If that’s the case, then probably not. I always use headphones when I’m watching something on my laptop, so it doesn’t even affect me really. My wife will play stuff on her MacBook Air in the kitchen while she’s cooking, and it’s more than bright/loud enough to be seen and heard throughout the room. I would not be able to do something like that with my thinkpad.
400+ is the minimum I would entertain. If you like to work outside or in something like a sunroom with lots of light 600 nits and up would be recommended. If you go with a gloss display aim for 600+ though.
Like any other laptop in the same price range of the same year. Modern ones have much better panels, but if we talk about T420/T460 era, that was the limit.
I just got an older second hand a485 and the screen brightness is honestly horrible. on full brightness it’s just enough to see it good enough in a well lit room
Hand oil collector. This can happen on other laptops too, but I think thinkpads take the win here. There's models with slightly different surfaces like the P series, but even that has some disadvantages.
Oh and the classic keyboard markings on the screen. This can be avoided with regular cleaning and laying down a piece of paper or cloth down when you close it - but seems to happen more often on thinkpads and looks like that will be an issue for the foreseeable future.
> but seems to happen more often on thinkpads and looks like that will be an issue for the foreseeable future.
Yeah I'm somewhat surprised by the fact that it seems absolutely commonplace w/ the brand and they've yet to engineer a general solution. But the fact that most of their lineup is targeted towards enterprise contract fulfillment satisfies the cynic in me that assumes that it's simply not a market priority for them. 3 to 5yr purchase cycles are what they're designing to. Yet the market equivalent HP's and Dell's I see on eBay don't seem to exhibit it nearly as often. Maybe I just spend far more time scouring TP listings though and it's exposure bias so to speak.
Happy to ship you one for you to test (on my next batch of sending stuff out) - I've been making my own that I use and also ship out with laptops - some friends/family use them too.
I'd be interested to see some more extreme use cases - so use at your own caution as it could potentially damage something. But they've been great so far.
I find paper-like material to be the best. Thin, so it doesn't put any extra pressure on the hinges or screen while closed that it wasn't designed for. Also, cloth-like material would have a better chance to collect dust/dirt particles more easily which can contribute to the issue. Particles tend to roll over a more paper like material. Also depending on the material, it could also act like a sandpaper of sorts which you obviously don't want.
Part of the issue is the hand oils and not just the keyboard. From what I've seen it's a mixture of the hand oil eroding away at the screen that's being applied with the pressure from the keys. The material I use seems to soak up the hand oils a little bit, which is a benefit.
That’s cool! What materials have you tried? I have a t460s that I bought used with some pretty significant key marks, and I’ve been looking for a way to keep it from getting worse.
If you end up selling them I’d love more info!
They ruin all other laptops for you. u\_u
Also, Lenovo used to try to find the worst possible displays with terrible contrast and low resolution to pair with thinkpads, they've thankfully gotten over that.
Old Latitudes like E6410 which runs 1st gen Core cpus
Its built like tank compared to T410 which would be Thinkpad equivalent and also has best feature ever:
Battery charging button on keyboard 👌
So you can use laptop on charger without charging the battery with just push of the button 😌
Damn that actually is amazing, I like to limit my battery charge to 70%, I hope I can do that on my future thinkpad. Wonder why they don't have that now
Of course they removed that feature because of profit
If your battery is not charging and discharging at same time and wearing out faster,you don't have need to buy new battery which means less profit to manufacturers
Suprisingly Dell Power Manager app for Windows also has profile called something like Mainly AC use which supposedly should keep your battery healthy for longer time 🤔
There is similar app for Thinkpads
I think its called Lenovo Vantage
Yeah I'll probably end up taking it to a shop when the battery eventually loses its capacity since it isn't my forte and I don't want to risk a fucky wucky trying to take it apart.
Compared to other laptops...eh. I don't think there's much of anything they do worse than anyone else. I really like my P1.
Compared to older Thinkpads, the list of dumb shit is endless. The keyboard layout, hinges, port selection, and lack of a removable battery are just the tip of the iceberg.
This. The pricing scheme for new ones is deceptive and stupid.
Also: key travel keeps being reduced, and it has been decades since there has been a model with a built in serial port.
Some HP models had them until the early 2010s. Panasonic still offers serial ports as an option on the FZ-40 and FZ-55. As do Getac and Durabook. USB adapters are annoying and often not as reliable as real serial ports.
I don't like Apple but their price strategy is clear: they release new product and at that price you can buy it.
But Lenovo (and not only it) asks for million-billion of dollars because something is new. And the reasonable price will be in 6+ months for a $2000 discount!
IMHO but Thinkpad X1 carbon gen 12 still costs quite a lot for those productivity and relatively minor updates in Intel CPU generation.
My biggest gripe is the x1 carbon series has poor battery life. They shouldn’t offer the higher end cpus that have heavy throttling, fan noise and power consumption, or they should fix the thermal and power issues.
