Seems like I lost access to my old account, so had to create a new one.
I just bought this a couple of days ago. I went with the ryzen, OLED version and 32GB RAM. I ordered without an OS and run Ubuntu on it. The decision was between T14 , the carbon x1 and the framework.
My previous laptop was a x1 gen 3. The laptop hinge broke :/ I absolute love this machine.
Impressions so far:
* Ubuntu 23.04 and Gnome runs so good that we even setup a donation on behalf of our company to the Gnome foundation. Ubuntu 22 will keep locking up.
* Everything works - camera, video recording, qualcomm wifi, all function keys etc. Even fingerprint login works!
* Gnome tweak tool is your friend. Especially to adjust those font sizes. I switched to noto from the default ubuntu.
* Keyboard is great but x1 carbon is still the best :-)
* Maybe my eyesight is failing me but I find no great difference between the FHD of x1 carbon gen 3 and OLED with 3 times more resolution.
* Batter is like 5 hours of so when I am working full time. I suspect OLED has something to do with this low battery life.
* Love that the camera has a physical switch
Some other tips:
* When you order be sure to not order the computer vision camera. This doesn't work on linux and there is a post on LKML saying it won't work for the next 2 years atleast.
* I am based in berlin, so ordered from Germany. You can order the "Beleuchtete Tastatur, schwarz – Englisch (EU)" keyboard for the US keyboard. Only practical change is euro sign instead of dollar in number 4 key.
* In the penultimate order screen, lenovo will sneak in a support option. But there's actually a basic support option which will save you some money. I think only difference is you might have to mail in your laptop for fixes, not sure.
What kind of programs do you use? I can get ~20 hours on a zenbook flip with OLED, because I use mostly terminal programs (black background, so most of the pixels are off).
Have you tried running powertop for a bit? It would be interesting to see if the screen was consuming most of the power, or if the draw can be attributed to a particular device (maybe it is something useless like a Bluetooth radio that you can shut off!)
I wonder, if you can’t see the difference, maybe try halving the screen resolution? No reason to render all those extra pixels if you don’t need them, right? Plus, I guess it is rare in 2023, but any UI elements that are badly coded and not scalable would be sort of “normal sized.”
What is the hardware decoding/acceleration scene with Linux on modern laptops such as this?
1. Can you expect to watch Netflix, fandom video services like F1tv without tinkering with some tunables in the OS?
2. What is the sleep/wakeup situation like?
Can it do MacBook style - shut your lid when you go away from desk for a coffee and come back and open the lid for instant ON(back to work)? Reliably?
3. Also, does x86 laptops have the sane sleep state back? Or does it still keep sipping power and heat up while stashed in the backpack?
Happy to see the refresh. These APU systems are great.
The alarmingly priced usb-c dock works. Three monitors around laptop, no problem. The LTE modem works out of the box on windows and works with some arguing on Linux (I built a driver from GitHub, but that's probably improved since).
An not-obvious benefit of the Lenovo ones is they're on the approved list for AMD's employees, so broken stuff is pretty immediately apparent to lots of people with internal paths for reporting bugs to Lenovo.
Thinkpad shill here. Before buying Thinkpads, I recommend a quick search of threads about existing units (and immediate predecessors) for overheating issues. Lenovo prioritizes performance (good!) but in the past has overestimated the cooling/manufacture.
Lenovo learns tho; the trend is that issue-y lines are followed by stable lines. ex:Some early X1 gens had a small % with issues and later were fine. ex:We just redid the thermal compound on a 2yo P15 this week (thermal shutdowns). Ours seemed to be an outlier and was clean + lightly used.
Lenovo absolutely honors warranties tho and will even allow purchasing an extended after expiration (tho w/ a 30day 'cooling' period).
I have two framework laptops with Intel CPU. I unfortunately would not recommend framework with Intel - they can't handle any development workload through docker without the risk of launching to the moon from the fans spinning. I hope that AMD ones are better.
TLDR (though do try to read the review: Notebookcheck is one of the most trustworthy and methodical tech review sites)
The main competitors here is the HP EliteBook 845 G10 and the MacBook Pro 14 M2 Pro.
- Design: classic ThinkPad look, a bit brutalist. Lighter than MacBook Pro 14 since it uses carbon fiber instead of metal.
- Networking, keyboard: great
- Display: 16:10 Full HD IPS, 400 nits with very good contrast ratio 1800:1, though the MacBook Pro and laptop with OLED screens will still have the edge here
- Performance: Ryzen 7 7840U is currently the flagship low-power laptop CPU from AMD. Comparable to the i7-1370P and the M2 Pro 12-core, especially in terms of multi-core and efficiency. It completely slaughters any U-variant from Intel. The iGPU Radeon 780M is currently the fastest iGPU in the x86 world, leading Intel's Iris Xe Graphics G7 by around 50% in most games and tests.
