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Comment by shmerl | Hacker News Reader

Zen 3 APU based ones are really good like T14 Gen 2 AMD. I wish though AMD would have started using RDNA 2 there instead of Vega GPUs. So for example no AV1 hardware decoder yet. For that we'd need to wait until Zen 4 APUs probably.

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.

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T14 gen2 is now shipping with a realtek wifi card that won't have mainline linux support until the next kernel (5.16) ships.

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 got one with a Mediatek card and replaced it with Intel one. It works fine after that.

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.

Well response time wise they're worse than the new Macbooks, and those are pretty terrible: https://twitter.com/andreif7/status/1452622025550438403

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.

Is the higher res panel better for them?

Comment chain was too deep so I couldn't reply.

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

Thanks for the pointer. Sounds like PWM frequency is something that should be specified in the screen specs.

I'm not sure which exact 4k panel(s) Lenovo is shipping with the T14 this year. From what notebookcheck has tested, the P14 4k panel they had was pretty good (still a bit slow, but usable, and no PWM), while the X1 carbon 4k panel they got was unusable (fast enough, but 200hz PWM so basically guarantees that it'll cause headaches).

What exactly does PWM affect and how do you check if it's used?

No OLED screen.

No 5750g so no ECC.

5750g sounds pretty power hungry. T14 are more balanced for performance / battery life. Lenovo should have some other line of laptops for that.

Whats the problem with Mediateks? Thinking about getting bunch of P41s amd gen 1's for work but intel wifi is not available because chip shortag so it's either realtek or mediatek.

Lagging upstream support. Something is coming in 5.16 from what I've heard. Intel on the other hand support their WiFi in a timely fashion and their drivers are pretty solid. I simply made myself a rule to only use Intel WiFi becasue of so many problems with other drivers in the past even if the do exist. Save yourself the trouble and frustration.

> 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.

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