that installed (1 stick or 2) and Lenovo offers 8 GB as either 1x8 or 2x4.
Brett Howse - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
There's a CPUID picture on the first page showing it in dual-channel and it's listed in the specs as well.Masospaghetti - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
I see. I'm just saying that the performance is in-line with competitors with single channel memory. Maybe its a memory bandwidth problem even with dual-channel? I would be curious to see memory throughput on this compared to other Ryzen laptops. Otherwise the performance of this machine is inexplicably low.watersb - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
Reviews this detailed are all too rare elsewhere. I am a Mac refugee that has really gained respect for the ThinkPad product line over the past year. Keyboard is fantastic...The performance and design tradeoffs here are confusing to me. This laptop could well come in a $2000 retail, and yet does not seem competitive with other devices in this price range. An 8GB RAM single configuration seems like plenty, until I consider that our standard corporate deployment is starting to use "CONTAINERS!!! VIRTUAL SANDBOXES!!!" like that's the new XML hotness.
Heavy sigh.
Great to see a sub-15Watt AMD APU, though.
Ruimanalmeida - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
So, as a summary:for the moment, if you need to buy NOW a laptop, better to choose one with an Intel processor, with or w/o discrete graphics processor. Due to required cooling for AMD processors to be fully exploited ... and others. By the way, I'm not an Intel employee!
Lopez951 - Monday, December 31, 2018 - link
Every Ryzen PRO processor and Ryzen PRO Processor with Radeon Vega graphics contains a powerful, integrated security co-processor running AMD GuardMI technology helping to enable power-on to power-off protection https://krogerfeedback.me/www-krogerfeedback-com-g...Shahnewaz - Saturday, January 12, 2019 - link
So is it really down to just the standard DDR4 SODIMM memory they're using that's causing such a large battery drain?kitchen hood cleaning - Saturday, January 25, 2020 - link
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