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At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Large display Spacious keyboard Solid productivity performance Cons Flimsy plastic build No support for Copilot+ features Poor battery life Our Verdict The bargain-priced Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 has enough oomph to knock out spreadsheets and video meetings, but it may not hold up to the rigors of travel. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Today’s most capable laptops have the powerful AI-accelerated chipsets, pixel-perfect OLED screens, and incredible graphics processors—the Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 doesn’t have any of those things, but there’s one more thing it doesn’t have: a high price. It runs a last-gen Intel Core Ultra 5 125U and a 16-inch IPS display with up to 32GB of RAM. You even get some unexpected extras in this price range, like Thunderbolt 4 and an IR webcam for biometric logins. This business-oriented machine starts under $800, and while I don’t suggest the cheapest version of the ThinkBook 16, this laptop can be a great value. The Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 definitely cut some corners to keep the price that low, but does it cut the right ones? Further reading: Best laptops 2024: Premium, budget, gaming, 2-in-1s, and more Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7: Specs and features Lenovo has released several different models of the ThinkBook 16 Gen 7, but you should ignore the base model. Priced under $800, this machine only has 8GB of RAM and 256GB of SSD storage. For about $100 more (when not on sale), you can get the version I’ve been testing, with 16GB of RAM, 512GB of space, and a Core Ultra 5 CPU. The two cheaper models run the Core Ultra 5 125U, but you can upgrade to the Core Ultra 7 155U for $200 more. The ThinkBook is also available in an AMD flavor. The laptop is available with up to 1TB of storage and 32GB of RAM. Even fully decked out, the ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 costs just over $1,000. CPU: Intel Core Ultra 5 125U Memory: 16GB LPDDR5 Graphics: Intel Arc Display: 16-inch 1920 x 1080 LCD Storage: 512GB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD Webcam: 1080p IR Webcam Connectivity: 1x USB-C (Thunderbolt 4, 40Gbps), 1x USB-C (10Gbps) 2x USB-A (5Gbps), 3.5mm audio jack, HDMI 2.1, Ethernet, SD card reader Networking: Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 Battery capacity: 45Whr Dimensions: 356 x 253.5 x 17.5 mm (14.01 x 9.98 x 0.69 inches) Weight: 1.7 kg (3.75 lbs) MSRP as tested: $829 Lenovo’s ThinkBook lineup isn’t supposed to blow you away with raw power—these machines target value, and the ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 is the truest expression of that tradition. Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7: Design and build quality IDG / Ryan Whitwam The ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 makes a good first impression with its sleek metal lid, featuring the trademark two-tone finish of most current ThinkBooks. This line sits below Lenovo’s ThinkPad computers. So, the rest of the materials aren’t as impressive. Most of the body is composed of plastic, but the lid does add some much needed rigidity when the machine is closed. You’ll find most of the ports on the left edge, including both USB-C ports, one of which supports Thunderbolt 4. There’s also a USB-A, HDMI, and the 3.5mm jack. Opposite, the ThinkBook has another USB-A, Ethernet, the SD card slot, and a Kensington lock. The bezel around the display is relatively narrow but not what you’d see on a high-end laptop. There’s plenty of room at the top for a webcam that doesn’t extend too far into the trademark Lenovo lid handle. The 1080p camera has solid video quality for meetings, and it supports IR for Windows Hello biometric login. I also appreciate the inclusion of a privacy shutter for the camera. At 16 inches, this is the largest footprint you’ll see for a ThinkBook. That means you get an expansive display and plenty of room for the keyboard. The hinge is a bit on the stiff side, which makes it hard to open the Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 with one hand. However, the screen stays in place even if you move the machine around during use. The bottom half of the ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 is plastic, and there’s not a lot of internal structure to support it. The case flexes noticeably when you push on the plastic chassis, and it sags when you pick it up by one side. That said, there are no creaks or cracks, and the body should hold up fine as long as you’re not wedging it into a cluttered bag all day. The construction seems about right for a computer that comes in significantly under $1,000. In spite of all that plastic, the ThinkBook is no lightweight. It clocks in at 3.75 pounds, which is around the same as more premium laptops in the same size range. Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7: Display and speakers IDG / Ryan Whitwam Having a 16-inch screen on a laptop can be refreshing if you’re used to a smaller device. The ThinkBook 16’s touchscreen is expansive enough that you can split-screen apps without feeling too cramped. Those with visual impairments can also increase the text size and still have plenty of screen real estate. The display is only 1080p, which is on the low end for a 16-inch laptop. However, it won’t consume as much power as a higher resolution display, and the sharpness is acceptable at normal viewing distances. The brightness is similarly unimpressive, topping out at 300 nits. That’s bright enough for most indoor conditions, aided by the screen’s matte finish. Reflections won’t be a major issue, but bright ambient light in some offices or outdoors will make the screen hard to read. However, you will notice uneven dimming if looking at the LCD from an angle. The Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 has speakers tucked under the left and right edge of the laptop, similar to most other 2024 notebooks. Some machines manage solid audio despite firing sound downward, but the ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 is on one of them. It’s fine for the occasional YouTube video, but music gets muddy before you even hit 50 percent volume. It also causes the plastic enclosure to vibrate even at lower volumes. Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7: Keyboard and trackpad IDG / Ryan Whitwam Some 16-inch laptops leave wide swaths of potential keyboard space unused, but the ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 doesn’t leave anything on the table. It sports a full keyboard layout, featuring bit arrows, page up/down keys, and a number pad. The number pad is squeezed in off to the right, with keys that are roughly half as wide as the rest of the keyboard. Still, it’s nice to have that on a laptop at all. The keyboard itself gets the job done, but the keys aren’t very tactile, and there’s a lot of mushiness at the bottom of each press. You can feel and see the laptop’s plastic deck flexing as you type, making for a mediocre typing experience despite the good layout. The trackpad is shifted to the left to be aligned with the keyboard’s spacebar. I prefer trackpads to be centered on the laptop’s frame, but that’s a minor quibble. The trackpad is plastic, offering average sensitivity and responsiveness. The click mechanism is rather loud, almost echoey, and the trackpad could stand to be larger, considering the ample real estate on a 16-inch notebook. Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7: Performance IDG / Ryan Whitwam PCMark 10 is designed to test a machine across a variety of metrics like web browsing, video chat, and photo editing. The ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 brings up the rear in this test but not by much. Its general productivity performance is solid, even though machines with newer chips can manage much higher scores in this test. IDG / Ryan Whitwam Cinebench is a CPU-focused test that shows how a PC handles heavy but brief multi-core workloads. More CPU cores grant higher scores in Cinebench and cooling doesn’t matter very much. Cinebench shows another trailing score for the ThinkBook 16 Gen 7. This is a result that would have been in the middle of the pack just a year ago, but the latest Intel and AMD designs have emphasized multi-threaded performance. IDG / Ryan Whitwam The Handbrake test is similar to Cinebench in that it shows how a computer handles multithreaded tasks, but this is a longer-duration test where thermals matter more. Here, the ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 picks up a little steam, besting several machines with similar specs. Lenovo’s cooling setup seems to work well, keeping the Core 5 Ultra chip running faster under load. IDG / Ryan Whitwam Our first gaming test is 3DMark Time Spy, a graphical benchmark that focuses on GPU performance. This is not a gaming machine by any means, and this benchmark proves it. AMD processors, as well as newer Intel chips, have much more capable integrated GPUs. Intel’s latest CPUs are getting close to the performance of discrete GPUs from a few generations ago. The Core 5 Ultra, however, struggles even with simple games. The laptop is fast enough for the tasks you’re likely to ask of it in a work setting. However, it’s not great for creating and editing content or gaming. A faster machine will pay off if you plan for heavier workloads. Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7: Battery life The ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 has two USB-C ports, and either one can be used to charge the laptop. The machine comes with a bulky 65W charger, but you don’t have to use that one. It also charges at full speed with any third-party USB-PD charger with a 65W or higher capacity. IDG / Ryan Whitwam With a 45Whr cell, this machine was never going to set any longevity records. Our battery rundown test consists of playing a 4K video on a loop at set brightness until the machine dies. The ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 managed almost nine hours (532 minutes) in this test, which is not an impressive showing. However, it makes a lot of sense given the meager 45Whr battery—that’s tiny by 2024 standards. Actually, this makes a bit more sense with the plastic build. This laptop is intended to remain plugged in stationary on a desk most of the time. Sure, you can take it to a meeting, but it won’t withstand as much abuse as a more sturdy and expensive laptop. Lenovo ThinkBook 16 Gen 7: Conclusion Lenovo’s ThinkBook lineup isn’t supposed to blow you away with raw power—these machines target value, and the ThinkBook 16 Gen 7 is the truest expression of that tradition. It would be easy to dismiss Lenovo’s new ThinkBook on the basis of its middling performance and build quality, but the price makes this notebook worth thinking about. 