Ask HN: Are new ThinkPads still worthy?
if not alternatives
1) good for windows Linux and double boot (I have acer and is really painful install linux)
- Dual boots Arch and Windows perfectly, never had issues.
- Several years old but still faster than I need with the i7, NVMe SSD and 16 GB memory.
- Soft plastic non metallic feel, doesn't get too hot or cold, fan only rarely comes on and it's way quieter than pre M1 MacBooks
- Feels like the lightest performance laptop I've ever used.
- The PERFECT laptop keyboard. Love the travel, love the dim click, love the positioning of every key, love the dedicated home, end, page up, page down, delete keys. Love the physical left, middle and right click buttons and of course the nipple for comedy factor (however the trackpad obviously sucks relative to MacBooks).
- Lid opens and closes easily.
- Perfect connectivity options, two USB C (PD, Thunderbolt, ethernet), 2/3 USB A, HDMI, microSD, SD.
- Matte screen.
- Physical camera slider.
I understand the latest X1 Carbons have most if not all of these features.
I miss USB-A ports on MacBooks. Every indication is I'll still miss them in 2025. Perhaps by 2030 it will seem like an OK choice.
I don't miss dedicated Thunderbolt ports, whatever those were called. Like they had on 2015 and earlier MacBooks. Replacing those with thunderbolt-capable USB-C ports is absolutely an improvement, and the right call for Thinkpads, too.
I'd rather see laptops get rid of HDMI ports and put in more USB-C ports instead.
I have a X1 Carbon 5th gen and it's awesome. No issues at all running Fedora and Windows. I'll likely buy the newest version next year to replace it.
Otherwise, its been very good. I used this guide to set up the dual boot with https://www.mikekasberg.com/blog/2020/04/08/dual-boot-ubuntu..., with some small changes because that is a dell machine.
I have the UHD display and the type is a bit small, but the scaling works well.
The only thing that is a little flaky is the fingerprint reader. The battery, with Ubuntu, is not great, but fine for my uses.
It’s the only non-Apple laptop I’ve ever loved.
Definitely not all of them. They key travel and (I think) keyboard size have been reduced recently, Ethernet adapter is no longer included, matte option is only available for cheaper low-resolution screen options.
Since all laptop manufacturers are heavily influenced by trends set by Apple, I really hope that recent changes to MacBook Pro (bigger dimensions, more weight, return of old keyboard design) will make Lenovo reconsider in their mindless pursuit of kneecapping their designs to shave off some additional 30 grams of weight.
Interestingly, my son, 14, told me, even after using desktops at school, the Mac we have at home and probably some other computers with friends, that the best keyboard is from the X220. I am never talking about the quality of the keyboards, this was the first time we discussed about it as he just told me that out of the blue.
At risk of sounding overly subjective, I've got an external Thinkpad USB keyboard with Trackpoint - the 2012 SK-8855 model - which is basically the X220 keyboard.
It is hands down the best keyboard experience I've ever had (and I've owned plenty, including mechanical boards, most recently the Logitech G915 TKL).
Sadly my backspace key is misfiring and it's beginning to show its age. Which really saddens me. I wish I bought several of these when they were still available. Now even second hand models are difficult to come by.
After going through the grueling setup I couldn't get the damn thing to start and the errors were coming from some random windows service that I couldn't see referenced anywhere.
Fortunately I was on onboarding with another person and they had the exact same problem, so it wasn't just something I was doing wrong.
Two days worth of googling and fumbling around I figured out we were the first to get the updated model of the laptop everyone else was using and the dolby surround drivers that came with the new version were killing some windows messaging service used by some database feature.
A hard pass on Lenovo stuff after that experience, drivers breaking core OS services is not something I'd call a professional device. Who the hell buys a P15 for Dolby Atmos support anyway ? It could have no speakers included and be equally good for the intended use case.
There's a reason I stay away from these machines.
The thinkpad was pretty good, and wayland on fedora worked beautifully (I only used integrated graphics in linux, didn't even try to get the discrete gpu working). The one thing that really didn't work in linux was the fingerprint scanner - it would fail about 7/8 times I used it, which is really too bad because fedora has really nice fingerprint integration with sudo.
Also, something seemed to be a bit funny about it's displayport implementation - when it was connected to my DP monitor and went to sleep, the monitor would wake it back up again almost instantly and it would get into this weird back-and-forth between sleep mode and waking. That happened in both linux and windows. This doesn't happen with my new xps.
