I bought a 3rd gen X1 Carbon. Three weeks out of warranty, the display stopped working. The repair took five weeks and they put in the wrong parts, downgrading the CPU and RAM. it took three more weeks for them to even ship a new replacement. On every single interaction I was told something false about the repair process, timeline, shipping, etc - seriously, I kept a log. Every department pointed fingers at every other department, no one (even the "Executive Support" I was escalated to) even claimed to have comprehensive knowledge, let alone actually took responsibility for the process.
Read the reviews. My experience wasn't unusual. Would having no laptop for nine weeks inconvenience you?
I'll just offer a contrary anecdote. A few months ago, I had a catastrophic failure of my X260 failure (hard crash--would not power up) while on site for a client in a manufacturing facility on the south side of Chicago. I called support and within 3 hours, a tech was on site with a comprehensive set of tools and parts. The technician had been repairing ThinkPads since the late 1990s and still wore his original IBM badge along with his newer one. He ended up nearly completely disassembling and re-assembling my machine in the temporary cubical I was sitting in to replace the motherboard, but was gone within two hours and the machine has worked fine ever since.
I'm sure service varies, but I always purchase the same day, onsite, four hour warranty option and try to be a little savvy about who the contracted service firm is. You can use Lenovo's website to find the certified repair firms and suggest that your ticket be dispatched to one you want.
I have been buying a new ThinkPad every couple years for about 15 years. I have ambivalent feelings about the newest generations, but still find them to be the most ergonomic and comfortable option for me (TrackPoint, keyboard quality, matte display, extended battery options).
My last personal laptop was a Macbook Air, however I used a 4th gen X1 Carbon in my previous role and loved it so much I bought my own after I left. Unfortunately they're a lot less pragmatic without a corporate IT help-desk to troubleshoot issues and provide replacements on demand.
I consider myself very fortunate to live 45 minutes away from a Lenovo certified repair shop.
I recommend the T460s instead to anyone considering the X1. Very similar form factor and specs but the RAM and SSD are not soldered on so it's much more future proof. I run mine with 20GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD and I don't think you can even get that in the X1. It also has a better set of connectors, including an Ethernet port. Linux runs very well in it but I assume the X1 is similar.
I was torn between the T470 series and the X1 a few weeks back. I ended up getting the X1 and have been liking it so far. Got it with 16 GB RAM and the upgraded screen. Personally the screen was enough for me to chose the X1 over the T4xx series. Also the SSD is not soldered in and can be replaced, the RAM is indeed soldered in. Linux does run very well on it, didn't have any problems out of the box.
Edit: Although I wouldn't mind the T470 since one of my previous laptops was a T430 and I love the accessibility of that series.
- The T460s (and T470s) only has one free RAM slot, the other is soldered on as well.
- You're implying that the X1 has a soldered on SSD, but that's not true, it has a standard M.2 connector for the SSD. Maybe you were thinking about the MacBook...
Let's not forget to mention a somewhat important detail: the T460 weights about 1.7 kg, while the X1 only weights about 1.1 kg. It's not a huge difference, but having a lightweight laptop is a big plus when carrying it around all day.
Agreed. Just switched from X1 Carbon to T460s. Got it with 4GB of RAM and stuck a 16GB stick in the slot (total: 20GB). It's hard to tell the difference with the X1 Carbon and the extra USBs, HDMI and such are welcome.
Seconding T460s as well. My company's dev team is mostly X1 Carbon, with some other T460s, and so far I'm having a great time with it. Maxed out specs (full mem, full SSD), running ArchLinux + Win10 dual boot. Arch has much better battery life than Win but it's good to cover all the bases when I need it for work. It's light, capable, good ports, and all. It's a real pleasure to use it every day. :)
I'm fairly happy with my t540p, even has a socketed CPU for replacement. They're fairly cheap on eBay right now because they just came off lease from some larger companies.
This is my main dev machine, although I bought the 4th gen (right before they retired it last Fall). It's a beautiful dev machine as soon as you put Linux on it. I have the highest end specs and it runs really smooth. And as this article explains, the build quality is top notch. Highly recommended laptop.
