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Colorful Source N14 Review: Power Meets Portability

July 25, 2024
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In the past couple of years, Colorful has been quite active in the notebook market and has introduced a wide variety of products targeting different groups. There is a flagship series like the X17 / X15, the hidden star of e-sports G15 / 16 and P15 / 16 series, COLORFIRE MEOW R15 fashionably decked out with cat culture elements, etc. All these together have formed a unique brand image for Colorful.
Now, Colorful launched another versatile, lightweight notebook with high AI computing capability: the Source N14. What most people do not know is that this will not be the first time Colorful has made an effort in the 14-inch notebook market; the Colorful Source N14 made its way to the markets as far back as 2010, making it 14 years of continuous innovation.
Light and versatile, the Colorful Source N14 is powered by no other than the mighty Core i9-13900H processor and RTX 4070 laptop GPU. This high-end pairing, typically seen in heavy-weight gaming laptops, could very well power anything from content creation to video editing, and AAA gaming.
Impressively, the Source N14 keeps the weight at only 1.53 kg and the thickness at just 17.9 mm, making it very portable. Storage configuration is generous: this laptop comes with dual-channel 32GB LPDDR5X-6000 high-speed memory and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD.
Now, let’s take a look at the real-world performance of the Colorful Source N14.

Appearance

The newest ultra-light and thin model from Colorful, developed in cooperation with top domestic manufacturer BYD, will come out as a limited edition in the “Ink Blue” color. Colorful N14 is designed to meet versatile workplace and creative needs, with a minimalistic design where only the CENTER English lettering of the COLORFUL logo is embarked on the center, free of any other embellishments. The all-metal body and matte finish give the product an excellent feel to the touch.
Colorful Source N14
It has a slim profile: only 17.9mm at the thinnest and weighs around 1.53kg, so it won’t add much extra burden to any backpack. On the A-side, it has a 14″ display with a resolution of 2560×1600, a refresh rate of 165Hz, and a 16:10 aspect ratio. Additionally, it supports a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut and calibration for each consumer piece in the factory. At the top of the screen, we have a 1-megapixel camera, a microphone array, and a physical shutter for added privacy. On the bottom part, we also have a COLORFUL logo.

What else

The Colorful N14 comes with a full-size keyboard layout, and the distance is large enough to guard against discomfort one may have during daily typing. Under the keyboard, there is a large touchpad for navigation. On the left side are the DC IN Power, HDMI 2.1, USB-A 3.2 Gen2, and a USB-C full-function interface that supports video output and 100W PD charging. It also has a 3.5mm audio jack and a USB-A 3.2 Gen1 on the right side and an anti-theft lock slot.
There’s also a cooling air intake on the D-side, space-wise covering around half. You will also get a 150W power adapter in the package. If you take apart the D-side, you will find a cooling system with two D8 heat pipes and a dual-fan design, increasing the fin contact area to improve heat dissipation efficiency. It also houses a Yangtze Memory PC411 SSD model, which is located on the middle left. On the right-hand side, there’s also an AX211NGW Wi-Fi 6 Wireless Network Card. Down below, there will be a 58.1Wh Lithium-ion battery pack flanked by speakers on either side.

CPU Performance

The following settings were used to squeeze every last drop from the Colorful N14: we set the notebook to “Performance Mode,” then changed the power plan in the Colorful iGameCenter control center to “Best Performance” while setting the graphics card to “Direct Connection to Independent Graphics.”
The benchmarking process was done on the Core i9-13900H processor, which comes with 14 cores and 20 threads (6P+8E), a maximum turbo of 5.4GHz, and an L3 cache of 24MB.

Benchmark results

Graphics performance and games

The Colorful Source N14 sports an RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, powered by 4608 CUDA cores, 8GB GDDR6 video memory, and an AI computing power of 321 TOPS. Let’s take a closer look at its performance in theoretical and game tests:

Theoretical Tests

1. Time Spy (DX12+2K)
2. Time Spy Extreme (DX12+4K)
3. Fire Strike (DX11+1080P)
4. Fire Strike Extreme (DX11+2K)
5. Fire Strike Ultra (DX11+4K)

Game Testing

1. Borderlands 3
2. Cyberpunk 2077
3. Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
4. Far Cry 6
5. Horizon Zero Dawn
6. Shadow of the Tomb Raider
7. Forza Horizon 5
The Colorful Source N14 aims to provide sturdy performance for handling demanding tasks and high-quality gaming.

Screen, memory, and hard disk

Screen

The coverage of the Colorful Source N14’s 14-inch is nice, full of coverage and accuracy since 100% color could cover the sRGB spectrum, 88% in the Adobe RGB, and 99% in the P3. On the screen, we can reach a peak brightness of 416 nits and a contrast ratio of 950:1. Now about the color accuracy. Here are the Delta-E values found when testing the screen:

Memory

The Colorful Source N14 includes a 1TB PC411 by Yangtze Memory hard drive using PCIe 4.0 x4. When tested using CrystalDiskMark, the drive boasted speeds of 6.9 GB/s sequential read and 6.2 GB/s sequential write. The 4K random read speed was 74 MB/s, with the 4K random write speed at 198 MB/s.
These detailed specifications help Source N14 to be a powerhouse in quality screen display, memory bandwidth, and speed storage, thereby being versatile and a force to provide a catapult for one’s work and entertainment.

Baking and battery life

Baker Machine Test

1. Single-baked CPU
Doing an FPU stress test with AIDA64, we find Core i9-13900H of PL1, which burns an initial 80W of power. After 10 minutes, its power consumption would rise to 85W PL2. During that, the P-core frequency was 3.6GHz, the E-core frequency was 2.8GHz, and the temperature was from 80°C to 87°C.
2. Single-baked GPU
On the GPU, FurMark was used at the settings of 4K and 2x MSAA multi-sample anti-aliasing. Its power consumption reached stabilization after 10 minutes, hitting 75W with the RTX 4070 Laptop GPU. At this point, the temperature also reached as high as 83°C, while the maximum frequency reached 1875MHz.
3. Double Baking (CPU + GPU)
While running the combined stress test with FurMark on the GPU and CPU Burner on the CPU, the power consumption for the Core i9-13900H dropped to about 27W, in which the frequency for both the P-cores and E-cores goes down to 2 GHz and 1.6 GHz, respectively. The temperature of the CPU stays near 78°C. As concerns the RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, the power remains at 73W with temperatures of about 80°C and an absolute maximum frequency of 2415MHz. The total power consumption of Colorful Source N14 in this test was 100W.

Battery Life Test

The Colorful Source N14 is equipped with a 58Wh battery. Simulation of the battery life using PCMark 10 Modern Office. Settings: set the graphics card to hybrid output, power mode to “Best Energy Efficiency,” Control Center switched to “Quiet Mode,” and adjust the screen brightness to 50%.
The battery life test from 99% to 4% lasted for 6 hours and 39 minutes.

Conclusion

Colorful Source N14—Innovation Never Stops: Powerful performance meets portability. Packing a robust Core i9-13900H processor and an RTX 4070 Laptop GPU, it’s designed to give support for the most demanding tasks—content creation, video editing, and gaming. With all that high-performance hardware on board, this laptop still manages to stay pretty light at just 1.53kg and 17.9mm thick for easy carrying. With the 14-inch display offering great color accuracy and brightness, while dual-channel 32GB LPDDR5X memory and a 1TB SSD provide for smooth operations and ample storage space, this will be an ideal match for those seeking top-class notebooks that enable several applications. The battery life of the N14 is 6 hours and 39 minutes, and its outstanding cooling system, makes it preferred for users seeking versatile and portable high-performance laptops.
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