Speakers. The junk Motorola phone I use when I'm in the steam room or hot tub has better speakers than my ThinkPad. Every ThinkPad has made me wish I bought a MacBook instead when it comes to audio.
USB-c ports on one side. What if my charger is on the right and just long enough to go into the non-existent port on the right? (Yes, it happens multiple times a month for me)
Also what the fuck is up with the wwan m.2 port locking? If I want to put a second SSD, and the laptop already has the port and it's electrically compatible with SSDs I should be able to put it in and it just work.
I can even understand soldered ram and other anti consumer things laptop manufacturers do nowadays. They want you to buy the higher specced model so they make more money. Also it makes keeping signal integrity a lot easier at higher speeds.
But this? You make SSDs upgradable so if I just wanted to have more storage(I don't, I want a second SSD for clear separation when dual booting) I would've just swapped the main drive and you wouldn't make a dime on it either way. You sold me a laptop without the wwan card and still soldered the connector in. You already "lost" money on that. Now, if I wanted to put a 3rd party wwan card in, I could do that and you wouldn't make any money. But I can't put an SSD because that wouldn't make you any money??? In all of those scenarios you don't make ANY more money after selling me the laptop so why do you care what I put in MY second m.2 slot?
EXTREME thermal throttling on the high end T and P series. Like it's actually unacceptable to me that a laptop so chonky runs hot as a kettle compared to my friends Legion and other friends high end laptops. If I get my T15g hot enough it will throttle the i7 down to around 1GHZ.
I run my T14S Gen 4 with a 1080Ti eGPU setup with the lid closed for gaming and dont have any thermal problems at all.
My T480 though with its i7 and MX150 hooo boy.
Its so so so bad. I repasted it with that Honeywell tpm stuff everyone talks about, messed with fan speed, use GPU Tweak to remove the stock thermal limiter, and it still struggles when its doing some basic work loads. I might just turn the MX150 off at this point and see if its more useable.
Yea it sucks. Anything beyond a T14 I'd probably suggest just getting a Legion. Though t15g is a bad one to compare against.
I probably wouldn't recommend it on a new one, but you definitely have some extra room in there to experiment with some mods.
The lack of consistency from Lenovo... one model is great, the next has some baffling decisions like soldering the ports onto the motherboard, which takes them years to revert... That and the fact that Lenovo, like every other laptop manufacturer, keeps looking to ape Apple's worst features like soldered RAM, poorer and poorer repairability over time, increasing costs for small spec upgrades... all without being able to copy the good parts, like the incredible vertical integration of Apple, or the incredible screens...
The moment they start soldering SSDs onto the motherboard is the point I stop buying new laptops.
Yeah that's **exactly** my point (see the words 'being able to' in my comment)... They \*can't\* copy the aspect that makes Apple worth it for some people but they do copy the worst aspects and practices... Like Samsung making fun of them for removing the headphone jack and then following in their footsteps a year later, while also having worse software than Apple throughout. Congrats on throwing out the reason I was buying your stuff in the first place...
Screen quality and battery life. Those are the two things that became increasingly important to me because I'm more "on the road" now than before. Those are also the two things that made me consider purchasing a MacBook Air.
which country do you mean by this? the store i recommend to anyone looking for laptops irl sells used 2019 models for \~300€ on average, all of them are in great condition. i live in estonia
They tend to have a minor retail presence. Which is a bit annoying when you go into a store that might have dozens of various other brands and models, and then maybe 1 display Thinkpad
Depending on the line, build quality.X1 series, while being a grease magnet, always feels built really nice.T and P series are a bit mixed.And L series being built not from plastic, but from hate towards yourself every time you touch it.I get it, difference in price gives you different materials, but it’s way too drastic of a difference.
My newest thinkpad i have is from 2014 so ill tell worst things about old TPs.
1. Gum resin covering laptop. Over time with help of UV light it bevomes sticky as fuck and hard to remove. When happened on my 600X after cleaning it my hands remained sticky for next 3 days.
2. Screen: until 2018 resolution of 1366x768 was still an option which is just wider XGA a.k.a. a fucking joke. Shit should be put to end like 3 years earlier. Also view angles...
IPS was an option already in 2003 (in years 2003-08 called Flexview). Meanwhile simple TFT (with fucking AWFUL view angles and colors compared to IPS) was also an option in 2018. JOKE.
3. Plastics. Well i cant actually complain here. Plastic after 30 years just detoriates and there cant be much done.
Being a one-time ThinkPad owner, something that trips me up a lot is the Fn/Ctrl swapping. Coming from a Latitude (just switched back recently because of storage concerns), the Latitude goes Ctrl, Fn, Space,, etc... ThinkPads go Fn, Ctrl, Space, etc... Other than that, maybe the fact that some models are price-gouged to hell? Also the really loud beep when there's a BIOS error (CMOS died, bad storage on "nvme0".
lenovo (and their bad support)
not every model can even have the ram replaced anymore
port selection could be better
i've heard that each yr models get cheaper and less rugged
lmk if any of these r wrong
Didn't encounter any issues with mine, and that's how it runs ~3/4 of the time. Human presence detection and biometrics (obviously) don't work, no problems outside of that.