Have you had any issues with the trackpad? I have a Lenovo w530 and the trackpad is junk. The texture completely rubbed off with a few months of heavy use. The scrolling behavior is erratic on both Ubuntu 17.04 and Windows 10. It's probably the biggest factor in determining whether I buy another Thinkpad or go back to Apple.
For anyone shopping for a good deal: The Lenovo Outlet sells refurbished products for a great discount. They often get inventory in bursts, so if you want a good deal figure out your search criteria and check repeatedly. I got a T460s with great specs for around $800 a few months ago.
I recently made the switch from Surface Pro 4 to a ThinkPad 370 (like a smaller X1 Yoga). I was close to pulling the trigger on the X1 Carbon, but wanted a touch screen. Before the Surface, I had MacBooks and iMacs. Biggest takeaway, I love the keyboard and the TrackPoint. I was concerned about going from a high DPI screen to HD, but after a week my eyes adjusted. I will take 7ish hour battery over the Surface's 3-4.
Build quality is spot-on, no issues thus far. Having 2 USB ports and 1 USB C (thunderbolt) is clutch. I use the thunderbolt port to hook up an eGPU with 1070 GTX card. I can finally play some games and edit video.
Worse pixel density than a Macbook and the screen is 16:9 instead of 16:10, giving me less real vertical real screen estate than a 13 inch Macbook.
I really, really, really want a new ThinkPad, but they simply cannot compete with Macbooks. For the record, I am a huge ThinkPad fan, I count 14 thinkpads around me, the most recent one I have being X240. For me, the epitome was X61T. I still have two of those in mint condition. But today, when I buy a laptop it will be a MacBook.
After lots of thinking I eventually went with T470. The reasons: 32GB of memory, dual battery configuration (possible to swap battery while running).
Drawbacks with my choice are at least the size, probably not so good display and just PCIe x2 for the SSD.
There are small annoyances. The software-hardware integration is not on the level where it should be. Pretty much out of the box and for example sleep does not always work - sometimes when waking up all apps are gone. Windows 10 install is not clean, there's Lenovo and Intel stuff hanging there. I dislike for example the Intel popups that I get when changing WLAN. Yes, it is possible to clean up these, but I'd rather not spend time on that. The build in LTE feels a bit unrealiable, it is not there always when computer wakes up and sometimes I'm not able to get connection. Also Lenovo does not provide 1TB SSD that would be compatible with Microsoft eDrive specs, which allow Bitlocker to offload encryption to SSD (which is anyways doing it).
I bought the 2nd gen ThinkPad X1 Carbon (20A7) back in 2014. Been rock solid to this day and not a single complaint. This is my main dev machine. Ive been running Ubuntu since I got it, so the 8GB of RAM has been more than enough. No driver issues or anything, high density screen has been great, CPU is fast (Intel Core i7 dual core), and battery life is still excellent. Even have the finger print reader working :)
Looks good on paper, and surprisingly bloat-free stock OS (just the usual Windows 10 crapware), but even with the highest bin kit, my Carbon Gen5 gets hot to the point of being uncomfortable to handle, and starts stuttering with just 5-6 Chrome tabs open. It can play Starcraft 2 for 10-15 minutes (just long enough to run a benchmark!), and then just starts giving up.
>starts stuttering with just 5-6 Chrome tabs open.
I have a 3rd Gen, and have several dozen tabs open right now, with no issues, stutter or otherwise. One is playing a video, quite a few are also larger page/webapps (e.g. Gmail, Trello, Github in a large PR). I am have the 1440p version, and am plugged into an external monitor that is at 1440p, which should be further taxing the integrated graphics, but it's not showing. I can't imagine you're coming close to hitting any memory limits with just five or six tabs, so presumably something compute related?
Unfortunately that seems to be the staple of all modern thin laptops :(
My top spec 15" touchbar MacBook Pro happily locks it's 2.9GHZ CPU to just 1.2GHz after less than two minutes of running anything intensive (including games) and gets too hot to hold in the lap.
