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What is the best model of used ThinkPad to purchase?

I’m thinking of picking up a used ThinkPad on eBay for cheap to serve as my daily driver. I’ll likely run LMDE, and primarily use it for web browsing, office programs, coding, and FreeCAD. Any recommendations on which model would best hit the sweet spot of capability vs price?

umami_wasbi ,

T14 Gen 3. Or T480 for hot swap battery.

Mint_Raccoon ,
@Mint_Raccoon@kbin.social avatar

I have a T480 that I'm very happy with. With shipping I paid a little under $250. It came with 16GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD (which I replaced with a larger one).

0x0 ,

Seems to be the top contender atm.

SandbagTiara2816 OP ,

Yep, I think it’s what I’ll be going with!

nobleshift ,
@nobleshift@lemmy.world avatar

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    monsterpiece42 ,

    I have a T580 and a T15g2 and the T580 is 100% a more rugged build–not even close.

    The T15 is way lighter, so maybe that feels like stiffness?

    G1s do not just “have brighter screens” than Gen 2. Those are spec-able options.

    G1 had three screens, 250nit, 300nit, 500nit (4k only)

    G2 had three screens, 300nit, 300nit, 600nit (4k only)

    Both have the same 57wh battery. Not sure what you’re talking about there.

    nobleshift ,
    @nobleshift@lemmy.world avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    monsterpiece42 ,

    You should contact Lenovo and let them know their spec sheets are wrong. Because they say exactly what I just said.

    Not my problem if you have aftermarket modifications to them.

    notthebees , (edited )

    Might depend on who Lenovo used for the displays. Either the specs are different than listed or it was modded.

    My own example is HP, I have 2 identical laptops (same model and seller). One has a 100% sRGB panel and the other has a 60% sRGB panel.

    The 100% sRGB panel is LG and the 60% sRGB panel is Innolux.

    Also maybe battery capacity over time? Istg batteries have way more degradation now than before.

    Edited for clarity.

    Edit 2: while some HP laptops might have had different color accuracy display options for the same model, this one is just straight 768p or 1080p and nothing else. The site says 45% NTSC but my own experience shows they had some good panels and it was just luck of the draw. Fwiw the PC is a HP pavilion x360 15-br095ms. It had an i5-7200u, Radeon 530 2GB DDR3, 8 gb of ddr4 and a 128 gb m.2 sata ssd. It’s been motherboard swapped with an 8th gen i7 version, same gpu on the new board and has 24 gb of ram. I’m using a cs900 240 gb 2.5 in ssd for now. I plan on getting a better nvme drive for it eventually but I have none on hand that i could use.

    monsterpiece42 ,

    Could be. I do have some significant Thinkpad experience (going back to the IBM days) and I do know that they will not alter the model number regardless of what’s in the machine, but you can pull a build sheet from their website with the serial number. Do you know if your HPs could have had this happen? Was your distributor HP or elsewhere? (Not hating, just curious!)

    Capacity loss over time is a decent idea. The 2nd Gen machine has an 11th Gen chip, vs 10th Gen in the Gen 1, and quiet possibly is able to burn more power quicker as well. Thinkpad power consumption is also definable in the BIOS or Vantage software for many of them, so those settings all could vary.

    Normally I’d be happy to help troubleshoot this sort of thing but frankly I’m not sure OP was looking to chat.

    notthebees , (edited )

    The seller was some dude on Amazon, but both machines were new in box and were purchased in 2018 and 2019. The model is 15-br095ms for what it’s worth. It’s a Microsoft signature edition laptop so “less” bloat than other machines. Basically it didn’t have McAfee or norton.

    At least for that line of HP machines, you had a 768p panel and a 1080p panel. Both are 1080p.

