Hello everyone. I’ve been looking for a new laptop recently, and I was wondering what your thoughts were. This is what I want in a new lapop:

  • Decently powerful processor for virtualization, compilation, and BitTorrent
  • Easily replaceable/upgradable battery
  • Upgradable RAM
  • Upgradable storage (preferably 1 TiB+ NVMe SSD)
  • Webcam
  • Microphone
  • Hassle-free Wi-fi (I’m tired of fighting with proprietary blobs that need manual installation and want something plug-and-play)
  • Hassle-free Bluetooth
  • Ethernet port
  • USB ports
  • Hardy frame (nice but not required)

Important note: Ideally the laptop will be compatible with Linux Libre, as I want to run Guix System on it. But I’m not opposed to using the normal Linux kernel if necessary (and probably will anyways due to security protections like Spectre).

I’ve been eyeing the ThinkPad T480 (specs link) for some time. What do you think? It seems to tick all the boxes:

  • Powerful processor: i7-8650U (a 2018 model I think)
  • Upgradable battery: 24 Wh internal + 72 Wh discrete battery
  • Upgradable RAM (up to 32 GB)
  • Upgradable storage
  • A webcam
  • A microphone
  • Wi-fi
  • Bluetooth
  • Lots of ports (3 USB Type-C, 1 HDMI, 1 Ethernet, 1 headphone)

I do have some concern about the additional storage though. A Reddit user said this:

Just note that the T480 has only 2 usable PCIe lanes, so it’s half the rated max speeds (ie, for most of the premium performance pcie3x4 drives, it’s about 3500/3000MBps reads/writes respectively), so half that because it’s only 2 lanes.

Found this out the hard way, ended up selling the T480 and going for a T14 AMD instead, because for that particular use case I had, high speed reads/writes were important. Was wondering why my 970 Evo Plus was so slow, and thought I had a faulty drive for a moment.

Lenovo acknowledges this limitation at the PSREF: “Installed M.2 SSD is PCIe 3.0 x 4 but run at PCIe 3.0 x 2 due to M.2 SSD adapter limitation”

https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad/_T480/ThinkPad/_T480/_Spec.PDF

Link to post

I’m not sure what to think about that. I don’t like the idea of getting half capacity, but 1.5 GBps doesn’t seem so bad, even if it could theoretically be higher.

Has anyone here used this laptop? Am I understanding the specs correctly?

This isn’t specific to this laptop, but how do you determine which NVMe to get? I see lots of numbers and am not certain how to interpret them.

If you think another laptop would meet the above qualifications, feel free to point it out. But my budget is rather tight (250 USD max for the computer, preferably under ~200 USD if possible), so I probably don’t have a lot of options with regards to newer computers, which is why I was considering this slightly dated model.

Bonus: I found this article while browsing. Looks like the Wi-fi and Bluetooth don’t work…

  • dingdongitsabear
    3·
    17 hours ago

    that’s about the crux of it. it’s a widely available platform that can be had for cheap, the replacements and upgrades are plentiful and cheap and cross-generational compatibility (both from earlier and later models) is exceptional. some notes:

    • ignore the NVMe speeds; they’re perfectly congruent with the rest of the machine and there are virtually no bottlenecks for the use you mentioned
    • no idea about the Guix thing, normal Linux distros (Fedora, Arch, Debian, etc) have OOB functionality for all comms; spotty fingerprint reader support though
    • there’s a negligible performance difference between the top-of-the line i7-8650u and the entry-level i5-8350u, so feel free to ignore the CPU entirely. also be aware that earlier models came with the kabylake 7xxxu line, which you don’t want for any kind of money
    • although panels can be upgraded cheaply and easily, make sure you don’t get a 768p panel. the factory 1080p stock panels are IPS and 6-bit, so they’re decent and power-efficient. if you’re into color-accurate use cases, you’ll need a 8-bit 400-nit upgrade at some point
    • if at all possible, try to buy it without RAM and storage; they’re predominantly available with shitty 256 GB drives and one 8 GB stick and that makes a normally specced machine with 32 GB and 1TB+ storage unnecessarily pricier
    • don’t shy away from newer models (T49x, T14 Gen1) if you happen to find them for cheap; T14 AMD for instance has one slot populated with 16 GB (1 free) and has only one battery, but it makes it up with a more modern, powerful and power-efficient platform
    • if you plan on using it with external devices (monitors, sound, etc.) do yourself a favor and get a dock station. just like the T-series they’re widely available, cheap and work across generations; e.g. the 40AJ dock, you click the laptop into place and all your devices and PSU are connected instantly
    • 0xDEADBEEF2@lemmy.caOPEnglish
      1·
      13 hours ago

      Thanks for the detailed breakdown.

      How well do those other models (T49x, T14 Gen 1) work with Linux? Is everything compatible out-of-the-box? And how does the CPU performance compare to the T480? It looks like the T490 has the i7-10710U and the T14 Gen 1 has the Core i7-10810U. Is the CPU performance ranking T14 Gen 1 > T490 > T480? (I’d think a bigger number means better performance.) Does the performance difference even really matter? It looks like these laptops were released 2018 - ~2020, so I imagine they’re all close in performance.

      T480 specs

      T490 specs

      T14 Gen 1 specs

      I also found out that there is a difference between the T480 and the T480s. Do you have any opinions on them? A Reddit user said this:

      This sub loves the T480, but the T480s is a much nicer feeling machine in the hand due to the external frame materials.

      Reasons for the T480: power bridge, 64G RAM dual channel. T480s can do 40G RAM which is plenty but it will sacrifice some real world performance due anything above 16G being single channel (visible on i.e. speedometer 2.1)

      Reasons for the T480s: build quality/feeling, portability

      Link to post

      T480s specs

      Overall, it looks like the T480s is less upgradable, but more comfortable. Is that analysis correct?