I have the Gen 5 X1 (i7, 16GB RAM, 512 NVMe). I do not notice the type of performance you are experiencing. Although I am running Arch Linux, I can play SC2 on lower-moderate settings. It handles all the work I throw at it thus far.
I've been using an X1 (3rd gen with the 4K display) for about 2 years now I think, and it's a great laptop for Linux. A full charge will last around 8 hours, maybe 9 or 10 if you turn of Chromium and WiFi (this all depends a bit on what you end up doing).
My only complaint is that I had my display replaced 3 (or maybe already 4) times either due to dead pixels, or these white smudges on the screen (these appear to be caused by damage to the LCD). These smudges in particular keep popping up and aren't too uncommon amongst other users either. There's a new one since I last had my screen replaced, but it's fortunately only visible when looking down on the laptop from the top (even then it's hard to see).
I've got the most recent generation, and in addition to killer battery life, the battery charge times are incredible. I basically don't have to think about it -- plugging it in while I'm in the shower gives it enough charge to last the day. Seems to charge about three times faster than my phone...
Extremely happy with my current generation X1C running Fedora. The selection of ports hit a sweet spot for me: two full-size USB, two Thunderbolt 3, and full-size HDMI. After years with Macs, it's wonderful to finally be free from dongles.
I wonder if they really did get the hinge right. The reason I ask is that I just replaced the wife's laptop because the hinges were stiff enough to beak the case around them (after years of use.) That was an economy model that we purchased off lease so it didn't sting too badly. The housing on my Y50 is cracked around the hinges. I need to open it up to clean out the dust but I'm afraid to do so.
My wife's laptop was replaced with an Acer. If I were to replace mine today it would probably be with a Dell XPS 15. Only time will tell if these are any better.
I replaced my Thinkpad by an XPS15 with a small fear that I would regret the Thinkpad, and I absolutely not. Under Windows, the Dell software is far better than the one of Lenovo (far less bloated, and far more discret).
I thought that I would regret the Thinkpad keyboard, but the keyboard of the XPS is actually not bad at all (well, the Thinkpad one better, but the XPS is still largely ok for me).
The only thing that I clearly regret are the lack of dedicated Page-up/Page-down keys. This is even ridiculous given there are empty space next to the arrow keys where they could have been put (same place as on the Thinkpad). Well, I can live with that.
just my 2 cents after owning one for quite some time now. Avoid.
Right after the warranty ended the screen has constant flickering and will sometimes turn to straight up static for 5 minutes at a time. moving the laptop hinge doesnt affect this at all which leads me to believe its a motherboard issue rather than a screen or ribbon cable issue.
Besides that, the build quality is actually pretty terrible for what one of these costs and the hinge is flimsy and wobbles around when you move the laptop.
my thumbs are still on the inside of my hands so unfortunately I still cannot deal with trackpad buttons above the scrolling surface.
I have an older thinkpad from my job which is a great machine but unusuable trackpad-wise due to this design. I use a cheap asus zenbook daily. Would love to have a trackpad-buttons-where-my-thumbs-are lenovo again.
1080p screen, awful headphone audio quality, limited to 16GB of RAM, and ships full of Windows crapware - I guess "Apple has made its MacBook line worse, not better" from the intro is describing reversion to the mean.
This will of course be a matter of personal preferences, but yes, I concur with the sentiment: Apple made its MacBook line worse, not better:
- They confine better specs to the touchbar models, which I would tolerate (not love) if it had the decency of starting after the ESC key. As it is, it's an abomination which must die, die, die.
- They give you USB-C ports (yay) at the expense of leaving you with zero USB-A ports (nay).
- They supply you with a low spec charging cable, indistinguishable from a high spec one
- They took away MagSafe which I love and has saved my laptop
- They took away the SD slot (but left the headphones jack? While arguing in favor of its removal on the iPhone? A bit inconsistent?)
