ThinkPad T14

I'll echo archvile here, in that I get excellent battery life running Linux. I've been getting 10-12 hours of battery life from the assortment of Asus and Thinkpad laptops I've had the past 15 years. To give a very concrete example, I have two identical Thinkpad T14 at work, one running Linux (Debian Bookworm with KDE) and one running Windows 11. When doing normal office work, the Linux laptop easily lasts a whole workday with 20% battery left at the end. The Windows laptop runs out of battery in less than 2 hours.

[...] I would periodically try on laptops Linux again, but there were always things broken in bad ways. Early this year I bought a ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 AMD. [...] Lately I have been using my ThinkPad much more than my MacBook Pro. [...]

[...] Thinkpad x220, x230, hp probook 445 g7, 845 g7, 845 g8, 835 g8, thinkpad t14 gen 2, gen 3, lenovo legion go, steam deck, dell 8290 (yes, dell had of course to do their "magic" with the fan so no amount of claude ASTRAL GOD PLUS can fix that), any elitedesk minipc, asus rog g14, all the versions since the first one, dell precision 3571.... [...]

I have a Lenovo thinkpad T14 gen 1. [...] Battery has 600 cycles and I still get 4 hrs out of it, when in low power mode. [...]

I have a ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 AMD (besides MacBook Pro M1 Pro) and with some powertop tweaks it lasts about 6-7 hours. [...] The nice thing is that I loaded it up with 64GiB RAM and a 2TB SSD for cheap (almost infinite NixOS generations, yay!). The MacBook has a better trackpad, stronger case, better battery life, far better display. But the ThinkPad has NixOS running perfectly (I had Asahi on my Mac Studio, but with the lack of Thunderbolt and not so great battery life I don't want to run it on a MacBook). At any rate, the Mac is going to be better, but I have to sacrifice a bit for tech-feudalism-free computing (Mac is slowly becoming more and more closed).

I was really close to getting a Framework earlier this year, but ultimately landed on a Thinkpad T14 Gen 5 because at the time, the price gap was significant (the Thinkpad was $250 cheaper) and the T14 still had a better CPU. Not to mention the T14 has expandable RAM, replaceable battery, screen, and keyboard, and is acceptably thin and light. In the end, I think the Framework is worth it if you have a desire to support the company and the mission, but I think most people should go refurbished if they only care about value.

[...] an AMD ThinkPad T14 and it was seamless, with no tweaks needed. [...] I currently run nix flake update on my system way too often... [...]

Asahi only supports M1 and M2 Macs well (and you will still miss support for some functionality, like Thunderbolt or USB-C DP-Alt mode displays). Ryzen APUs have indeed narrowed the gap and if you want to run Linux, it's probably much better to get a recent Ryzen ThinkPad than a Mac (or get a Strix Halo Ryzen once it lands in the good ThinkPad models). (I am a longtime Mac user, but I recently got a ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 and all the hardware works out-of-the-box and very well on Linux.)

What Linux computer can you buy with the battery life, quietness, lack of heat and speed of a modern ARM based Mac? Battery life, probably none. For the rest it's pretty ok now - I recently got a ThinkPad T14. Performance-wise it's in M1/M2 territory and yes the fans can spin up, but they are not very loud. I have used MacBooks since 2007, but I have started using the ThinkPad more and more. [...] When the battery has had its time, I can replace it by removing a few screws. [...] Even though the GPU in my MacBook Pro (M3 Pro) blows away the ThinkPad's GPU on paper, the ThinkPad with Wayland actually renders everything super-smoothly on my 120Hz 4K screen, while on the MacBook the difference between 60Hz and 120Hz is barely noticeable. [...] The primary thing that my MacBook has over my ThinkPad are battery life and a bunch of really good Mac applications like the Affinity Suite. [...]

[...] A few years ago I had a Gen 1 ThinkPad T14 AMD, which still had S3 sleep. [...] trackpad, fingerprint reader, etc.). [...]