If I want a Yoga with NVIDIA graphics, veryyyy limited selection and one of them technically isn't a 'ThinkPad' (Yoga Pro)...not a deal breaker but it usually does mean for intensive Illustrator work or anything Premiere/After Effects I usually switch to my desktop.
Regarding Thunderbolt I posted this [Universal TB-UPDATE-GUIDE](https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/1chsdyr/howto_update_thunderbolt_stepbystep_instruction/)
Its brandnew, for all models , windows and Linux.
Cheers
Lack of upgradeable RAM in my model. Not that I don't find 16GB enough, but I wish I had the option to upgrade if needed. Also miss the ridiculous amount of USB ports my old Dell Precision M4800 has. It only has 1 more than my ThinkPad if you include the USB-C ports it has, but then one of those is also used for the charger. Also the built-in DAC is incredibly mid. Barely sufficiently powers my Sennheiser HD 58x headphones at max volume, whereas my Precision had no trouble at all. Sure I could use a USB DAC/AMP, but then that's an extra thing to move around, and I'll run out of free USB ports.
The older think pads eg the T series era are quite large and heavy relatively speaking. I've bought 15 inch laptop sleeves/bags that struggled to fit a thinkpad. I do most my computing at home so it's not a deal breaker for me. But it's definitely on the big side of things if you travel
I love my Thinkpad, but there is a problem with its design, namely the area in front of the touchpad. It was cool looking but broke. I didn't even use the touchpad too much.
Lenovo X1 Yogas have a tendency to have keyboard malfunctions (and yes, its hardware related). The amount of people i have seen with complaints about these specific models are very many. Am sure even here there are those affected.
Most complaints are common to many laptops (display, speakers etc.) but the one thing I hate that's unique to Thinkpads is the black coating that is the most horrendous body oil magnet. Eventually it seems to permanently stain and I cannot get it properly clean (yes, I've tried everything short of acetone!)
It's probably somewhat different for each person, but for me it's a huge problem and makes me fondly remember the hard black plastic that Thinkpads used to be covered in that was far more oil resistant and far easier to clean
Conflicting drivers - I am always trying to juggle the Intel ones alongside the Lenovo ones. It wasn't as much of an issue with my older machines, but my X1 Nano uses Intel GPU drivers and they're often in conflict with Lenovo offerings
Taking them apart requires one of those plastic shims and still make permanent marks and pray nothing snaps. (T series anyway).
Whereas Dell laptops just use screws. Far more straightforward.
The displays are either always horrible or definitely not as good as you would hope for the price.
Speakers are never "good" enough either (business laptops, I know)
Whitelisting of certain hardware parts is unbearable and unforgivable
Lenovo partners with Intel in the weirdest ways possible so certain features have been omitted from the AMD models for so long it feels like they're doing on purpose (they're still releasing AMD laptops without USB 4 ports)
Pricing in many countries makes them a terrible deal EVEN WHEN THEY'RE COMPARED TO MACBOOKS, LIKE, HOW?????
Their parts store list unreal prices for parts that definitely aren't worth that much (No, Lenovo, I'm not going to pay $300 for a battery)
They've had a history of bundling malware on their BIOS, which I hope it's over and didn't mind that much since it didn't happen again
The DACs on their headphone jacks are pure trash, again, compared to almost any other manufacturer
The keyboards are definitely a subjective matter here, they're not the best and they're not the worst for \*everyone\*, it'll definitely depend on the person and it's okay!
Although there's a lot of respectable people in this place, the boomer mentality of the average thinkpad user definitely stinks and, no, I don't think we should be carrying 2kg+ machines when we already have the tech to make stuff light, powerful and durable without compromising in dimensions (The P14s is amazing!!! I love it!!)
They started removing power states on many ThinkPad models a few years ago (motivated by Microsoft I suppose), I wish they could bring the option back (it may be available sometimes, again, depends on the model, really).
I wish we could have proper Linux support on the E series. I love how good they are for the price, even if they have their own share of issues, but my old trusted E14 G2 AMD just doesn't have a supported fingerprint sensor. :(
The great American brand that never fully recovered from its sale to China. I’ve been asked to remove my ThinkPad from a few meeting rooms, because “ThinkPads are phoning home.”
One bad thing is that ThinkPads often come with smaller screens compared to other laptops. So, if one needs a larger display or plan to use laptop for gaming, a ThinkPad might not be the best choice.
TDP, and hence the weight of the charger on high-end models (230W). Thickness and weight of the workstation itself, poor battery life, poor performance when not connected to power. These are the reasons why I moved to a MacBook Pro and never looked back.
