Are new ThinkPads still worthy?

I have an X1 Carbon (6th or 7th gen, I forget) and I love it. I've handled dozens of other laptops and tried out loads at shops and nothing else feels as good to me. It ticks so many boxes for me:

- 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 have a T480 as my daily driver, my kids are using my old X220 and I still have an X60s around to experiment. I really like all of them.

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.

I had a p15 at a job a few years ago. I was onboarding on this large .NET project that had like a day of environment setup just to get it running.

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.

I just replaced a thinkpad x1 extreme gen 2 with a dell xps 17 (I wanted a 16:10 screen and shipping estimates for the x1 extreme gen 4 were ridiculous. Also, Lenovo of Canada are a bunch of dirty crooks).

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.

I firmly believe Thinkpads are the best mainstream Linux laptops you can buy.

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.

I had a terrible experience with Lenovo. In October 2020 I ordered a laptop. In the next couple of months I called and tried to cancel (they would put in a "cancellation request"). Additionally, they sent an email saying the regulation required that since it hadn't shipped, if it still hadn't shipped in 5 days they would have to cancel the order. A few weeks later, it shipped and I had UPS "return to sender" before it even arrived at my apartment. It was returned to the address Lenovo put as the return address.

Paypal refunded me the money after reviewing the case, but I'm now fighting a debt collector for the ~1k USD.

They are worse than they used to be, but the bar is so low in the market that they are still among the best. My gripes are entirely with reliability.

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 have a T490s from last year for work.

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.

I've used Lenovo laptops almost exclusively for the past 5 years (coming from a Dell XPS 13). I've had a X1 Carbon, an X1 Yoga, a couple of T4xx, and now a P1 Gen3. All of my lenovos were awesome. None of them had real issue. I love how they're built and their small design decisions.

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...)

I have two Dell XPS13s, one five years old, one new. Both took to Linux (Mint, in my case) like ducks to water. They dual boot from rEFInd, but I seldom use Windows (I have just one heritage Win application to support, and that's been stable for five years). However, while these are light, compact and highly specced, they're not user upgradeable and their fans get noisy under load.

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/).

Thinkpads are generally better than Acer. That said:

  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 used to have an X1 Carbon 4th gen. I was super excited to get a 9th gen.

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.

No. No they are not.

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.

My P15 supports ECC, has great graphics, ok cooling, and in a pinch is heavy enough to be used in self-defense.

I would say be extremely careful with the model that you purchase. I purchased the new E15 Gen 3 AMD model (I know, my mistake) and running Linux on it has been pure hell.

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

It's weird. I own two Thinkpads, a "golden era" model with the 7-row keyboard (x201) as well as a newer Skylake model (T460s). The difference between the two is noticeable, but not as much as people make it out to be. The older model feels like a really solidly built device, and the performance is surprisingly good while running Linux. It idles on the hot side (little less than 40c no matter what you're running), but CPU usage is low even on high-bloat desktop environments like KDE. Without anything running in the background, CPU usage stays below 2%, which kinda blows my mind for a machine pushing a decade old. The newer model I have is much the same way, but it's thinner and idles at a much more reasonable temp (28-30c). Frankly, I think they're both fine. The new keyboards aren't mind-blowing, but I'd still put them leagues beyond Dell and Apple's offerings these days. I'd frankly recommend either of them, as long as you can find one without a TN panel. The other advice I'd give is to not buy directly from Lenovo, since their prices are all over the place and tend to screw you over if you don't do your due diligence.

It depends. I'm a Linux user and my recent experiences are with two devices:

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.

I've been using two Thinkpad Extreme X1's for awhile now. I have a first-gen I use for personal programming projects and gaming and a second gen one that I use for work.

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.

I have a new t14 at work. I use a Dell xps 15 at home. Would always go for the Dell. The t14 is incredible ugly (guess all thinkpads are), wastes a lot of space with those mouse clickers, is bulky and also heavy compared to the Dell. Sound / Display aren't even comparable. Build quality is close but that's it.

Both run arch like a champ.

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.

I use a X1 Carbon Gen 9 for my daily driver after switching from Gen 6. I still love both. I have been using Arch primarily which has a great wiki for installing in case you were leaning that way. Ubuntu is also spot on for all drivers.

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.

