When Lenovo introduced a completely new sub-series of its ThinkPad business laptops with AMD processors to the market at the end of last fall, it was a bit surprising. After all, the first models of the new ThinkPad A series, the ThinkPad A275 and the ThinkPad A475, were based on the "Bristol-Ridge" processors from AMD. These were already aged at the time and ready to be replaced by the "Raven-Ridge" mobile Ryzen processors. However, it was already clear then that the first two models were only place holders to establish the ThinkPad A series and bridge the time until the Ryzen.

Now, almost one year later, the second generation of the Lenovo ThinkPad A series is on the market, and it finally contains the newest Ryzen processors. The design continues to be based on the current models of the ThinkPad X and the ThinkPad T series. For the smaller ThinkPad A285, the Intel equivalent would be the Lenovo ThinkPad X280, while our current test unit, the ThinkPad A485, is based on the design of the Lenovo ThinkPad T480. We can therefore leave out the description of the case, connections, and input devices, since you can find all this information in the detailed review of the Lenovo ThinkPad T480.

In addition to the ThinkPad T480 as the most obvious reference comparison, the main competitor to the Lenovo ThinkPad A485 is primarily the HP EliteBook 745 G5. While the Dell Latitude 5495 would also be a good comparison device, since we have not been able to test this model yet, we are comparing the ThinkPad A485 with the Dell Latitude 5490 with Intel internals instead.

Our test unit is currently the only best-selling model on the German market. This configuration with the model number 20MU000CGE contains the AMD Ryzen 5 2500U, 8 GB of RAM, a 256-GB SSD, as well as an IPS display with Full HD resolution (1920x1080).