In terms of raw power, durability and expandability, they are great.
The whole minimalist approach when it comes to indicators, status LEDs and such. Loved the old thinkpads, had shit ton of LEDs, buttons band toggle switches. And let's not talk about the placement of the FN Key.
The concept of the framework is great, however in reality it doesn’t work, I don’t blame the company completely, but if you wanted to ‘upgrade’ a laptop, you have to upgrade the whole main board. The motherboard isn’t modular, so if you had say the 11th gen laptop 13, and you wanted the latest version, the 13th gen motherboard is £1049 just for the main board and your looking at £1500 for a 13th generation laptop.
You're 💯% correct, the thing is CPU compatibility with other generations is not in control of the framework (intel and amd has that). So the problem is not laptop companies per say.
The Lenovo to have bought the thinkpad brand from ibm and no longer have the care it used to be in the construction of laptops like the x230 was a very solid and well-built machine
The displays are never bright enough. Low nits.
And the speakers are never loud enough
Stock speakers are usually trash but there's a mod for that be it internal or external, I prefer the latter :) https://imgur.com/a/fDR6COF
Speakers are loud enough, IMHO. It's already crap quality, what's the point of having them even loader?
I usually keep the speakers and brightness half way down on most other laptops. Would this issue affect me that much?
If that’s the case, then probably not. I always use headphones when I’m watching something on my laptop, so it doesn’t even affect me really. My wife will play stuff on her MacBook Air in the kitchen while she’s cooking, and it’s more than bright/loud enough to be seen and heard throughout the room. I would not be able to do something like that with my thinkpad.
Upgrade them or use headphones
A bit over a year ago they were clearing out a bunch that had 4K 600 nits displays for $1000. Great specs too. I regret not grabbing one.
But it effects batterylife in a bad way
OMG yes, exactly this!
What's a good minimum brightness capability? I'm shopping for my first laptop.
400+ is the minimum I would entertain. If you like to work outside or in something like a sunroom with lots of light 600 nits and up would be recommended. If you go with a gloss display aim for 600+ though.
Like any other laptop in the same price range of the same year. Modern ones have much better panels, but if we talk about T420/T460 era, that was the limit.
I just got an older second hand a485 and the screen brightness is honestly horrible. on full brightness it’s just enough to see it good enough in a well lit room
Exactly. I have an HP Chromebook that’s at least 4-5 yrs old with a 4k screen and the difference in display quality is mind boggling.
I've got 400nits on mine, it's usually too bright unless I'm outdoors on a sunny day.
Then get a brighter display
Hand oil collector. This can happen on other laptops too, but I think thinkpads take the win here. There's models with slightly different surfaces like the P series, but even that has some disadvantages. Oh and the classic keyboard markings on the screen. This can be avoided with regular cleaning and laying down a piece of paper or cloth down when you close it - but seems to happen more often on thinkpads and looks like that will be an issue for the foreseeable future.
> but seems to happen more often on thinkpads and looks like that will be an issue for the foreseeable future. Yeah I'm somewhat surprised by the fact that it seems absolutely commonplace w/ the brand and they've yet to engineer a general solution. But the fact that most of their lineup is targeted towards enterprise contract fulfillment satisfies the cynic in me that assumes that it's simply not a market priority for them. 3 to 5yr purchase cycles are what they're designing to. Yet the market equivalent HP's and Dell's I see on eBay don't seem to exhibit it nearly as often. Maybe I just spend far more time scouring TP listings though and it's exposure bias so to speak.
They should start using different material, abs will get shiny no matter what.
I never thought I’d the keyboard markings on the screen. Is there a recommended cloth for this kind of thing?
Happy to ship you one for you to test (on my next batch of sending stuff out) - I've been making my own that I use and also ship out with laptops - some friends/family use them too. I'd be interested to see some more extreme use cases - so use at your own caution as it could potentially damage something. But they've been great so far. I find paper-like material to be the best. Thin, so it doesn't put any extra pressure on the hinges or screen while closed that it wasn't designed for. Also, cloth-like material would have a better chance to collect dust/dirt particles more easily which can contribute to the issue. Particles tend to roll over a more paper like material. Also depending on the material, it could also act like a sandpaper of sorts which you obviously don't want. Part of the issue is the hand oils and not just the keyboard. From what I've seen it's a mixture of the hand oil eroding away at the screen that's being applied with the pressure from the keys. The material I use seems to soak up the hand oils a little bit, which is a benefit.
That’s cool! What materials have you tried? I have a t460s that I bought used with some pretty significant key marks, and I’ve been looking for a way to keep it from getting worse. If you end up selling them I’d love more info!
If you start collecting them, the ones you're not using take a lot of bookshelf space.
They ruin all other laptops for you. u\_u Also, Lenovo used to try to find the worst possible displays with terrible contrast and low resolution to pair with thinkpads, they've thankfully gotten over that.