- Emission: fan noise and heat are no issue, around the same as MacBook Pro 14.
- Battery: same as MacBook Pro 14, i.e., really good.
In short, a true Windows alternative to the MacBook Pro. The main factor for this is the stellar Ryzen 7 7840U and its Radeon 780M. Ever since it appears in Windows handheld gaming consoles, it has shown to be a capable balance between performance and power consumption, asymptomatic to the M2 Pro. The only problem is AMD not making it available widely enough, with laptop options trickling down quite slowly compared to Intel. (There was rumor laptop makers have to restrict the use of the 7840U since its iGPU means a cut to their gaming segment.)
I used a ThinkPad X1 Carbon G9 before, and while it's great, the Intel CPU really handicapped it. Now I'm on a MacBook Air M1, but damn the Windows offerings are more and more attractive now (thanks to macOS ruining an otherwise good laptop).
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. It had really bad idle power management for background tasks. This had never happened before on any older T14’s with Intel cpu. I won’t get another laptop with AMD again.
I thought I was the only one. I was excited to get a Thinkpad because just about every nerd praises them all the time and I thought the AMD one would be a great experience, but it was terribly slow. Additionally, the trackpad, the screen and the camera broke independently of each other and needed to be replaced which makes me really doubt the build quality (though having a technician come to your home tk repair it is great).
All in all, it was a bad experience and didn't even last 2 years for me. I don't think I'll be buying another Thinkpad soon.
I run Manjaro Linux with i3wm on a T14s gen3. I connect to two 2560x1440 external monitors via thunderbolt 3 dock.
I wish I could say it is 100% stable. It's close, and close enough for me to rely on it. Occasionally when I plug in to the dock the external monitors do not activate. Also if I plug in power while suspended, it powers on. I have face unlock working, which is nice. I have problems with connecting my Samsung bluetooth earbuds, but I haven't tried very hard to make that work well.
Idles at around 5 watts, which is nice. Real world use is around 6-8 hours battery, which is just about good enough for me. I had an X1 Extreme gen 3 before and it was the battery life that made me change. Before that a P51s which I do miss because of the clunky docking station and numeric keypad. It was too heavy though, and battery only just ok, even with two batteries including extended at the rear.
Shortly. T14s Gen 4 AMD are certified (you can check on the Canonical website), but (from official sourcec) Lenovo hasn't made available (due to internal testing) the Linux image yet.
How the image relates to upstream... I have no idea.
Does anyone know if it's possible to buy thinkpads with a US keyboard layout in Europe? Any thinkpad with a layout that's not the non-qwerty local variant of my country takes more than 6 weeks to deliver, and that is to get UK layout, not the US layout with different enter key, which I can't even find available at all
I'd much prefer if companies used the actual technical names for such layouts, i.e. ISO and ANSI. It's always hard to check the layout details to find out if what they call "English" means ANSI (US) or ISO (European).
Isn't the English (EU) layout close enough? I think it's basically the US layout with a Euro sign somewhere, but the physical key layout should be the same as a regular US keyboard.
Yes, I've been able to get them. You should be able to find an International English or US English Euro layout. --This is the standard keyboard used in The Netherlands, by the way.
Agreed. Even with my 24" a 16:10 is better. At 27"+ doesn't matter as much. Sadly to get high refresh rates I got a 34" 3440x1440 one for gaming and media viewing.
I was almost fooled by their 'Full HD' description, but glad to see 1920x1200 in the specs that followed.
I would love to have a SD/microSD card reader option, then I would not need any dongle.
Is anybody aware if you can repurpose the smart card reader slot on the T14 or T14s?
Tangential, what are the options for an AMD to drive a 5k screen? I chose an Intel laptop and then Mac with Thunderbolt. Seems AMD laptops with Thunderbolt are rare but exist, and upcoming USB standards could drive 5k.
> I don't get why biz users need multicore anything.
To run crapware/spyware installed by their corporate IT, of course! And I'm only half kidding since I distinctly remember how I couldn't even listen to Youtube Music without stuttering on my corporate Lenovo laptop on my previous job.
> biz users are email and a few small spreadsheets. I don't get why biz users need multicore anything.
That's a fairly narrow view of what a business user might do. The spreadsheets aren't necessarily small, there's usually a messaging tool or two open, and several web browsers open to line of business apps, etc. (This is before even considering OS overhead and the like.)