    Also the 11th gen i5 is weird. Idk if mine was a dud or they all ran like this but mine was super power hungry. 33wh capacity and I got like 3 hours of battery life. When the battery was new (40wh) it was like 4-5 hours if I babied it. When I swapped in a new Ryzen motherboard, it ran cooler and more efficiently. I get 4 hours of battery life if I do normal stuff and it can run fanless. And yes I’ve repasted it when it had an i5.

    For context, that old pavilion 15br laptop I was talking about had a motherboard replacement and I put a 15-br158cl motherboard in it so an 8th gen i7 and a Radeon 530. Not a particularly efficient gpu and an old cpu. It gets the same battery life. It’s got 2 drives, an older battery and it still beats the newer one. I could get that old i7 to sip power. I can’t get the new one to do that.

    notthebees ,

    My sister has a T580 with the 7th gen i5-7200u. Full tilt it runs at 60C after a repaste. My own pavilion x360 with the same i5 runs close to 90C. Let’s not talk about the 8th gen i7 version of said x360.

    The 8th gen i5 and i7 CPUs just run really hot.

    As for build quality, it’s fine. It’s no r500, but it’s built pretty well. Her laptop has been dropped a few times and the only issue it has is a fucked USB c power port (my only gripe is hard to replace USB ports).

    nobleshift ,
    @nobleshift@lemmy.world avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    notthebees ,

    The keyboard doesn’t really flex on my sister’s laptop but good God it’s awful to type on. It’s weirdly mushy. Idk if her laptop is defective or if it’s something else. The keyboard is clean but compared to both of my pavilion laptops, it feels like my old dell multimedia keyboard in terms of mush. And yeah they trackpad is awful. My friend had a w530 and it was about the same honestly. But that was a then 6 year old laptop.

    Fwiw the 11th gen i5 is actually garbage. Cpu is strong and the igpu has no business being as good as it is, but it is not power efficient at all at lower tdp. I cannot for the life of me get my old 11th gen i5 laptop to run any lower than like 1.8 GHz or something ridiculous. Just babying a laptop that’s less than a year old gets me maybe 3 hrs of battery life. It’s had really bad degradation, with 80% capacity left on a 40 wh battery but swapping in a Ryzen motherboard got me another hour of battery life. Also weird ass stutters, holy shit it’s bad. If I typed too fast, my computer would lock up entirely. It’s just a thing that it did.

    https://reddthat.com/pictrs/image/cc1ae3fa-d910-4edd-8790-d42a997b192c.png

    This is me on monkeytype when it locked up one day.

    BuoyantCitrus , (edited )

    I got a nice deal on the x280 and am happy with it, was also looking at the various X1 carbon. Two criteria I had were I wanted USB-C charging (since I have those chargers around and they can handle these laptops) and a single battery (eg. the T470s I have from work is nice but it has two small capacity batteries that each cost the same to replace as the full size single ones in the carbon and x280). One thing to keep in mind is some of the earlier X1 carbon don’t support NVME SSD (I think it started with 5th gen?)

    Edit: another thing to consider is soldered RAM. Part of why my x280 was cheap was it’s only 8gb and can’t be upgraded. Since you’re looking at lighter weight things and using FOSS (and perhaps open to tinkering with things like ZRAM) that might be a useful aspect to focus on because there is probably a glut of such machines given how memory inefficient things are lately with every trivial app running a whole browser engine. OTOH, depending how many tabs you tend to have open and how many electron apps you tend to keep floating around, 8gb might start to feel cramped. Especially if you think you might want some VMs around.

    Beaver ,
    @Beaver@lemmy.ca avatar

    I got 4gb on my Thinkpad Linux Mint Cinnamon, most the time it runs good but sometimes it slows to crawl with not much on it.

    Jumuta ,

    t430 runs great for me but if you need more (stock) performance maybe the t480?

    Beaver ,
    @Beaver@lemmy.ca avatar

    Same here T440 runs like a charm. I love my brick!

    pastermil ,

    One-up for a fellow 30s series! Currently rocking a W530 semi-mobile workstation!

    Jumuta ,

    oooh w series are cool

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