According to a new review of the ThinkBook 14 G9 from Notebookcheck, Lenovo has started shipping its global laptop configurations with SSDs made by YMTC for the first time. This is significant news, considering that SSD prices have been skyrocketing in recent months due to a massive shortage of NAND Flash storage modules. These modules have traditionally depended on a few manufacturers like Samsung, SK hynix, Micron, Kioxia, and others. However, Chinese company YMTC has entered the market and begun volume production of its Xtacking 4.0 technology, offering 1 TB TLC or 2 TB QLC storage modules, which is disrupting the balance in the global NAND Flash supply chain.

Previously , Lenovo used DRAM from another Chinese supplier, CXMT, only for Chinese laptop models. This marks the first time YMTC-made NAND Flash has been included in a laptop sold outside mainland China. YMTC has achieved performance that is decent enough for NAND Flash, with sufficient capacity for major laptop OEMs like Lenovo to start shipping this NAND Flash without waiting for capacity from other storage module makers. In Notebookcheck's testing, the ThinkBook 14 G9 SKU uses a 512 GB NVMe PCIe 4.0 M.2 2242 SSD, with sequential read speeds of 3,950 MB/s and write speeds of 2,514 MB/s. While this is considered below average for an office laptop, it is adequate for getting the job done and helps ease the global supply chain shortage slightly.