Otherwise it was pretty smooth sailing. It was a well-built computer with a nice keyboard. I might get another thinkpad at some point, but I'm loving this super-compact 17" 16:10 display on the xps.
- The xps 17 "feels" more solid and less creaky. It's probably less survivable, but it feels like a higher-quality machine
- The wifi seems great, but lately I've been having problems with the microphone. It just stopped working in Windows a week ago, presumably after an update?
- The keyboard isn't quite as good as the thinkpad, but the thinkpad extreme's keyboard isn't nearly as good as the keyboard in my old thinkpad t520. Lenovo are hell-bent on gimping their keyboards until they're no better than anyone else's, and reviews suggest that they've finally succeeded with the x1 extreme gen 4. The xps 17 keyboard is nice, but I notice a squeaking noise from the enter and right shift keys when I type.
- The xps 17's battery life is a lot better. My thinkpad's battery life was puzzlingly bad, even under windows.
I have a 2nd gen P1 with a 4k OLED screen, 9400H, dual nvme SSDs and 64gb of decent RAM. It is the best laptop I've ever owned.
Dual booting Fedora ever since I've owned it, with 95% Fedora / 5% Windows split. Never a hiccup, perfect thermals, extremely servicable, tough as hell, best keyboard ever.
Paypal refunded me the money after reviewing the case, but I'm now fighting a debt collector for the ~1k USD.
I have had many issues with mine (Carbon X1 G6, then G7), all due to bad firmware, which lenovo swapped out the mainboard 5 times trying to fix. They also keep making the keyboard shittier on the X1, but then don't let you choose a good display on a larger model (at least in Aus when I was looking, but I know there is some variability in what is available where and when)
Have a look at frame.work laptops to see if that might suit you. I have never used them, but they look great. The major manufacturers seem to be on a treadmill, pumping out half-finished unreliable garbage to keep up with industry trends.
From the limited surveys etc I could find online, all windows laptops have roughly twice the failure rate of macs. As best I could determine, It seems you have about 1 in 5 chance of major failure from lenovo/dell etc. and about 1/10 chance from apple (from memory, could be 1/10 vs 1/20). Major failure being something that requires the device to be serviced or sent back, not necessarily a show stopping issue.
Get on-site servicing when its offered because it doesn't cost much and there is a good chance you will need to use it.
I just had the keyboard (well, entire top assembly) replaced today via the on-site warranty because the touchpad was ghosting and the physical buttons had stopped working, i.e. it was basically impossible to use without an external keyboard. This also meant that the left shift key no longer comes loose all the time, which it started doing soon after I got it. It also has a couple of dead pixels, though I don't care too much about those.
Battery life at this point is less than one hour, after which it cuts out with no working. That might be a Linux issue, but the battery reports its charge state at ~25% when it cuts out. I had hoped they would replace it as well, but my work didn't get the extended warranty for the battery, which is a separate thing. That means that the warranty is only one year, and as such Lenovo want 300 EUR or so to do the replacement, and that's if I send it to them (onsite I imagine it'll be even more expensive).
All in all, I'm not very happy with the machine. Overall feel is OK (not fantastic), but the random shut-downs and keyboard wonkiness are extremely off-putting, as is the development in the battery life - it barely works as a laptop anymore.
My personal laptop is an almost antique X200, I've gone through a couple since 2008, but they always feel dependable in a way that this just doesn't, and I can't see myself getting a new Lenovo now based on this experience. In my personal life I don't need the extra speed at all, and I wish Lenovo would just keep making spares (and new batteries) for the X200 so I could use that for the rest of my life.
You do have to keep in mind that small devices with great battery lives usually don't have as powerful of a CPU or can't sustain it for long without sounding like a small jet engine, but that's more a question of adjusting ones expectations to what's realistic within a category. This was largely the reason I switched from an ultrabook-y lenovo (X1 Carbon and the Yoga) to a slightly heavier device (P1) when my laptop became my main dev machine during COVID (before that, my laptop was used for hardcore dev work occasionally, but my desktop at the office was my main machine for heavy lifting...)
If I were buying a laptop for Linux only, I'd be considering the Framework (https://frame.work/) or System 76 (https://system76.com/laptops/).
1. Modular build is non existent. With new thinkpads you can’t even remove the battery. That sucks.
2. Cooling. A lot of their new models seem to have been modeled to be as thin as possible and then some, so there's no space for cooling. CPU/GPU throttling was unheard of from that brand for a long time and is no longer the case.