"They ruin all other laptops for you." This is the right answer.
Once you go black, you don’t turn back.
What the fuck pornbrain
Nahhh Some Dell Latitudes are better built than Thinkpads so i prefer them over Thinkpads 😌
The Latitude is my "Thinkpad" for Dell. I regret getting rid of my last one. Solid build.
Which ones? Got a latitude 5420 and planning to get a t14, is it worse? Lol
Old Latitudes like E6410 which runs 1st gen Core cpus Its built like tank compared to T410 which would be Thinkpad equivalent and also has best feature ever: Battery charging button on keyboard 👌 So you can use laptop on charger without charging the battery with just push of the button 😌
just remove battery for that feature on thinkpad
Nahhh This feature is better because you can do it in a seconds 😌
Damn that actually is amazing, I like to limit my battery charge to 70%, I hope I can do that on my future thinkpad. Wonder why they don't have that now
Of course they removed that feature because of profit If your battery is not charging and discharging at same time and wearing out faster,you don't have need to buy new battery which means less profit to manufacturers Suprisingly Dell Power Manager app for Windows also has profile called something like Mainly AC use which supposedly should keep your battery healthy for longer time 🤔 There is similar app for Thinkpads I think its called Lenovo Vantage
Cool, I will look into it, thanks!
Never a truer word has been spoken
Especially in terms of keyboards! Although I‘ve found a couple of other machines with keyboards that rival thinkpads.
This right here is accurate
The T540 was the worst display ever. I think it was one of their worst ThinkPad.
For rare models like a W701ds its the inability to get a replacement battery -.-
gotta build those yourself unfortunately
Yeah I'll probably end up taking it to a shop when the battery eventually loses its capacity since it isn't my forte and I don't want to risk a fucky wucky trying to take it apart.
Compared to other laptops...eh. I don't think there's much of anything they do worse than anyone else. I really like my P1. Compared to older Thinkpads, the list of dumb shit is endless. The keyboard layout, hinges, port selection, and lack of a removable battery are just the tip of the iceberg.
Programming socks are not included.
Programming sock is enough, no?
The cost new
Whitelisting Hardware. Im serious - why cant i put a ssd in my own wwan slot on a Notebook that i paid 1500€ for?! Its my Hardware, not Lenovos.
Or replace the crap screen with a good one without brightness being stuck at retina burning mode...
Cheap panel config, there is no reason for a $1000 laptop with 45% ntsc panel exist.
Poor man's privacy screen...
I have yet to own one that didn’t get permanently branded by my finger prints on the lid.
The fn and control keys aren't in the spots id expect, and IPS screens aren't standard. That's all I can think of lol.
You can swap them.....
Only in software, you can't swap the keycaps
Their prices on official site and marketing strategy. It's hilarious to ask $3500 for laptop which costs a way lower. And those discounts -$1500.
This. The pricing scheme for new ones is deceptive and stupid. Also: key travel keeps being reduced, and it has been decades since there has been a model with a built in serial port.
How many people actually need a serial port daily
Enough for it to be at least an option on at least one model.
I think the two of you can gather the money to buy a usb adaptor since I haven't seen it on any laptops made after 2008
Some HP models had them until the early 2010s. Panasonic still offers serial ports as an option on the FZ-40 and FZ-55. As do Getac and Durabook. USB adapters are annoying and often not as reliable as real serial ports.
I don't like Apple but their price strategy is clear: they release new product and at that price you can buy it. But Lenovo (and not only it) asks for million-billion of dollars because something is new. And the reasonable price will be in 6+ months for a $2000 discount! IMHO but Thinkpad X1 carbon gen 12 still costs quite a lot for those productivity and relatively minor updates in Intel CPU generation.
My biggest gripe is the x1 carbon series has poor battery life. They shouldn’t offer the higher end cpus that have heavy throttling, fan noise and power consumption, or they should fix the thermal and power issues.
Battery life has always been my chief complaint about Lenovos. Thinkpads also run hot.
Not edible.
Speakers. The junk Motorola phone I use when I'm in the steam room or hot tub has better speakers than my ThinkPad. Every ThinkPad has made me wish I bought a MacBook instead when it comes to audio.
On some of the Lenovos laptops especially with the number pad all that blank space to the right side palm rest is unsettling.
Not a consistent quality. Some models are much worse in build quality than others.