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At a GlanceExpert`s Rating Pros Imaging, backup, and disaster recovery Actively protects against viruses and ransomware Integrated cloud storage available Cons Heavy installation footprint Subscription only Lots of telemetry Our Verdict Acronis True Image (nee Cyber Protect Home Office, nee True Image) is a comprehensive backup and security solution with no peer. If you want everything tied up in a neat package, this is it. However, if your needs are more mundane, it’s a might bit of overkill. It’s also subscription only. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Retailer Price Acronis $49.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Best Prices Today: Acronis True Image Retailer Price Acronis $49.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide Product Price Price comparison from Backmarket Acronis True Image (2024), nee Cyber Protect Home Office, nee True Image, is without question the most comprehensive suite of utilities for keeping your computer backed up and secure. It’s not even particularly close in fact. Marrying anti-malware and backup, as True Image does, might seem an odd choice at first. However, the ability to fire off a backup or shut off access to previous backups when malware is detected makes a whole lot of sense. I was a bit skeptical when the company first started down this path, now I’m completely on board with the concept, if perhaps not the heavy system footprint and copious telemetry. Further reading: See our roundup of the best Windows backup software to learn about competing products. What are Acronis True Image’s features? There’s a lot to cover in a program as comprehensive as True Image. I’ll get to the malware protection in a bit, but first let’s talk about backup. The program creates image files from drives or partitions, as well as selected files and folders. These can be full (everything), incremental (everything since the last backup), or differential (everything since the initial backup).  You can also back up files from your phone or files from remote shared-network locations, and employ Blockchain to notarize backed-up files (premium version). True Image offers just about every backup feature known. True Image lets you save backup jobs and schedule them, automatically (or manually) cull older backups when space runs low, split backups, copy sector-by-sector or data-only, validate backups post facto, run commands pre- and post-operation, and a lot more. In short, just about every option invented by the backup community has been implemented. The program also backs up to nearly any type of media or location: local drives, network destinations, the 1TB of cloud storage provided by Acronis with some subscriptions, and even optical — remember CDs and DVDs? They’re still in use! If you’re super old-school, sorry, tape is not supported.  True Image will optionally place a version of the program on removable media for use during restore (Acronis calls it “recovery”) operations — i.e. create a disaster recovery boot disk. A favorite feature of the recovery disk, other than being able to make additional emergency backups (some disks don’t) is the system report facility. In short, just about every option invented by the backup community has been implemented. True Image offers a variety of pre-cooked backup schemes including the hybrid chain. The explanatory image is actually animated. Sweet. Many people conflate sync with backup, and while they have similarities, they’re not the same operation. Backups are meant to be immutable, remaining available well into the future so you can retreat to older versions and data. Syncs evolve and generally reflect the current state of your data. You can futz sync into backup with some programs by implementing versioning — i.e., saving older versions of files rather than deleting them, and not mirroring deletions from the source. Acronis’s sync is two-way with the only option being whether it’s synced to Acronis Cloud first (if you opted for the service), rather than the destination, assuming the destination isn’t Acronis Cloud to begin with. True Image will sync as well as back up. This is file-based, not imaging. The reason I discussed the difference between sync and backup is because True Image features sync jobs as a separate function — as it should be. This allows you to synchronize data between your local PC, Acronis Cloud, and your mobile devices. Yes, as mentioned, True Image offers Android and iOS clients as well. See below. Screen captures of the Acronis Android app. Other related and tangential features include hardware-independent WinRE recovery media (USB/optical), disk cloning, an OEM-like recovery partition (boot time restore of your original OS state from your internal drive) creator, a system cleanup tool (think CCleaner), and a secure-erase utility. True Image offers a number of image and backup related utilities. Acronis True Image sports a clean, attractive interface, and is easy to use — once you’re accustomed to it. It’s not amazingly intuitive when it comes to organization and operation, but a half-hour kicking the tires and you should be good to go. Assuming you’re familiar with basic backup concepts. How effective is Acronis True Image’s malware protection? A few years ago Acronis recognized an opening in the market due to a spate of ransomware attacks, and added ransomware protection to its flagship software’s bag of tricks. Don’t pooh-pooh ransomware as something that happens to someone else. It happened to me. It’s out there and without backups, I would’ve been royally hosed. Acronis subsequently expanded anti-malware capabilities to protect against general threats, malicious websites, and other bad behavior such as code injection into apps. This obviously requires real-time intervention — a big addition back in 2021.    True Image’s Protection settings page. To test True Image’s anti-malware abilities I ran the tests on the WICAR.ORG site and surfed some known bad areas of the web. True Image caught everything. As effective as it proved, real-time protection is optional and may be turned off. True Image warning you of a dangerous web page. How much does Acronis True Image cost? Acronis thoughtfully provides a 30-day trial that you can use to test out the program. Beyond that, it’s $50 for a one-year subscription sans online storage (Essentials), $58 per year for Advanced with 50GB of storage (enough for most essential, non-media data) and more malware features, and $125 for Premium with 1TB of storage, which should be enough for most of your stuff excluding video. A full comparison is a available here. Acronis True Image is available as standalone, or with storage. You’re basically paying $75 per year for 1TB of storage with True Image, which is only a bit more than OneDrive’s 1TB plan. However, OneDrive includes Microsoft Office, both local and online. Note that if the subscription lapses, you’ll be limited to restoring data from the recovery disk after 30 days. You’ll also need to grab your online data within that period. Which brings me to cloud storage managers such as CloudMounter and Mountain Duck. These will integrate any number of online storage services, including cheaper S3-compatible services, into Windows Explorer as pseudo local drives. You can then use the $50 version of True Image (or any other backup software) to back up to them and save some coin. Note that there are Enterprise-level versions of True Image available as well, though these still sport the Cyber Protect title. How fast is Acronis True Image? Generally speaking, True Image is as quick as it gets. I ran backup jobs to external and internal SSDs, a NAS box (2.5Gbps), wrote folders to optical (single BD-R/M-Disc), and to Acronis Cloud. All proceeded as quickly as you could ask given each bandwidth, and without incident. I hate incidents and tend not to trust backup software that suffers them.  On the other hand, I did have some slight issues with the Linux boot disc, although the Windows PE version was A-OK. My only real performance gripe is that the main interface is rather slow to launch. No doubt due the large number of processes spawned by the various components, not to mention connecting to Acronis Cloud. 12 processes running in the background is a lot, even for a program as comprehensive as True Image. As to processes… True Image has a sprawling system footprint that spawns a whopping 12 of them (shown above). I noticed little impact on system performance other than the program boot time, and modern PCs such as my AMD Ryzen test bed should be able to handle it, but for older legacy hardware it might be a strain. True Image also takes up a substantial 1GB of disk space. One thing that disturbed me a bit was spotting the Google analytics report sender running alongside True Image. While comprehensive, True Image is also singularly intrusive. One thing that disturbed me a bit was spotting the Google analytics report sender running alongside True Image (see above). While comprehensive, True Image is also singularly intrusive. Should you buy Acronis True Image? Given its broad capabilities, True Image is a pretty good deal. You might opt for another vendor with cheaper online storage, but Acronis Cloud is integrated and I will admit, I found it very handy. Bottom line: If you’re looking for a comprehensive, set-it-and-forget-it data-safety solution, I know of nothing better, or comparable for that matter. However, it’s overkill for the average user, there’s a ton of telemetry going on, and it’s subscription software — albeit with 30-day grace period for restore functionality (perpetual from recovery media). If you’re confident in your anti-malware setup, check out our favorite: R-Drive Image. Note: This review originally sported the Cyber Protect Home Office moniker in its title. The review has been lightly edited to reflect the product’s new name and our most recent experience with it as of December 2024. Our software testing is necessarily limited due to time and equipment constraints. We report any issue experienced historically or during testing for the article; however, you should research user forums for information on issues other users may have experienced. This applies to all software. Read...

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