- They massively bumped prices, making it considerably less appealing from a price/specs ratio perspective
- ...and they max out at 16GB just as you criticized the Lenovo.
If you like the X1 Carbon, but need more ram, the Toshiba Portege X30 is the only machine that has fully serviceable components at only 1,1kg of weight. I ordered mine with 32 GB of ram, loving it so far.
Does it have up to 5 years on-site warrenty (the fix it at your place) on the next business day.. 3 years are factory default, the 2 year upgrade costs peanuts (compared to the machine)?
[+] [-] pushcx|8 years ago|reply
I bought a 3rd gen X1 Carbon. Three weeks out of warranty, the display stopped working. The repair took five weeks and they put in the wrong parts, downgrading the CPU and RAM. it took three more weeks for them to even ship a new replacement. On every single interaction I was told something false about the repair process, timeline, shipping, etc - seriously, I kept a log. Every department pointed fingers at every other department, no one (even the "Executive Support" I was escalated to) even claimed to have comprehensive knowledge, let alone actually took responsibility for the process.
Read the reviews. My experience wasn't unusual. Would having no laptop for nine weeks inconvenience you?
[+] [-] tumba|8 years ago|reply
I'm sure service varies, but I always purchase the same day, onsite, four hour warranty option and try to be a little savvy about who the contracted service firm is. You can use Lenovo's website to find the certified repair firms and suggest that your ticket be dispatched to one you want.
I have been buying a new ThinkPad every couple years for about 15 years. I have ambivalent feelings about the newest generations, but still find them to be the most ergonomic and comfortable option for me (TrackPoint, keyboard quality, matte display, extended battery options).
[+] [-] nickfromseattle|8 years ago|reply
I consider myself very fortunate to live 45 minutes away from a Lenovo certified repair shop.
[+] [-] mikedelfino|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pedrocr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] om42|8 years ago|reply
Edit: Although I wouldn't mind the T470 since one of my previous laptops was a T430 and I love the accessibility of that series.
[+] [-] skrause|8 years ago|reply
- The T460s (and T470s) only has one free RAM slot, the other is soldered on as well.
- You're implying that the X1 has a soldered on SSD, but that's not true, it has a standard M.2 connector for the SSD. Maybe you were thinking about the MacBook...
[+] [-] YorickPeterse|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CoffeeDregs|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imrehg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peternicky|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koyote|8 years ago|reply
It's a nice compromise between an ultrabook and a massive brick of a laptop. It is 'cheap', powerfuland easily upgradable but still very portable.
[+] [-] breul99|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ge96|8 years ago|reply
Edit: nvm saw below 14 + 6
[+] [-] artursapek|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lj3|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tannhaeuser|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 4ad|8 years ago|reply
Unfortunately it was confirmed it's not 4:3, and I think it's very unlikely to be 16:10 instead of 16:9, but I still hope it will be good.
[+] [-] apricot|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shimon|8 years ago|reply
http://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/outletus
[+] [-] fumar|8 years ago|reply
Build quality is spot-on, no issues thus far. Having 2 USB ports and 1 USB C (thunderbolt) is clutch. I use the thunderbolt port to hook up an eGPU with 1070 GTX card. I can finally play some games and edit video.
[+] [-] tertius|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 4ad|8 years ago|reply
I really, really, really want a new ThinkPad, but they simply cannot compete with Macbooks. For the record, I am a huge ThinkPad fan, I count 14 thinkpads around me, the most recent one I have being X240. For me, the epitome was X61T. I still have two of those in mint condition. But today, when I buy a laptop it will be a MacBook.
[+] [-] jpalomaki|8 years ago|reply
Drawbacks with my choice are at least the size, probably not so good display and just PCIe x2 for the SSD.