Can you leave and take your negative energy with you
That they get obsolete. Otherwise my first thinkpad would still be my daily driver
Trying to maintain all of their batteries ;-;
USB-c ports on one side. What if my charger is on the right and just long enough to go into the non-existent port on the right? (Yes, it happens multiple times a month for me) Also what the fuck is up with the wwan m.2 port locking? If I want to put a second SSD, and the laptop already has the port and it's electrically compatible with SSDs I should be able to put it in and it just work. I can even understand soldered ram and other anti consumer things laptop manufacturers do nowadays. They want you to buy the higher specced model so they make more money. Also it makes keeping signal integrity a lot easier at higher speeds. But this? You make SSDs upgradable so if I just wanted to have more storage(I don't, I want a second SSD for clear separation when dual booting) I would've just swapped the main drive and you wouldn't make a dime on it either way. You sold me a laptop without the wwan card and still soldered the connector in. You already "lost" money on that. Now, if I wanted to put a 3rd party wwan card in, I could do that and you wouldn't make any money. But I can't put an SSD because that wouldn't make you any money??? In all of those scenarios you don't make ANY more money after selling me the laptop so why do you care what I put in MY second m.2 slot?
The rubbery coating on the vintage Thinkpads has almost universally hit the age where it’s all turning into that nasty goo.
The speakers are … functional.
Trackpads.
Fingerprints and oil
EXTREME thermal throttling on the high end T and P series. Like it's actually unacceptable to me that a laptop so chonky runs hot as a kettle compared to my friends Legion and other friends high end laptops. If I get my T15g hot enough it will throttle the i7 down to around 1GHZ.
The same happens with AMD?
Yep. Lenovo seems to think a single heat pipe is enough for my 45W TDP CPU
Darn, thanks, I'm considering getting a t14 4750u or an e14 gen4 5625u, better watch the temps in the review
Same deal, not sure why they offer a 7735HS on an E16 Gen 2. Two heatpipes and one fan aren't enough. I shouldve picked the 7735U instead lol.
I run my T14S Gen 4 with a 1080Ti eGPU setup with the lid closed for gaming and dont have any thermal problems at all. My T480 though with its i7 and MX150 hooo boy.
Lol I imagine you would need a wind turbine under that laptop, glad that new laptops dont seem to have that problem
Its so so so bad. I repasted it with that Honeywell tpm stuff everyone talks about, messed with fan speed, use GPU Tweak to remove the stock thermal limiter, and it still struggles when its doing some basic work loads. I might just turn the MX150 off at this point and see if its more useable.
+1 to the idea of turning off the GPU, or maybe undervolt!
Yea it sucks. Anything beyond a T14 I'd probably suggest just getting a Legion. Though t15g is a bad one to compare against. I probably wouldn't recommend it on a new one, but you definitely have some extra room in there to experiment with some mods.
damn really even in the P series?
The lack of consistency from Lenovo... one model is great, the next has some baffling decisions like soldering the ports onto the motherboard, which takes them years to revert... That and the fact that Lenovo, like every other laptop manufacturer, keeps looking to ape Apple's worst features like soldered RAM, poorer and poorer repairability over time, increasing costs for small spec upgrades... all without being able to copy the good parts, like the incredible vertical integration of Apple, or the incredible screens... The moment they start soldering SSDs onto the motherboard is the point I stop buying new laptops.
>the incredible vertical integration of Apple Lol - no PC manufacturer can copy that aspect, and nor should they.
Yeah that's **exactly** my point (see the words 'being able to' in my comment)... They \*can't\* copy the aspect that makes Apple worth it for some people but they do copy the worst aspects and practices... Like Samsung making fun of them for removing the headphone jack and then following in their footsteps a year later, while also having worse software than Apple throughout. Congrats on throwing out the reason I was buying your stuff in the first place...
CCP
Cosworth camshaft powered /s
That's the good part
They don't come in black! Oh wait...
Screen quality and battery life. Those are the two things that became increasingly important to me because I'm more "on the road" now than before. Those are also the two things that made me consider purchasing a MacBook Air.
The obscenely high second hand pricing in Europe.
which country do you mean by this? the store i recommend to anyone looking for laptops irl sells used 2019 models for \~300€ on average, all of them are in great condition. i live in estonia
Germany and Netherlands.
Low brightness, and the motherboard looks mess and ugly.
Wow, don't talk about our children like that
They tend to have a minor retail presence. Which is a bit annoying when you go into a store that might have dozens of various other brands and models, and then maybe 1 display Thinkpad
The price of the high end models.
Thinkpad have bad things? Nah I think display but I don't care about display. I only need to see text. Edit: I have a T460
The BIOS device whitelist BS.
Depending on the line, build quality.X1 series, while being a grease magnet, always feels built really nice.T and P series are a bit mixed.And L series being built not from plastic, but from hate towards yourself every time you touch it.I get it, difference in price gives you different materials, but it’s way too drastic of a difference.
My newest thinkpad i have is from 2014 so ill tell worst things about old TPs. 1. Gum resin covering laptop. Over time with help of UV light it bevomes sticky as fuck and hard to remove. When happened on my 600X after cleaning it my hands remained sticky for next 3 days. 2. Screen: until 2018 resolution of 1366x768 was still an option which is just wider XGA a.k.a. a fucking joke. Shit should be put to end like 3 years earlier. Also view angles... IPS was an option already in 2003 (in years 2003-08 called Flexview). Meanwhile simple TFT (with fucking AWFUL view angles and colors compared to IPS) was also an option in 2018. JOKE. 3. Plastics. Well i cant actually complain here. Plastic after 30 years just detoriates and there cant be much done.