> biz users are email and a few small spreadsheets. I don't get why biz users need multicore anything.
Have you opened a Chrome or Electron app recently? And many biz users need to run those apps while on Zoom with a virtual background for the camera.
Based on your logic, all most biz users really need for email and spreadsheets can be done using Lotus Notes / 1-2-3 on a single-core IBM 5150 with 5 MHZ and 256KB of memory.
Webapps like Salesforce, Gmail, Slack, Google Docs drink resources. They occasionally get stuck pegging an entire core indefinitely. Also Microsoft Teams.
When line of business apps like email use 1GB of memory each you need a faster machine than if you use mutt.
Honestly the 8core ~15W things are alright for dev work. It seems to be game for giving all the power budget to one core. Runs a badly configured Emacs with misc c++ parsing nonsense without trouble, and I build llvm on one every few months without too much irritation.
gramakri2|2 years ago
I just bought this a couple of days ago. I went with the ryzen, OLED version and 32GB RAM. I ordered without an OS and run Ubuntu on it. The decision was between T14 , the carbon x1 and the framework.
My previous laptop was a x1 gen 3. The laptop hinge broke :/ I absolute love this machine.
Impressions so far:
* Ubuntu 23.04 and Gnome runs so good that we even setup a donation on behalf of our company to the Gnome foundation. Ubuntu 22 will keep locking up.
* Everything works - camera, video recording, qualcomm wifi, all function keys etc. Even fingerprint login works!
* Gnome tweak tool is your friend. Especially to adjust those font sizes. I switched to noto from the default ubuntu.
* Keyboard is great but x1 carbon is still the best :-)
* Maybe my eyesight is failing me but I find no great difference between the FHD of x1 carbon gen 3 and OLED with 3 times more resolution.
* Batter is like 5 hours of so when I am working full time. I suspect OLED has something to do with this low battery life.
* Love that the camera has a physical switch
Some other tips:
* When you order be sure to not order the computer vision camera. This doesn't work on linux and there is a post on LKML saying it won't work for the next 2 years atleast.
* I am based in berlin, so ordered from Germany. You can order the "Beleuchtete Tastatur, schwarz – Englisch (EU)" keyboard for the US keyboard. Only practical change is euro sign instead of dollar in number 4 key.
* In the penultimate order screen, lenovo will sneak in a support option. But there's actually a basic support option which will save you some money. I think only difference is you might have to mail in your laptop for fixes, not sure.
AMA.
bee_rider|2 years ago
Have you tried running powertop for a bit? It would be interesting to see if the screen was consuming most of the power, or if the draw can be attributed to a particular device (maybe it is something useless like a Bluetooth radio that you can shut off!)
I wonder, if you can’t see the difference, maybe try halving the screen resolution? No reason to render all those extra pixels if you don’t need them, right? Plus, I guess it is rare in 2023, but any UI elements that are badly coded and not scalable would be sort of “normal sized.”
reacharavindh|2 years ago
1. Can you expect to watch Netflix, fandom video services like F1tv without tinkering with some tunables in the OS?
2. What is the sleep/wakeup situation like? Can it do MacBook style - shut your lid when you go away from desk for a coffee and come back and open the lid for instant ON(back to work)? Reliably?
3. Also, does x86 laptops have the sane sleep state back? Or does it still keep sipping power and heat up while stashed in the backpack?
JonChesterfield|2 years ago
The alarmingly priced usb-c dock works. Three monitors around laptop, no problem. The LTE modem works out of the box on windows and works with some arguing on Linux (I built a driver from GitHub, but that's probably improved since).
An not-obvious benefit of the Lenovo ones is they're on the approved list for AMD's employees, so broken stuff is pretty immediately apparent to lots of people with internal paths for reporting bugs to Lenovo.
john_miller|2 years ago
calvinmorrison|2 years ago
WarOnPrivacy|2 years ago
Lenovo learns tho; the trend is that issue-y lines are followed by stable lines. ex:Some early X1 gens had a small % with issues and later were fine. ex:We just redid the thermal compound on a 2yo P15 this week (thermal shutdowns). Ours seemed to be an outlier and was clean + lightly used.
Lenovo absolutely honors warranties tho and will even allow purchasing an extended after expiration (tho w/ a 30day 'cooling' period).
oaiey|2 years ago
bkovacev|2 years ago
magnio|2 years ago
The main competitors here is the HP EliteBook 845 G10 and the MacBook Pro 14 M2 Pro.
- Design: classic ThinkPad look, a bit brutalist. Lighter than MacBook Pro 14 since it uses carbon fiber instead of metal.
