14-inch ultra-thin AI PC - Colorful Source N14 all-round notebook
In the notebook market, Colorful, which originated from making graphics cards, is undoubtedly a "dark horse." From its initial foray into the notebook market with its first product, the Colorful Jiangxing X15, to the subsequent Jiangxing Pro Max series, Yinxing series, and COLORFIRE MEOW series, Colorful has been a "game-changer," turning the gaming laptop market upside down and disrupting the existing order. Now, in the era of AI PCs, Colorful is not only "changing the game" in AI application experiences but also setting its sights on 14-inch thin and light all-purpose laptops. This time, Colorful has introduced its first 14-inch ultra-thin all-purpose laptop—the Colorful Yuan N14. How does this machine perform?
Product Specifications:
Operating System: Windows 11 Home Edition in Chinese (64-bit)
Display: 14-inch IPS screen (2560x1600@165Hz, 100% DCI-P3)
Processor: Intel Core i9-13900H (14 cores, 20 threads, max turbo frequency 5.4GHz)
Memory: 32GB LPDDR5x 6000 dual-channel (soldered)
Storage: 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU (8GB GDDR6)
Battery: 58Wh
Dimensions: 313mm x 224mm x 17.9mmWeight: 1.53kg (excluding power adapter)
Reference price: 9999 yuan
All-metal body
Lightweight and portable
Advertisement
The 14-inch laptop with discrete graphics is a special category in the laptop market because it is a true combination of portability and high performance. On one hand, 14 inches is a common size for most office ultrabooks, with a screen size that is suitable for office work and a compact body that is easy to carry.
On the other hand, these models, once equipped with discrete graphics, often also have powerful graphics performance. When taken out, they can serve as gaming laptops and meet the requirements for accelerating design and creative tasks. Therefore, from a product positioning perspective, 14-inch laptops with discrete graphics fit well with those who have performance requirements (such as those who like to play games or need discrete graphics to accelerate creative software) and have to carry their laptops out frequently.
It is precisely because these laptops are lightweight and portable, and equipped with powerful discrete graphics, that they can be used for gaming as well as design, that the market also refers to these products as all-rounders. In this market, first-tier brands such as ROG, Razer, and Alienware are the main players, and the corresponding product prices are also very high, which is not very friendly to mainstream users.
The arrival of the Colorful Source N14 is similar to the birth of the Star series, causing a sensation in the all-rounder laptop market and breaking the price barrier. The low-end version of this product (Core i7-13620H + RTX 4070) is priced at only 7999 yuan, and the high-end version (Core i9-13900H + RTX 4070) is priced at only 9999 yuan. Such a price is very competitive in the all-rounder laptop market.
In addition to the price advantage, the Colorful Source N14 is also not inferior in terms of body design. The Source N14 is the first 14-inch all-rounder laptop with discrete graphics under Colorful, and in order to create a better product, Colorful and BYD have jointly developed a brand-new ultra-thin mold. The ultra-thin mold used by the Colorful Source N14 has reached a first-class level in terms of body thickness, weight, appearance design, and performance release level.
In specific numbers, the weight of this machine is as low as 1.53kg, and the body thickness is only 17.9mm. The weight of the Razer Blade 14 2024 model is 1.84kg, and the thickness is 17.99mm; the weight of the ROG Zephyrus 14 Air 2024 is 1.5kg, and the thickness is 15.9mm. In comparison, the level of thinness and lightness of the Colorful Source N14 has reached the first-tier level, and such a thin body can even match most integrated graphics ultrabooks. For users, the Colorful Source N14 has excellent portability and can truly be easily held in hand, taken anywhere, and carried out without much burden.Users who prefer a 14-inch dedicated graphics all-rounder laptop generally have high standards for their quality of life and place greater emphasis on the external aesthetics of their notebook. This requires notebook manufacturers to put effort into the design of the all-rounder's appearance. Let's take a look at the competitors in the market; whether it's Razer or ROG's similar products, they all have their own distinctive design features. So, how does Colorful handle this? The N14 adopts a stylish and minimalist route.
The Colorful N14 features a minimalist design style, with the A, C, and D faces all made of full metal, ensuring the stability of the body structure while also providing a good metallic feel. As the front face of the notebook, the A face design of this machine is very simple, with only the "COLORFUL" brand logo engraved in the center, and no other unnecessary design elements. The B face frame adds a bright edge created by a diamond-cutting process, further enhancing the premium feel of the machine. At the same time, Colorful also introduced a "Moyun Blue" limited color scheme, a color with a strong Chinese style that covers the entire body of the notebook. Except for the B face screen, there is no color difference in the entire shell part of the notebook, and the unified overall feel makes the notebook look more elegant.