3. Warranty. Depending on where you are in the world you'll get very different attitude towards respecting warranty. As some have pointed out it can get pretty bad.
4. Linux support is mostly ok except for NVidia/primus/optirun shenanigans.I was utterly disappointed. The fan would turn on for no good reason and make noised. My 4th gen never did that. And the performance was not that different from my 4th gen.
So, I returned it after a while. Got myself a Macbook Air M1. The hardware is brilliant. But to my taste, Mac OS is nowhere near close to how comfortable I was with my Linux/KDE setup. So now I'm backing marcan's effort to get Linux running on this device, but that doesn't seen to be close. Thus, I'm thinking of giving the Lenovo T14 Gen2 a try. As of now every moment I use the Air is pain.
I just bought my 3rd X1 Carbon (gen 9), and then returned it the next week. It made a constant buzz. $$$$ laptops aren't supposed to sound like the cheapest USB charger knockoff. Plus it would never go to sleep (so it just discharged every time I shut the lid).
I've never been able to get any X1 to seamless work with a thunderbolt dock either. 3 docks tried, and the Macbook is fine on 2, but the thinkpad always has problems. A firmware upgrade helped a little, but it's never seamless.
I wish I could find my next linux laptop. My gen 5 is getting a little long in the tooth.
Got it a year ago for 2500 and I'm a bit on the fence about having gotten it, it's a great computer but the new M1 Mac would smoke it and I prefer MacOS to Windows.
I installed Ubuntu 16.04 initially and half of the drivers did not load. Every time I installed a new driver another cog stopped working. It was a mess to get Bluetooth working, WiFi just wouldn't work and my display driver straight up wouldn't work. After a week of getting stuck in this tangled mess, I decided to move to 18.04 assuming that drivers would be available on a later version of an LTS distribution. I was partialy right, I managed to get the WiFi and Bluetooth working but the god damn display drivers just won't load. This means I cannot suspend my PC, adjust brightness or connect to an external monitor. I will sell you this machine but looks like you need linux as well.
So I have a decently speced hexa-core PC with a dream keyboard, great screen but cannot run Ubuntu which is what my job as a robotics engineer most need. Everytime I look at it I'm infuriated at my utter lack of due diligence. There's a guide on the Ubuntu website with a list of supported PCs. Refer to that before making a purchase. Its hellish, frustrating and heartbreaking otherwise.
/rant
The Linux kernel containing the drivers as the distribution model is usually seen as a good thing, but it's also a huge downside when it comes to these problems. There's just no easy way to get a new GPU driver onto an older OS (except Nvidia). Any WiFi card that isn't Intel is probably going to be a fun time.
16.04 is ~ 5 years older than the hardware. 18.04 is still ~ 3 years older than the hardware.
For example, the 3500U in my ASUS laptop still had problems in 20.04. That's an older CPU/GPU but much newer OS.
Which KDE is that and how exactly is it "high bloat"?
Definitely not Plasma. Modern KDE is very resource efficient, even giving XFCE a run for its money.
Turn off animations.
1. T470p - Out of the box it had a couple dead pixels, and the right click physical button to match the red nub had a hair trigger - I ended up disabling the nub entirely in BIOS so that I could type without triggering it. I also regularly (daily?) suffered video driver crashes. I don't know if it was faulty hardware or something with the i915 driver, but I think the former since my new device doesn't have this issue and others with the T470p didn't experience it. The battery life wasn't great either, which was surprising since it was one of the chunky-battery models. I hated this machine.
2. X1 Carbon (9th gen) - Works almost perfectly with very little fiddling. I do occasionally still have some brief issues with the Intel graphics causing freezes (both in Firefox and Zoom), but nothing like the crashes I saw before and everything just works. Plus it supports a USB-C dock that allows me to drive two monitors, connect my mouse and keyboard, and charge the laptop all with a single cable. Thin, light, with great battery life too.
In my opinion, they're wonderful. I dual boot both of them. The process was simply shrinking the Windows partition using the built in Windows utility and then installing Linux into the free space. I don't have any issues with the system sleeping or not waking up. I haven't really messed with hibernation though since I haven't been very mobile the past two years or so.
The hybrid graphics work fine too, with one caveat. External displays require Nvidia mode, and mode switching can only be done with an X11 server restart. Hybrid mode has much better battery life but doesn't support external displays. My work laptop is generally plugged into 3 external displays so I keep it in Nvidia mode.
I haven't tried Wayland, so I have no idea how well it works vs X11.
