While at this point all the major PC manufacturers offer laptops with AMD's Ryzen processors, there are large differences in the model labels. At Lenovo, things are also a little more complicated, since the manufacturer mainly offers the ThinkPad A series with AMD APUs (although with the PRO chips) that are based however on the more expensive business models of the T and X series. On the other hand, our test unit, which is called ThinkPad E485, is part of the E series and is basically the AMD equivalent to the ThinkPad E480 or the new ThinkPad E490.

We test the 20KU000NGE configuration, which is available for about 650 Euros (~$731; starting at $573 in the US). This makes the E485 about 100 Euros (~$112) more affordable than a comparable Intel model. Our test unit includes a Ryzen 5 2500U quad-core processor together with a Vega-8-GPU, 8 GB of RAM, a 256 GB NVMe SSD, and the 14-inch FHD panel. You can continue to configure the device in Lenovo's online shop, but the optional dedicated graphics card of the E480/E490 is not available. The most affordable model with the Ryzen 3 processor is offered for only 550 Euros (~$618).

The strongest competitors of the ThinkPad E485 are naturally its own E480/E490 siblings, but of course we also compare our test unit with other laptops. These include the HP ProBook 645 G4 (also AMD), the ProBook 440 G6, and the Dell Latitude 3490.

Update: An additional test unit of the ThinkPad E485 was made available to us by notebooksandmore.de. This uses a different panel from Innolux, which differs fairly significantly from that of our first test unit in terms of its quality. The corresponding information is available in the Display section.