14-inch 2560×1600@165Hz screen
The Colorful N14 is equipped with a 14-inch 2560×1600 resolution IPS matte screen. The 16:10 display ratio is very beneficial for daily office work, web browsing, and creative design scenarios because the screen display area is relatively larger than the traditional 16:9 ratio, which is more conducive to improving efficiency.
The color performance of this machine's screen is also excellent. According to our test results, its screen color gamut coverage reaches 99.3% sRGB, 76.9% Adobe RGB, and 90.5% DCI-P3. This means it uses a wide color gamut screen, and the color performance can meet the needs of daily office work, entertainment, and creative design. More importantly, the screen of this machine has been calibrated one by one at the factory, which can restore true colors and bring a realistic display effect.
As an all-rounder, the screen specifications also need to meet the needs of gamers for a high refresh rate. The screen refresh rate of this machine is as high as 165Hz, which has reached the level of mainstream gaming notebooks. The ultra-high screen refresh rate combined with a powerful dedicated graphics card means that it can bring a tear-free and smoother picture in the game, and the gaming experience is better. However, this machine does not currently support dynamic refresh rate adjustment, and it can only be manually adjusted to 60Hz when saving power is needed.
In addition, this machine is equipped with a 720p camera at the top of the screen, which can provide support for video calls, live broadcasts, and other scenarios in the daily use environment. However, it is a pity that this machine does not have an infrared camera and does not support face recognition to unlock and log in to the system. Moreover, the camera specifications are not high, which is slightly inconvenient for some office workers. It is hoped that Colorful will upgrade and improve in the next generation of products.
The Colorful N14 uses a full-size white backlit keyboard, with a larger key spacing and a comfortable key feel. Even men with thick fingers are not easy to press the wrong keys, and the input experience is still good. In addition, the keycaps and touchpad of this machine are all in a similar color scheme to the C face shell, so the style of the entire C face is relatively unified, and there is no abrupt feeling, which shows that Colorful is still attentive in design.
The interface design of this machine is moderate. It is equipped with two USB-A interfaces (USB-A 3.2 Gen1×1, USB-A 3.2 Gen2×1), one HDMI 2.1 interface, one DC power interface, one 3.5mm audio interface, and one full-function USB-C interface (supporting video output, data transmission, 100W PD charging). Such interface design can meet the needs of most users. However, for a 14-inch dedicated graphics all-rounder, it would be better if some expansion interfaces for creative design people were added, such as card reader slots, Thunderbolt interfaces, etc.Equipped with a Standard-Voltage Core i9 Flagship Processor
Colorful Yuan N14 is powered by Intel's 13th generation Core H series standard-voltage processors, with options for Core i7-13620H and Core i9-13900H. The version we tested this time is the top-tier Core i9-13900H.
Some readers might wonder: Why is the previous generation Core processor used? In fact, the root of this question lies with the upstream chip manufacturers. Because in the mobile platform, Intel has canceled the 14th generation Core H series products, only introducing the 14th generation Core HX series processors aimed at enthusiast-level users and the all-new Core Ultra processors. The HX series products are mainly targeted at high-performance gaming laptops, which are not suitable for use in slim and versatile laptops like the Colorful Yuan N14.
Among the Core Ultra processors, only the Core Ultra 9 185H has a base power consumption of 45W, while the rest of the Core Ultra processors have a base power consumption of only 28W. If the Core Ultra 9 185H processor were adopted, it would not only further increase the price of the laptop, but there would also be no significant difference in processor performance compared to the Core i9-13900H. Therefore, on balance, choosing the previous generation Core i9-13900H is actually a better option.
As a flagship processor of the previous generation, the Core i9-13900H is of high quality. It uses the Intel 7 manufacturing process, is based on a hybrid architecture, and is equipped with 6 performance cores and 8 efficiency cores, forming 14 cores and 20 threads. The maximum turbo frequency reaches up to 5.4GHz. This processor also comes with 24MB of smart cache, with a base power consumption of 55W and a maximum turbo power consumption of 115W.
In "Performance Mode" and with the maximum fan speed enabled, this machine achieved a single-core score of 1945pts and a multi-core score of 17401pts in the CINEBENCH R23 processor rendering performance test. For an ultra-slim versatile laptop, such results are very impressive, and these results can fully compare with the Core Ultra 9 185H (single-core 1811pts, multi-core 17630pts) — there is only about a 1% difference in multi-core performance, a gap so small that it can be considered negligible; in single-core performance, the Core i9-13900H is actually about 7% ahead. This also confirms our guess that the actual performance of the previous generation flagship processor Core i9-13900H is not actually worse than the latest Core Ultra 9 185H, so it is understandable that the Colorful Yuan N14 adopts such seemingly outdated configurations.