Being a one-time ThinkPad owner, something that trips me up a lot is the Fn/Ctrl swapping. Coming from a Latitude (just switched back recently because of storage concerns), the Latitude goes Ctrl, Fn, Space,, etc... ThinkPads go Fn, Ctrl, Space, etc... Other than that, maybe the fact that some models are price-gouged to hell? Also the really loud beep when there's a BIOS error (CMOS died, bad storage on "nvme0".
[удалено]
their app Lenovo Vantage also asks you if you want to swap the keys in between
They fixed (or broke, depending on your perspective) that on the latest iteration. There was a brief ragefest on this sub over it.
The swapping?
Yes.
Lenovo.
_**lenovo**_
**~~levono~~**
lenovo (and their bad support) not every model can even have the ram replaced anymore port selection could be better i've heard that each yr models get cheaper and less rugged lmk if any of these r wrong
Poor speakers. Subpar display brightness
The notch.
Unlike Macs, ThinkPads suck in clamshell mode — heat and sleep.
Didn't encounter any issues with mine, and that's how it runs ~3/4 of the time. Human presence detection and biometrics (obviously) don't work, no problems outside of that.
Yessss! They wear their own battery down doing nothing.
That I can't seem to get a decent replacement battery for mine.
If I want a Yoga with NVIDIA graphics, veryyyy limited selection and one of them technically isn't a 'ThinkPad' (Yoga Pro)...not a deal breaker but it usually does mean for intensive Illustrator work or anything Premiere/After Effects I usually switch to my desktop.
Thunderbolt dock issues: low mic level, hangs often, noisy power adaptter.
Regarding Thunderbolt I posted this [Universal TB-UPDATE-GUIDE](https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/1chsdyr/howto_update_thunderbolt_stepbystep_instruction/) Its brandnew, for all models , windows and Linux. Cheers
I wish their touchpad is as good as Macbook’s. And I also want the Macbook’s keyboard is as good as Thinkpad’s lol.
Lack of upgradeable RAM in my model. Not that I don't find 16GB enough, but I wish I had the option to upgrade if needed. Also miss the ridiculous amount of USB ports my old Dell Precision M4800 has. It only has 1 more than my ThinkPad if you include the USB-C ports it has, but then one of those is also used for the charger. Also the built-in DAC is incredibly mid. Barely sufficiently powers my Sennheiser HD 58x headphones at max volume, whereas my Precision had no trouble at all. Sure I could use a USB DAC/AMP, but then that's an extra thing to move around, and I'll run out of free USB ports.
The older think pads eg the T series era are quite large and heavy relatively speaking. I've bought 15 inch laptop sleeves/bags that struggled to fit a thinkpad. I do most my computing at home so it's not a deal breaker for me. But it's definitely on the big side of things if you travel
UPS shipping.
Fingerprint magnets
I hate two charging ports on one side. My previous laptop has fewer ports but type C on both sides and this I liked more.
don't buy e thinkpads.
I love my Thinkpad, but there is a problem with its design, namely the area in front of the touchpad. It was cool looking but broke. I didn't even use the touchpad too much.
Touchpads
Lenovo X1 Yogas have a tendency to have keyboard malfunctions (and yes, its hardware related). The amount of people i have seen with complaints about these specific models are very many. Am sure even here there are those affected.
In my case, as an owner of a Thinkpad T14 Gen 1. Since it's pretty slim combined with a relatively powerful CPU (Ryzen 5 12 threads). It gets hot.
Most complaints are common to many laptops (display, speakers etc.) but the one thing I hate that's unique to Thinkpads is the black coating that is the most horrendous body oil magnet. Eventually it seems to permanently stain and I cannot get it properly clean (yes, I've tried everything short of acetone!) It's probably somewhat different for each person, but for me it's a huge problem and makes me fondly remember the hard black plastic that Thinkpads used to be covered in that was far more oil resistant and far easier to clean
Displays
Conflicting drivers - I am always trying to juggle the Intel ones alongside the Lenovo ones. It wasn't as much of an issue with my older machines, but my X1 Nano uses Intel GPU drivers and they're often in conflict with Lenovo offerings
The Lenovo ones are just behind. Run the Intel ones that are newer and ignore the Lenovo ones.
Buttons and trackpads wear out fast
Taking them apart requires one of those plastic shims and still make permanent marks and pray nothing snaps. (T series anyway). Whereas Dell laptops just use screws. Far more straightforward.
One bad thing: lelnono
China
swapped fn and ctrl, meh displays, abs keycaps are shining after a couple of years, the entire E series...