I previously had T470s, which was a fine machine, except for short lived batteries and one soldered memory slot which, even if one slot was normal, really limited upgrading possibilities. But other than that, the experience was fine. Upgraded to T14 and have had nothing but problems. Battery management is the worst, you can choose quiet and sluggish or fans blasting all the time and ok, but not great performance. Some upgrades fix some issues but break things elsewhere. Based on this experience I can't recommend ,although it just might be this particular model (based on the forums it's not just my machine, but everyone with this model and some of the issues e.g. trackpoint dying seem to be shared with other recent models too). Can't comment on the Linux experience, only W10.

I love Thinkpads and bought some for myself. I also pushed for them to be adopted across my company's entire engineering department.

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.

Thinkpads are great, the problem is the price, specially overseas because of the exchange in countries which currency value have lowered in comparison to the dollar. Any Thinkpad was barely affordable and this situation became worse. A X1 Carbon is a dream, but it costs 5-7 times more than a low cost laptop (and low quality as well). A T490 is 3-4 times more expensive than a low cost laptop.

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).

A friend was looking and in the end decided not to buy a Thinkpad as both his current Thinkpads mis-order keys when typed quickly and it seems unlikely that it's fixed. (And to be honest, they don't deserve the money with such a bad bug).

See https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/ekin47/the_x1_ext... for the details.

I have a T495. Works great for me, very solid laptop for running Linux.

I used to have an x201 which I loved to death. I upgraded to an x240 a couple years ago and I honestly find it mediocre; it has an awful trackpad, and it gets hot way too easily.

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.

I've had a Lenovo x1 carbon (latest gen) earlier this year for work - hardware compatibility for linux is good, didn't really like the typing experience and the touchpad is imo awful.

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.

While not directly in the Thinkpad name, I have an older X1 Carbon (4th Gen) that has worked really well for me. Extensive travelling, multiple drops, etc. Thing still is solid. Runs Debian really well.

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.

I have a T14s with AMD Ryzen 7 and everything works on linux apart the fingerprint reader.

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.

It hasn't been mentioned yet how Lenovo preinstalled malware on their machines in 2014-15. There isn't really anything that can redeem that sort of behaviour in my eyes. Also they've used Uyghur forced labour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superfish#Lenovo_security_inci...

https://theintercept.com/2020/08/21/school-laptops-lenovo-ch...

I have an x13 gen 2, it’s just ok. 2 annoyances, I find the led next to the power button too bright and ctrl and fn are swapped and I hate it, I swapped them back in bios but now the labels are wrong.

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.

A week ago I bought a used X1 carbon Gen 8 for 1/4th of its original price, he wanted a macbook. I pity him, I love how light weight it is and the keyboard is so satisfying, my previous laptop was Dell 5559. I'm running Arch and no issues and I just love how productive it has been.

I got a new P14sand it managed to die within the year, after a ton of power management issues where it just would not shut down or wake up.

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.

I use a thinkpad chromebook using chromeos but because this is the high end thinkpad chromebook I run android studio and other linux desktop apps. It has a beautiful keyboard and amazing build quality. But I use linux apps on chrome rather than a desktop linux distro.

I have a brand new X1 extreme through work. The on-board sounds crackles and the on-board mic was broken for MONTHS awaiting a software fix from Lenovo that only corrected the mic issue. That is to say…no.

At least with the thinkpad/legion line they have been repairable and upgradable and perform well. I am using a legion 5 for my linux notebook and it works great in windows and ubuntu.

I'm writing this from a P14s Gen1 (AMD) and it works great on Fedora 35 and that includes the fingerprint reader. It obviously works great on Windows but I don't use that.

note that on many of the new thinkpads, the exhaust vent is on the right side. if you are right handed and use a mouse, it will blow hot air directly onto your hand.

X1 carbon here (admittedly, 9 year old one) and it's amazing. I'd buy an gen 5 to 7 without hesitation.

On fedora it has been without flaw.

I'd get the framework laptop.

Second hand t480s running Manjaro. No issues with dual boot. Great laptop!

T14 (Ryzen 5) running Debian Testing here. Perfect in every aspect.

T495 of last year here, an AMD with all(?) extras, love it.

I use a first gen T14 running Manjaro. Highly recommended.

Dell Precision 7xxx series. Unlike Lenovo, Dell officially supports linux on their laptops and actually ship them with it preinstalled. Also unlike chinese owned Lenovo, Dell doesn't have a track record of installing spyware.