en.Wedoany.com Reported - Lenovo's ThinkBook 14 G9 IPL laptops sold in the US market are equipped with solid-state drives (SSDs) from Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. (YMTC), marking the first time a major PC manufacturer has used products from this Chinese storage vendor in devices aimed at American consumers.
Notebookcheck discovered during a review that this Lenovo laptop features a 512GB YMTC M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD. The model is available in the US, priced at $1,124.25 on Amazon as of the time of writing. YMTC was added to the US Department of Commerce's Entity List in 2022, which prohibits it from accessing goods and services involving US technology, but does not prevent China-based Lenovo from importing such SSDs into the US.
Major PC manufacturers have traditionally relied on established storage chip suppliers such as Samsung, SK Hynix, Kioxia, Micron, and SanDisk. The current AI construction boom has driven up storage chip prices, prompting manufacturers to seek alternative sources. Apple is also seeking US government approval to purchase storage chips from Chinese company ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT). Although CXMT is not on the Entity List, it is classified as a Chinese military company, posing risks for US firms doing business with it.
Notebookcheck noted that the performance of this YMTC SSD is "below the average for office laptop SSDs" and cannot compete with the highest-performing SSDs on the market. However, the Lenovo ThinkBook 14 G9 IPL is positioned as a daily office laptop, and its target users may not require high read/write speeds, as long as it is faster than a mechanical hard drive.
Lenovo is one of the best-selling laptop brands in the US. Despite a 7% decline in PC shipments in the first quarter of 2026, Lenovo's market share grew by 1.2%, making it the third-largest desktop and laptop brand after Dell and HP. The ThinkBook 14 G9 IPL, as an affordable office-oriented laptop, may sell in large volumes through corporate procurement, helping to boost the adoption rate of Chinese storage solutions in the US market.
Since YMTC is also classified as a Chinese military company, buyers operating in sensitive industries or government agencies may face restrictions when purchasing this specific model. The tight supply situation in the storage chip market appears to have prompted Lenovo to offer models that may not be sellable in certain circumstances, providing more price options for consumers not subject to procurement restrictions.