In terms of memory, the Colorful Yuan N14 also offers two configurations: 16GB LPDDR5x 5200 and 32GB LPDDR5x 6000, depending on the processor configuration. The 32GB LPDDR5x 6000 version we tested achieved a read speed of 69772MB/s and a write speed of 87135MB/s in the AIDA64 software, with a latency of 89.4ns. Such performance is excellent, laying a solid foundation for the powerful overall system performance.
The internal design of the Colorful Yuan N14 is compact, featuring only a single M.2 SSD slot design, which cannot be upgraded to dual SSD configuration. However, this machine comes standard with a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD, and the large capacity space can meet the usage needs of most users. The machine we tested uses the Yangtze Memory PC411 1TB SSD, which achieved a sequential read speed of 6833.97MB/s and a sequential write speed of 6114.98MB/s in CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4. Such performance is very impressive, and whether loading large files or copying large amounts of data, a speedy experience can be obtained.
RTX 4070 Laptop GPU
Gaming, Creation, AI All in OneIn terms of graphics, the Colorful Yuan N14 is equipped with an RTX 4070 laptop GPU, which is based on the Ada Lovelace architecture and features 4608 CUDA cores, 8GB GDDR6 memory (Samsung particles), and a default Boost frequency of 1605MHz with a memory bus width of 128bit.
The RTX 4070 laptop GPU, utilizing the more efficient Ada Lovelace architecture, includes third-generation RT cores and fourth-generation Tensor cores, supporting NVIDIA DLSS 3.5. This not only brings more powerful graphics performance but also boasts formidable AI computing power (321 TOPS), which can further accelerate AI workloads and provide users with an excellent AI application experience.
It is worth mentioning that, as a versatile laptop, the Colorful Yuan N14 also supports three display modes: dedicated graphics direct connection, hybrid mode, and integrated graphics mode. The dedicated graphics direct connection mode can further "squeeze" the performance of the dedicated graphics, helping users achieve optimal performance when playing games or creating designs; while the integrated graphics mode can completely disable the dedicated graphics, helping users achieve longer battery life.
With the dedicated graphics direct connection, "performance mode," and maximum fan speed settings, this machine achieved a graphics score of 10716 in the 1440p, DX12-based 3DMark Time Spy, leading the 140W full-power RTX 4060 laptop GPU (10189pts) by about 5%. From the test results, the theoretical graphics performance of this machine surpasses most 15.6-inch RTX 4060 Laptop gaming laptops, achieving stronger performance with lower power consumption, which is the practical significance of being equipped with a 90W RTX 4070 laptop GPU.
In the 1080p, DX11-based 3DMark Fire Strike, this machine achieved a graphics score of 28409, which also leads the 140W full-power RTX 4060 laptop GPU (28015 points). It can be seen that, despite the compact and lightweight body of the Colorful Yuan N14, its graphics performance is very powerful.
We conducted a simple test with several popular games. At 1080p resolution, this machine achieved over 80fps in the highest quality settings (with ray tracing and DLSS 3 balance) in games such as "Shadow of the Tomb Raider," "Cyberpunk 2077," "Borderlands 3," and "F1 22," showing excellent performance. For example, it achieved an average frame rate of 84.18fps in "Cyberpunk 2077," with very smooth gameplay.
At 1440p resolution, this machine can also achieve an average frame rate of over 60fps in the highest quality settings in the aforementioned games. Even in the hardware-demanding "Borderlands 3," this machine maintained an average frame rate of 61.8fps at 1440p resolution. This means that the Colorful Yuan N14 has excellent graphics performance and can easily handle AAA blockbusters.
Outstanding graphics performance is also very beneficial for accelerating creative software. In the UL Procyon photo editing test, this machine achieved a total score of 8457, indicating that it can help users efficiently complete creative tasks such as photo editing and image processing.
Speaking of image processing, currently more popular are text-to-image and image-to-image applications based on large models, such as Stable Diffusion. The UL Procyon software has added an AI test item for Stable Diffusion 1.5, which can assess the AI image generation performance of laptops. In this test, the Colorful Yuan N14, accelerated by the TensorRT engine, achieved a total score of 1150, completing 4 batches of image generation in just 86.882 seconds, with an overall image generation speed of 5.43 seconds per image. Such performance can fully meet the requirements of different people for Stable Diffusion drawing.
We also conducted an actual drawing test through the latest Stable Diffusion Web UI. In the actual test, with CUDA acceleration, this machine generated a 512x512 resolution image in just 3.6 seconds. The process felt like the blink of an eye to complete the image generation task, and such efficiency is satisfactory.Colorful's First Rainbow AI Assistant
AI Conversation Generation and AI Creation Capabilities
Amidst the surge in AI PC development, various notebook manufacturers have introduced their own AI assistants to help users experience the charm of AI, and Colorful is no exception. The Colorful Yuan N14 all-in-one laptop is the first to feature Colorful's Rainbow AI assistant, marking another step forward for Colorful in the field of AI PCs.