I got a Thinkpad T14 AMD Gen 5 a few weeks ago to use aside my MacBook Pro. [...]

[...] Too low or high within the keyboard or the buttons were in uncomfortable positions. I would say mainly IBM and Lenovo have the positioning correct as well as on some models TrackPoint buttons. So if you had tried most of dell's attempts and tought it was useless, that's because it was even though its a simular implimentation :) I would certainly buy a Thinkpad T14 with the classic keyboard layout << T420 in a heart beat... << even if it had to be thinker standard price not x2 mess that was the Thinkpad 25. [...]

A few months ago after updating the UEFI firmware on my Thinkpad T14 Gen 4 (Intel), debian 12 bookworm (stable repo - kernel version 6.1) would become unresponsive (desktop freezing, wifi malfunctioning). After updating the kernel to version 6.11 via bookworm backports, the issues were resolved. Then there's also Firmware missing for most devices on Thinkpad T14 Gen 4 Intel

[...] Lately when I have finally done a proper desk again - I added some 'desktop' for either FreeBSD package building with Poudriere or for some casual gaming as AMD Ryzen 1700 with 8C/16T and AMD Radeon 5700 does quite good job at it. [...] I still use ThinkPad XY20 series from 2011 - they all have that great 7-row keyboard and are VERY usable. [...] and about a price? [...] I also got ThinkPad T14 with 6C/12T AMD Ryzen also with 16 GB RAM for $260. These are not expensive toys ...

[...] Basically the keyboard is riveted into the top case and the battery is stuck to that as well. That means they have to pretty much transplant the logic board and the screen into another shell and stick a new battery in it as well. [...] I have a 14" M1 MBP which I am selling next month as I have already switched to a ThinkPad T14 gen 3 running Windows 11. This is the keyboard replacement process for that:

[...] I was thinking of getting the AMD version but ended up getting the Intel Core Ultra 7H version as the AMD version has MediaTek wifi chip that's soldered in and I read some bad reviews about it and wanted to get Intel Wifi chip. Also for the display I upgraded from the stock 45% NTSC to the 100%sRGB IPS low power. Really wished if they offered a non touch WUXGA with 100% sRGB as I have no use for the touch screen on my laptop so I just disabled the touch screen.

This sounds like a hardware / firmware problem specific to your particular sound chip / card. Similarly, Bluetooth on my Thinkpad T14 is slightly wonky, and it sometimes fails to register a Bluetooth mouse on wake-up (I have to switch the mouse off and back on). [...] Binary-blob firmware, and physical hardware, do have bugs, and there's little an OS can do about that, Linux or otherwise. Macs have less hardware variety and higher prices, which makes their hardware errata lists shorter, but not empty.

Like I said, Framework 13 trackpad isn’t bad, it’s just not the best in the world. It’s not any worse than the traditional trackpads that are on Lenovo systems (but I’d love to try the haptic one on the X9 Aura Edition). This $2400 CAD price point is pure fantasy to me because that’s not what I paid. [...] I’ll use my US website prices to compare. [...] The display in that model is the base model display, not a 120Hz OLED, similar specs to the Framework. [...] Framework is an aluminum chassis and the keyboard deck flex is about as good as it gets before you sign your life away to Apple. The $500 cheapo spec laptops aren’t as nice as the Framework! [...] The Lenovo T14 felt cheap in comparison. If I get a $500 cheapo laptop I’m getting even more plastic and flex. The ThinkPad T14 keyboard was not good enough for me. The Framework 13 has better keyboard. [...] A $500 cheapo laptop isn’t going to satisfy me there. [...] Hardware firmware gets updated automatically within Linux, and there’s a dedicated community surrounding it, which you won’t get on some random $500 HP laptop. Maybe Lenovo offers an equivalent value

[...] My ThinkPad T14, while not macbook quality, is decent enough, and everything is user serviceable, and parts are cheap. [...] I'm also tired of my only choices being either a) enjoy the conveniences of the apple ecosystem and integration but have no ability to self-service my own hardware, or in the case of iOS, run my own software outside of the app store or b) try and hack together some equivalent "ecosystem" using Linux, Android, KDE connect, and various other homegrown scripts and apps but deal with an inferior laptop, inferior smartwatch, and inferior apps. [...]