- Networking, keyboard: great
- Display: 16:10 Full HD IPS, 400 nits with very good contrast ratio 1800:1, though the MacBook Pro and laptop with OLED screens will still have the edge here
- Performance: Ryzen 7 7840U is currently the flagship low-power laptop CPU from AMD. Comparable to the i7-1370P and the M2 Pro 12-core, especially in terms of multi-core and efficiency. It completely slaughters any U-variant from Intel. The iGPU Radeon 780M is currently the fastest iGPU in the x86 world, leading Intel's Iris Xe Graphics G7 by around 50% in most games and tests.
- Emission: fan noise and heat are no issue, around the same as MacBook Pro 14.
- Battery: same as MacBook Pro 14, i.e., really good.
In short, a true Windows alternative to the MacBook Pro. The main factor for this is the stellar Ryzen 7 7840U and its Radeon 780M. Ever since it appears in Windows handheld gaming consoles, it has shown to be a capable balance between performance and power consumption, asymptomatic to the M2 Pro. The only problem is AMD not making it available widely enough, with laptop options trickling down quite slowly compared to Intel. (There was rumor laptop makers have to restrict the use of the 7840U since its iGPU means a cut to their gaming segment.)
I used a ThinkPad X1 Carbon G9 before, and while it's great, the Intel CPU really handicapped it. Now I'm on a MacBook Air M1, but damn the Windows offerings are more and more attractive now (thanks to macOS ruining an otherwise good laptop).
ww520|2 years ago
Justin_K|2 years ago
Switched to Dell and couldn't be happier.
leononame|2 years ago
All in all, it was a bad experience and didn't even last 2 years for me. I don't think I'll be buying another Thinkpad soon.
soziawa|2 years ago
jefc1111|2 years ago
I wish I could say it is 100% stable. It's close, and close enough for me to rely on it. Occasionally when I plug in to the dock the external monitors do not activate. Also if I plug in power while suspended, it powers on. I have face unlock working, which is nice. I have problems with connecting my Samsung bluetooth earbuds, but I haven't tried very hard to make that work well.
Idles at around 5 watts, which is nice. Real world use is around 6-8 hours battery, which is just about good enough for me. I had an X1 Extreme gen 3 before and it was the battery life that made me change. Before that a P51s which I do miss because of the clunky docking station and numeric keypad. It was too heavy though, and battery only just ok, even with two batteries including extended at the rear.
pizza234|2 years ago
How the image relates to upstream... I have no idea.
tlhunter|2 years ago
Aardwolf|2 years ago
seego|2 years ago
edwcross|2 years ago
fweimer|2 years ago
tallanvor|2 years ago
FirmwareBurner|2 years ago
Order them from the Netherlands, Romania or other EU countries that use the US-INT layout.
mikeweiss|2 years ago
tivert|2 years ago
dmbche|2 years ago
karmakaze|2 years ago
I was almost fooled by their 'Full HD' description, but glad to see 1920x1200 in the specs that followed.
m1ckey|2 years ago
ndiddy|2 years ago
pella|2 years ago
aitchnyu|2 years ago
0xbadcafebee|2 years ago
chx|2 years ago
aitchnyu|2 years ago
dhruvdh|2 years ago
_a_a_a_|2 years ago
If a dev machine I'd get it, but biz users are email and a few small spreadsheets. I don't get why biz users need multicore anything.
caskstrength|2 years ago
To run crapware/spyware installed by their corporate IT, of course! And I'm only half kidding since I distinctly remember how I couldn't even listen to Youtube Music without stuttering on my corporate Lenovo laptop on my previous job.
mschaef|2 years ago
That's a fairly narrow view of what a business user might do. The spreadsheets aren't necessarily small, there's usually a messaging tool or two open, and several web browsers open to line of business apps, etc. (This is before even considering OS overhead and the like.)
terminous|2 years ago
Have you opened a Chrome or Electron app recently? And many biz users need to run those apps while on Zoom with a virtual background for the camera.
Based on your logic, all most biz users really need for email and spreadsheets can be done using Lotus Notes / 1-2-3 on a single-core IBM 5150 with 5 MHZ and 256KB of memory.
supertrope|2 years ago
When line of business apps like email use 1GB of memory each you need a faster machine than if you use mutt.
JonChesterfield|2 years ago
scarface_74|2 years ago
jpalomaki|2 years ago
The i7-1355U version takes pretty big hit, starting from 1500 units going quickly down to 1000. Probably due to thermal throttling.
wutwutwat|2 years ago
coin|2 years ago
wbeckler|2 years ago
MrRolleyes|2 years ago