There are small annoyances. The software-hardware integration is not on the level where it should be. Pretty much out of the box and for example sleep does not always work - sometimes when waking up all apps are gone. Windows 10 install is not clean, there's Lenovo and Intel stuff hanging there. I dislike for example the Intel popups that I get when changing WLAN. Yes, it is possible to clean up these, but I'd rather not spend time on that. The build in LTE feels a bit unrealiable, it is not there always when computer wakes up and sometimes I'm not able to get connection. Also Lenovo does not provide 1TB SSD that would be compatible with Microsoft eDrive specs, which allow Bitlocker to offload encryption to SSD (which is anyways doing it).
[+] [-] DerfNet|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reza_n|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arketyp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strgrd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chao-|8 years ago|reply
I have a 3rd Gen, and have several dozen tabs open right now, with no issues, stutter or otherwise. One is playing a video, quite a few are also larger page/webapps (e.g. Gmail, Trello, Github in a large PR). I am have the 1440p version, and am plugged into an external monitor that is at 1440p, which should be further taxing the integrated graphics, but it's not showing. I can't imagine you're coming close to hitting any memory limits with just five or six tabs, so presumably something compute related?
What five to six tabs cause stuttering?
[+] [-] izacus|8 years ago|reply
My top spec 15" touchbar MacBook Pro happily locks it's 2.9GHZ CPU to just 1.2GHz after less than two minutes of running anything intensive (including games) and gets too hot to hold in the lap.
[+] [-] vxxzy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] YorickPeterse|8 years ago|reply
My only complaint is that I had my display replaced 3 (or maybe already 4) times either due to dead pixels, or these white smudges on the screen (these appear to be caused by damage to the LCD). These smudges in particular keep popping up and aren't too uncommon amongst other users either. There's a new one since I last had my screen replaced, but it's fortunately only visible when looking down on the laptop from the top (even then it's hard to see).
[+] [-] girzel|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] callahad|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] HankB99|8 years ago|reply
My wife's laptop was replaced with an Acer. If I were to replace mine today it would probably be with a Dell XPS 15. Only time will tell if these are any better.
[+] [-] xorblurb|8 years ago|reply
I thought that I would regret the Thinkpad keyboard, but the keyboard of the XPS is actually not bad at all (well, the Thinkpad one better, but the XPS is still largely ok for me).
The only thing that I clearly regret are the lack of dedicated Page-up/Page-down keys. This is even ridiculous given there are empty space next to the arrow keys where they could have been put (same place as on the Thinkpad). Well, I can live with that.
[+] [-] Blaine0002|8 years ago|reply
Right after the warranty ended the screen has constant flickering and will sometimes turn to straight up static for 5 minutes at a time. moving the laptop hinge doesnt affect this at all which leads me to believe its a motherboard issue rather than a screen or ribbon cable issue. Besides that, the build quality is actually pretty terrible for what one of these costs and the hinge is flimsy and wobbles around when you move the laptop.
[+] [-] db48x|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zzzeek|8 years ago|reply
I have an older thinkpad from my job which is a great machine but unusuable trackpad-wise due to this design. I use a cheap asus zenbook daily. Would love to have a trackpad-buttons-where-my-thumbs-are lenovo again.
[+] [-] al2o3cr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gruturo|8 years ago|reply
- They confine better specs to the touchbar models, which I would tolerate (not love) if it had the decency of starting after the ESC key. As it is, it's an abomination which must die, die, die.
- They give you USB-C ports (yay) at the expense of leaving you with zero USB-A ports (nay).
- They supply you with a low spec charging cable, indistinguishable from a high spec one
- They took away MagSafe which I love and has saved my laptop
- They took away the SD slot (but left the headphones jack? While arguing in favor of its removal on the iPhone? A bit inconsistent?)
- They massively bumped prices, making it considerably less appealing from a price/specs ratio perspective
- ...and they max out at 16GB just as you criticized the Lenovo.
[+] [-] willtim|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alberth|8 years ago|reply
The X1 is fantastic because it's a matte finish.
I really wish more laptops used a matte finish.
It's so much easier on the eyes (due to lack of reflection).
[+] [-] Roritharr|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wodenokoto|8 years ago|reply
How does Linux run on it?
[+] [-] svennek|8 years ago|reply