Both run arch like a champ.
For Linux, make sure to replace the Mediatek WiFi horror with an Intel WiFi card.
And also get the correct one, since Lenovo has some fishy blacklists for WiFi cards. You can search for non blacklisted part codes here (narrow it down by your laptop model):
https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netb...
Other recent gotcha I had, if you are replacing the NVMe SSD too to something better than the stock one, make sure to buy a 0.5 mm thermal pad for it.
Another thing, in the UEFI change the suspend setting from Windows to Linux.
The main problem with the T14 is that the screens are either bad or horrifically bad, and you don't know what one you get until it arrives. The 400nit low power screens are more like a 30hz panel for the best one (~30ms grey to grey (g2g), and PWM so it causes headaches and eyestrain), or ~14hz for the worst one (74ms g2g! It's feels as slow as an eink screen.)
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-s-Panel-Lottery-continu...
I also replaced the SSD with 1 TB SK Hynix Gold P31.
I think my screen is 400 nit but I haven't really noticed major issues with it. I didn't do a lot of testing though.
They're not actually using the Innolux display this year sadly, only the AUO and BOE panels (which both have awful ghosting). Once you know what to look for (or feel, since bad ghosting gives me headaches and eyestrain :/), it becomes obvious.
Good article on PWM: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Why-Pulse-Width-Modulation-PWM...
I think you need an oscilloscope and some other tools if you want to test what the PWM frequency is. The easiest way to check for PWM is to just look up reviews for laptops using the same panel (you can find the panel number using hwinfo on Windows). To just test for if your display has PWM, lower the brightness, and use the blurbusters test: https://www.testufo.com/blurtrail
No 5750g so no ECC.
> Intel wifi is not available because chip shortag so it's either realtek or mediatek.
They are not that hard to buy as a separate part. I bought one recently to replace this Mediatek chip.
I only had an issue with the battery in the Gen 6 early on, which was fixed within two days by replacing it (under warranty). I have not had any issues with my Gen 9 (though it is only 5 months old).
Firmware is incredibly easy to update on it under linux.
I also from time to time swap out the M.2 SSD with windows when I need it. The screws are super simple and you won't lose them.
I have used a XPS 13 in the past, though it is an okay alternative, I will say, the keyboard is super compact and inconvenient. The battery is iffy (one friend's exploded on him), mine just did not last long. The form factor was nice, but it did not feel nearly as nice as the X1 Carbon.
We're sending them back for a refund and buying XPS Developer Editions for everyone instead, even though it's IMO a much inferior product with no ports and a crappy keyboard.
The Realtek wifi cards they're putting into the new Thinkpads are just a damn shame. Even with 3rd party kernel modules that you compile yourself, we couldn't get it to work reliably, and while I'm OK with opening up a laptop with 37 tabs and replacing the wifi card, we can't ask that of everyone.
For our team the laptop needs to "just work" and the new Thinkpads don't, which is deeply disappointing to me.
I'm typing this comment in my lovely T440, but my next laptop will probably not be a Thinkpad. They are great, but having one doesn't payoff nowadays (YMMV).
See https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/ekin47/the_x1_ext... for the details.
I bought my dad an x220 for his birthday a couple years ago and I love that thing to death -- such a great laptop in look and feel (if you dig the retro aesthetic).
I'm hoping to pick up an X1 Carbon or a Framework laptop one day, but I frankly have minimal use for laptops in general at the moment.
For my personal laptop, I have Arch (Manjaro) on a 13" xps 9130, and wouldn't trade it for anything. Screen is beautiful, keyboard is the best I've ever used (including new m1 macbooks), touchpad is fantastic - It's the perfect little laptop, imo.
I have only ever owned Thinkpads (until the carbon) and I don't see any reason I would personally switch back to Thinkpad version. Carbons are so small and perfect for my usage.
Battery life is very good and you have great linux support (including battery charge customization and other options with TLP) It's light, you have a good choice of ports (USB A, VGA, USB C) I think it's still a safe choice especially in the AMD variant wrt the other linux laptops.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish#Lenovo_security_inci...
https://theintercept.com/2020/08/21/school-laptops-lenovo-ch...
It runs Ubuntu fine and feels sturdy. Keyboard feels good, but I don’t like those two touchpad buttons integrated into the pad, it feels cheap to bend the pad itself.
As far as I can tell the board is completely dead. Hours of fiddling with the power button and trying anything I found online, but it doesn’t turn on anymore.
On fedora it has been without flaw.