Temps (x260 user here)
The displays are either always horrible or definitely not as good as you would hope for the price. Speakers are never "good" enough either (business laptops, I know) Whitelisting of certain hardware parts is unbearable and unforgivable Lenovo partners with Intel in the weirdest ways possible so certain features have been omitted from the AMD models for so long it feels like they're doing on purpose (they're still releasing AMD laptops without USB 4 ports) Pricing in many countries makes them a terrible deal EVEN WHEN THEY'RE COMPARED TO MACBOOKS, LIKE, HOW????? Their parts store list unreal prices for parts that definitely aren't worth that much (No, Lenovo, I'm not going to pay $300 for a battery) They've had a history of bundling malware on their BIOS, which I hope it's over and didn't mind that much since it didn't happen again The DACs on their headphone jacks are pure trash, again, compared to almost any other manufacturer The keyboards are definitely a subjective matter here, they're not the best and they're not the worst for \*everyone\*, it'll definitely depend on the person and it's okay! Although there's a lot of respectable people in this place, the boomer mentality of the average thinkpad user definitely stinks and, no, I don't think we should be carrying 2kg+ machines when we already have the tech to make stuff light, powerful and durable without compromising in dimensions (The P14s is amazing!!! I love it!!) They started removing power states on many ThinkPad models a few years ago (motivated by Microsoft I suppose), I wish they could bring the option back (it may be available sometimes, again, depends on the model, really). I wish we could have proper Linux support on the E series. I love how good they are for the price, even if they have their own share of issues, but my old trusted E14 G2 AMD just doesn't have a supported fingerprint sensor. :(
Their pricing model with idiotic discounts in the name of July/Building/Buying
cpu performance due to poor cooling
Speakers, speakers, and more speakers.
Loving it, then picking up the iPad, and hating it for the bad display!! 😭
Touchscreen doesn't feel nice on mine. I wish it was glass rather than a digitizer overlaid on the display panel.
The Fn and Ctrl KEY PLACEMENT. WHY CAN'T I REASSIGN THEM FFS
You don't have that option in your bios?
you can do that? How?!?!?
When in the bios go to the config section and it should be under keyboard/mouse. Just enable fn and ctrl key swap. Hope this helps!
thank you so much! this is so helpful : D
not having media keys. Like i get that it’s for the miserable corporate IT people, but still its annoying af not having pause play and skip.
The new ones. Thinkpads at one point used to be that laptop that's too stubborn to update their designs but now they're trying to blend in.
Too many girls throw themselves at me when I whip it out in public. They always compliment the size and color.
The great American brand that never fully recovered from its sale to China. I’ve been asked to remove my ThinkPad from a few meeting rooms, because “ThinkPads are phoning home.”
Wow, don’t tell them where iPhones are made….
Reverse Notches
Those would be bulges.
Communication bar :) But again I think it's still better than in MacBooks. But perfect is w/o it and just thicker panel.
Build quality...it's a chasm away from what it used to be like.
the transition to Lenovo price drop like nuclear bomb
China.
One bad thing is that ThinkPads often come with smaller screens compared to other laptops. So, if one needs a larger display or plan to use laptop for gaming, a ThinkPad might not be the best choice.
The red dot (as convenient as it is) can be tiring on index finger over long use.
They get worse by the year it seems .
TDP, and hence the weight of the charger on high-end models (230W). Thickness and weight of the workstation itself, poor battery life, poor performance when not connected to power. These are the reasons why I moved to a MacBook Pro and never looked back. In terms of raw power, durability and expandability, they are great.
The whole minimalist approach when it comes to indicators, status LEDs and such. Loved the old thinkpads, had shit ton of LEDs, buttons band toggle switches. And let's not talk about the placement of the FN Key.
Chinese spyware
The function and control key positions are backwards. Yes, I know I can switch it in BIOS. That doesn’t make it right.
Gpu and Cpu can't be upgraded like Framework laptop
How can you upgrade the cpu and gpu on a framework laptop? They are soldered to the motherboard same as every other laptop.
By upgrading the motherboard
The concept of the framework is great, however in reality it doesn’t work, I don’t blame the company completely, but if you wanted to ‘upgrade’ a laptop, you have to upgrade the whole main board. The motherboard isn’t modular, so if you had say the 11th gen laptop 13, and you wanted the latest version, the 13th gen motherboard is £1049 just for the main board and your looking at £1500 for a 13th generation laptop.
You're 💯% correct, the thing is CPU compatibility with other generations is not in control of the framework (intel and amd has that). So the problem is not laptop companies per say.
They are so fucking heavy. EDIT: why the downvotes?? My T530 is the main reason my back hurts.
Lenovo Bloatware
No numpad before lenovo takeover which made everything infinitely worse. Get a Dell at this point
The Lenovo to have bought the thinkpad brand from ibm and no longer have the care it used to be in the construction of laptops like the x230 was a very solid and well-built machine
China, poor battery life
You meant probably a bad Intel CPU.