[...] I was pretty angry that the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen3 has a full channel of soldered RAM and just a single slot for expansion since I really use a lot of RAM and would prefer to go with 64 GB full dual-channel and not a hybrid 48 GB with 32 GB being dual-channel and 16 GB being single channel. (Yes, it does actually work.) Most builds that I do are done asynchronously using GitHub Actions or similar. Yes, it does take some time but the build+deploy isn't that time sensitive.

[...] Same for LTE-to-WiFi hotspots. (Edited to add: one of the great things about a MacBook [Air] is supposed to be that you just throw them in your backpack, and you can be productive, like, anywhere, without having to worry about battery life, or anything. Still, 'lack of connectivity' kinda kills that dream, which means I still carry my ThinkPad T14 gen3 (despite its power management flaws) or Surface Go2 (Potato Inside<tm), where I would rather take my MacBook)

[...] I just wish the Linux part had gone a little bit further, especially with battery life. I have a T14 Gen 6 AMD with the Ryzen AI 7 PRO 350 and a 57 Wh battery, and I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time testing Linux distros on it. [...] and all distros basically “work” just fine — Wi-Fi, graphics, suspend, peripherals, etc. [...] On Windows I can see around 5–6 W in light use, while Linux has often been more like 7–11 W depending on the distro, desktop, kernel and display stack. [...]

[...] Not for usability, of course, with an 11th Gen i5 it's not quite the fastest, but the display could hardly suck more than this base config, and the Gen 2 has a µSD card reader (Lenovo PLEASE add (µ)SD cards to every ThinkPad!) and smartcard, which this one is lacking (idk who needs a smartcard, but I've got one and won't complain about additional features). [...]

I got the thinkpad t14, installed linux and instantly realised why I use the mac more than my other laptops. - the touchpad's on the other laptops are noticeably sluggish and I wish I could do something about it. For now, I've increased the speed to make it feel like it's more sensitive

I've been using as low end testing machine my Thinkpad T14 Gen2 i5. I think you have the same iGPU (Iris XE) but the resolution in the Thinkpad is 1920x1080 while I think you have 2880 x 1800 screen (guessing, please verify :) ) . [...] My other testing platforms are a desktop rig with 4k screen/ 3080 GPU and Windows Sandbox (the latter being super sluggish). [...]

the difference between a thinkpad T14 with replaceable RAM and SSD and a T14s with soldered RAM and SSD are minimal. [...] that holds my precious data, and even if i have a full backup, i do want to be able to take out the SSD when the laptop dies, or replace a broken or worn out SSD (as i had once). the risk of not being able to recover data from a soldered SSD is just not worth the few grams saved in weight.

My daily driver is a refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad T14 gen2 with R5/16/512 GB. 360e last year from a trusted retailer with a 1y warranty. [...]

[...] Before that, I ran Steam on Debian on a ThinkPad T14/P14s to play Cities Skylines. [...]

[...] AMD drivers had a bug around 2020 that newer AMD Thinkpads couldn't drive 4K displays. It was one of the reasons I stopped using Linux after buying a new Thinkpad T14 Gen 1. [...]

Anecdata here but I bought a thinkpad T14 in 2022. [...] My laptop has heating issues and terrible battery life. [...]

[...] In my opinion, DHH is underselling how terrible the keyboard on the Dell XPS is. I bought the lunar lake XPS and I hate the keyboard so much, I turned it into an expensive Jellyfin server and bought a $275 thinkpad T14 on ebay to use instead. Maybe the keyboard on the panther lake version is better, but my fingers just get lost with the flat keys. [...]

