ThinkPad Z13

[...] In my case for example, the ThinkPad Z13 was the best laptop for me at the time. My main criteria generally is a top-tier AMD APU, first-class Linux support, machined aluminium body, 12-14" display. Only the ThinkPad Z13 met my criteria at the time, but there wasn't any in stock in my country. So my only option was to import it, and it was pretty expensive with all the import duties. A Framework would've been cheaper, but they didn't ship to my country and they also didn't have an aluminum chassis. It was worth it though, I'm still using the ThinkPad and it's hands-down one of the best laptop+Linux experiences I've ever had. [...] Unfortunately, Lenovo killed the Z13 line with no equivalent replacement, and everything else on the market currently has some or the other limitation (for me) - the most common limitation being lack of official Linux support. [...] And the best part is, I can just swap out the mainboard the next time I want to upgrade - which I guarantee will be way cheaper than buying a laptop that meets all my requirements, assuming it even exists. But if you're not like me and you're fine with any random el cheapo Windows laptop, then yeah Framework is probably not for you.

As a ThinkPad Z13 user, I've had none of the issues you've described. [...] Only niggle was that not all bits of firmware was upgradable via fwupd, so I had to ocassionally boot into Windows to do the firmware updates. [...] In fact, battery life was better than Windows when I applied powertop's tweaks. [...]

Not OP and not the answer you're looking for, but FWIW I own a ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 (design is kinda similar to the X9) and literally everything works perfectly OOTB. You can even update every piece of updatable firmware from Linux (via fwupd), so there's zero reasons to have a dual-boot Windows on it, if you don't really need it. Also the best part (for me) is that the BIOS supports Opal2 drive encryption, so you could encrypt your drive without any performance overhead and without having to muck around with LUKS. [...] When you consider that not even Windows users on Surface laptops can claim a 100% bug-free OS upgrade experience, it is a pretty incredible achievement, IMO. [...]

[...] I recently had a ThinkPad Z13 for over a year. [...] It had inconsistent pressure pickup, bad haptics, and poor button integration. [...]

[...] My ThinkPad Z13 (aka AMD Carbon) was a piece of garbage: arrived without Fedora fully installed, crashed at least once per week, had GPU and dock and USB and sleep problems, sent back for repairs multiple times. [...] Crashed 7 times in the 9 days I had it. [...] Ibus and wireplumber would randomly crash. [...] Debian overheated rather than suspended when you close the lid. [...] Sometimes the 10-second power button shutdown was ignored; you have to use the little reset hole. [...] "fixed fingerprint reader problem, fixed hanging after hibernation, fixed hanging after resuming with lid closed, wake now works with any keyboard key instead of just F-keys, fixed issue where computer restarts unexpectedly, fixed overheating while charging, fixed problems related to docking and external monitors, fix sound, fix backlight, fix power profiles, fix slow boot, fixed USB port refusing to charge or enumerate (rarely (yes they actually said rarely in

I daily-drive an M1 MBA and a ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 running Linux (Bazzite), and the experience (in terms of convenience and reliability) is identical for the most part. In fact I actually prefer the screen on my ThinkPad, the 1200p OLED display is just so much more crisper and vibrant, it's been great for gaming and media consumption. In saying that, the touchpad experience on the MBA is a touch better, and of course, the battery life is much better on the MBA (as is the thermal effeciency). [...] I reckon they can come pretty close to the MacBooks in terms of battery life, unfortunately they're not quite there yet.

I tried a couple of puppies on my ThinkPad Z13 (Ryzen 6000 series) and couldn't get it to start X no matter what I tried. [...] No other distro has this issue on my laptop, but then again, they all use/support Wayland. [...]

Not OP, but I have an older generation Ryzen Thinkpad (Z13 with an AMD 6000 series APU). [...] However, a couple of things: at least on my setup, s2idle drains very little battery and doesn't cause your backpack to heat up. But if you're still concerned about battery drain over longer periods of time, you could enable the suspend-then-hibernate option, which will cause your laptop to automatically hibernate after it's been in standby for a while (exact timeout period is configurable). [...]

Bazzite is naturally a bit slower to boot compared to other distros due to the things it bundles in and the ostree system, but 2 minutes is unusually long. On my 3.5yr old ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 with the stock SSD, if takes exactly 34 seconds to cold boot to the full desktop (KDE) from the boot menu (I have enabled auto-logon), which I find acceptable. [...]

Yes, I bought my ThinkPad Z13 a few years ago with Fedora, and it's been excellent. [...]

Without any specific details, that sounds like a work-config/distro related issue to me. I use my personal laptop (ThinkPad Z13) runing Bazzite (w/ KDE) for both work and gaming, and it's been rock solid with ZERO crashes, for the past 3 years that I've been using on this machine.

Which issues (besides upgradability)? I've been using a ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 - everything worked OOTB (on Fedora & Arch), all firmware bits are upgradable via fwupd, BIOS supports Opal2 so you don't have to muck around with LUKS. Literally zero issues over the past 2+ years I've owned this laptop.

[...] They have official support for Linux and generally have excellent battery life. At least that's been the case for me on my ThinkPad Z13 running CachyOS. I did install TLP for better battery life, but TLP is a must-have for all Linux ThinkPad users anyways.

That is highly debatable, largely subjective and probably hardware dependent to an extent. I'm running Linux on five different machines, and two of them are portables: a ThinkPad Z13 and a GPD Win Mini 2024 - and have none of the issues you mentioned. In fact there's literally zero issues at all, I couldn't be any happier to be honest.

?? OPAL is transparent to the OS, Microsoft doesn't need to see/care about it. I'm multi-booting Win11, Linux and GhostBSD on my OPAL2 encrypted drive (on a ThinkPad Z13) and I've got zero issues.

I'm on a Zen3+ APU (Thinkpad Z13) and TLP has worked great for me. [...] Two cool things that TLP does is allow you to set battery charge thresholds for better battery longevity (I limit mine to 80%), the other being automatically changing the energy performance preference (EPP) in the amd-pstate driver, so if you're on battery you could get it to automatically switch to power saving or balanced powersaving etc. I get an 8-10 hr battery life even with the 80% cap capacity, with several MS webapps running in Edge (Wayland), including Teams and Outlook, VS codium and Firefox running in the background.