Rainbow AI is an AI software embedded in the Colorful Yuan N14 system. It does not support offline operation but is based on cloud-based online large model services, supporting functions such as AI conversation, AI painting, and AI photo processing. From a broad functional perspective, the capabilities supported by Rainbow AI cover two major scenarios: learning and work.
In terms of text creation, Rainbow AI's advantage lies in its pre-set AI application scenarios, such as "thesis," "survey design," "laboratory report," "story writing," "editing and polishing," "article summary," "title generation," "knowledge encyclopedia," "translation expert," and "couplet matching" in AI intelligent creation. This greatly reduces the barrier to entry for novice users in using generative AI. If you want AI to help you write a story, simply click on "story writing" to enter the dialog box and fill in your requirements without the need to set up AI characters through prompts beforehand.
For example, I asked Rainbow AI to write an 800-word folk tale, and it directly generated a story about the magical pen of Ma Liang, during which Rainbow AI could call upon AI large models.
For work scenarios, Rainbow AI also pre-sets a multitude of intelligent entities, covering fields such as programming development, divergent thinking, articles/stories, and writing assistance. For instance, under the programming development category, it is further divided into software testing, IT architect, front-end development, etc.; while in articles/stories, it includes entities like job application letters, news reporters, stand-up comedians, screenwriters, etc.
Intelligent entities refer to scenarios or roles pre-set for AI, such as under the news reporter entity, I only need to provide a brief text of information, and Rainbow AI can write a news article like a news reporter. Moreover, as long as the material provided is accurate, the news written by AI is also of considerable reference value.
Of course, if you do not wish to use the software's pre-set intelligent entities, you can also engage in free conversation with Rainbow AI directly through the dialog box.The "AI Camera" feature of Hongguang AI refers to the user uploading a portrait photo, and it can generate photos in various styles for you, including anime cartoons, movie time machines, youthful Leica, and retro oil paintings. In this way, users can create unique avatars on social platforms through the generated images.
Hongguang AI's "AI Painting" function can achieve text-to-image and image-upgrading creation. In this feature, users can use models including the well-known Midjourney and Niji. There are also various preset sizes available for text-to-image, including sizes suitable for promotional posters, computer wallpapers, or avatars. After integrating the Midjourney and Niji models, it also saves users the trouble of deploying on their own.
It can be seen that Hongguang AI has very rich functions, supporting text creation and AI painting. With the help of a wealth of intelligent entities, the threshold for users to use AI has been lowered, and the effects brought by using AI are also helpful for learning and work. In addition, all the services and features of Hongguang AI that we have experienced above are free. New users who purchase the Colorful N14 can activate and use them after registering an account.
Let's take a look at the thermal performance and battery life performance of the Colorful N14. This machine adopts a dual-fan dual-heat-pipe design. How is its thermal performance under high load?
We observe its performance in an environment of 25.2°C through dual baking. After 30 minutes of dual baking, we observed the highest temperature on the front surface of the machine to be 55.1°C, located near the exhaust port on the right side of the hinge, using a FLIR thermal imager. From the thermal image, it can be seen that the middle area of the keyboard of this machine has a higher temperature, maintaining around 48°C, with a more obvious heat sensation, and the temperature of the wrist rest position is maintained around 32°C, which is relatively cool.
After 30 minutes of dual baking, the overall performance release level of this machine is still good. The processor maintains around 25W, with a temperature of 77°C; the independent display maintains around 75W, with a temperature of 86°C. Overall, this machine can maintain an overall performance release level of about 100W.
The Colorful N14 is equipped with a 58Wh battery. How is its endurance? We tested it under integrated graphics output mode, power-saving mode, and the best energy efficiency settings, with 50% screen brightness and flight mode enabled, using PCMark 10. Ultimately, this machine achieved a battery life of 6 hours and 40 minutes in the "Modern Office" scenario of PCMark 10. Such performance is average, after all, its USB-C interface supports PD fast charging, and if the battery is not enough when going out, it can also be temporarily charged for the machine through a PD charging head.
In summary, the emergence of a new player in the 14-inch independent display all-rounder market is itself a joyful event for consumers. From our tests, the highlight of the Colorful N14 is that the price is "rolled" within ten thousand yuan, greatly reducing the entry threshold for all-rounder users. In addition to being competitive in price, the graphics card configuration and overall performance of the Colorful N14 are also very strong, ranking at the top level in the all-rounder market. Therefore, this is a qualified all-rounder with high cost performance, worth a look. More importantly, in the AI era, the Colorful N14 has strong AI computing power, which can efficiently deal with various AI applications, and it is also the first to carry the Colorful Hongguang AI software, which can bring new experiences in AI text creation, AI painting, and other aspects for users. Whether you use it for learning and office, rendering, gaming, design, or training large models, the Colorful N14, as an AI all-rounder, is truly versatile.