I can barely comprehend how prices have gotten out of hand. I bought a Thinkpad P1 Gen 7 last year. [...]

$800 and $1500 windows PC both has same OS experience , bugs, lags , moreover many consumers switch after 4-5 years, I purchased thinkpad 5y ago, now the genuine spares are too expensive for 5y old laptop, refurb spared are available at cheaper price,

[...] For example, the Framework 13 Pro has purportedly caught up to many of the advantages of a MacBook Pro (battery life, haptic trackpad, CNC aluminum chassis), judging by early press impressions. [...] One of my friends bought a $500 ThinkPad T14 on eBay and of course 100% of the hardware works. [...]

[...] Just last weekend I bought 8gb ram thinkpad t14 for an elderly relative. [...] It replaces his thinkpad x220 where the fan and ssd slowly dies. [...]

Linux is pretty bad at handling out of memory. In my old thinkpad T14 with Mint everything came to a halt when webpack gobbled up my 16GB of ram. Couldnt even move the cursor, stuff just got stuck hard

[...] I'm typing this on a Thinkpad T14 i5-1250p 512GB 32GB WWAN I picked up last week for $370 all in. [...]

I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad T14 Gen 6 and installed Omarchy on it. [...]

[...] For example, my current Thinkpad T14-gen5, was bought with 8GB ram and 256GB NVME, and then upgraded to 64GB ram and 2TB NVME, for the same price as 16G/512G would have cost at Lenovo. [...]

[...] And now it would be that my DJ software does not run on it. [...] I might try a MacBook air at some point, but they are quite expensive when you need 1TB disk for your music files. But for now my ThinkPad T14 Gen1 still runs fine. I don't need more battery or power. [...]

I had a stroke of luck this week - I am due a new laptop at work, and ordered a new ThinkPad T14, as they have served me well in the past. [...]

The most recent experience was a ThinkPad T14 G2, which had, in addition to my negative experiences that were not defects, enough hardware defects that they eventually sent me a new Intel model because I had RMA'd it so many times for failures.

I only recently got a Thinkpad T14 for work and the trackpad is really only serviceable. [...] [0] Especially because many years ago got a Dell Inspiron line laptop, and the trackpad on that feels great to me. [0] what's even more surprising is that in Ubuntu there's an extra package, that adds more configuration options for the Thinkpad trackpad, but even with that I couldn't really make it feel as pleasant as my old Dell.

[...] I'm back on Windows as a daily driver for the first time in about 12 years. [...] The first is hardware support; I bought a ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 AMD, which is almost a perfect Linux machine save for a whole bunch of bugs in the amdgpu driver that I'm not willing to live with. [...]

I have the same set and I've yet to have my computer (a ThinkPad T14 running Kubuntu 24.04) drop a connection, they work perfectly for hours at a time. Maybe depends on the Bluetooth chipset? But I've found Bluetooth in general to be much more reliable than it used to be with Linux these days.

Windows display hotplugging is pretty dire. I'm sure there's a good explanation (x86 legacy?) but Windows (Win11, current patch, Thinkpad T14) seemingly having a stroke any time I plug in a new display then having to do the "Advanced Display Settings" rigamarole, is always ugly and frustrating.

Joke is on them to think I care about any of this when I work on my company-issued ThinkPad T14 with a 45% NTSC screen that maxes out at 300 nits. [...]

I got a nice Thinkpad T14 Gen 4 recently with a 7840U, if you like Lenovo Thinkpads. I've used many Intel ones before and I like them all equally.

Tbh no one matches the hardware quality of MacBooks. But I refuse to use them on principle. Thinkpad t14 been serving me well (using fedora).

The last AMD based Thinkpad T14 I got was horrible. It had great numbers on paper and benchmarks, but horrible performance in real usage. Switching between programs was very slow. Even switching between tabs in browser was slow. It tended to overheat which throttled down the cpu. [...]