Lenovo ThinkPad P-series Gen 2 AMD

6owners with an opinion

60%of verdicts positive

2/2positive/negative since 2024

1 yrslongest happy owner

0happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and reliability; criticized for build quality and display.

What people wrote

Likes itOwned 1 year

I have a P14s Gen 2 AMD. I think it's pretty much identical to a T14 Gen 2 AMD because Lenovo. I've had it about a year. No cooling problems, no USB C ports have died, keyboard is pretty good although not as good as my W520. I don't use the trackpad so I can't really comment in it. Only real issue is that disabling the trackpad under Linux doesn't fully disable it.

Neutral

> Do CachyOS optimizations actually make any difference whatsoever? I know they enable certain optimization flags whenever building software, but that doesn't directly equate to performance improvements unless you're actually benchmarking and testing it. I switched from Windows 11 to Kubuntu a year ago, and then gave CachyOS a shot after hearing praise for it. I'm on a laptop with an AMD iGPU, and CachyOS's `znver4` optimized repos gave a significant bump on my Geekbench results: (Note: these results are from almost a year ago though) Lenovo Thinkpad P14s Gen4 AMD - Windows 11: 2366 Single-Core Score, 10717 Multi-Core Score - Kubuntu: 2496 Single-Core Score, 9878 Multi-Core Score - CachyOS: 2569 Single-Core Score, 11563 Multi-Core Score Repeat tests were essentially the same (Win11 23xx/107xx, Kubuntu 24xx/98xx, Cachy 25xx/115xx)

Doesn’t like it

There are weirdos out there. I am looking for a bulkier and more hackable laptop! I bought a ThinkPad P14s Gen5 AMD which has turned out to be a flimsy, plastic (not magnesium like the Intel units), disappointing piece of shit with frequent (but known) GPU crash issues, which I bought because I had a certain moment when I needed a computer and the Framework 16 was still on last-gen hardware, which felt silly to buy so close to an inevitable upgrade. I wish I had, though. Not much difference between an 8840HS and a 7840HS, but a huge difference between even a fairly upgradable ThinkPad like the P14s and a Framework.

Doesn’t like it

> I have a feeling the last time you looked at it was 2013. I literally looked at it last week. Spent multiple days on it. Tried Mint and Zorin (full install, not just live). This is on a brand new Lenovo p16s Gen 4 with AMD (no nvidia). That laptop didn't even exist before this year. List of problems I encountered: -- Multi touch not working (fixed by switching from Mint to Zorin, upgrading mainline kernel in Mint did not help). -- External monitor not working (had to install display link drivers by going into terminal and running scripts and all of that other classic Linux usability) . -- Hardware video acceleration not working (scrolling super slow, maps super slow, entire system super slow). Had to install AMD display drivers for that separately. Upgrading mainline kernel worked for Mint, but not for Zorin. Installing AMD drivers in Zorin involved downloading the drivers, !editting an install script that is part of the drivers! and then having an LLM guide me through the rest of the extremely elaborate process of installing the driver. -- And to top it off, my classic pet peeve: there's no way to configure something as basic as scroll-lines (mouse scrollwheel speed) through a GUI in ANY of the distros. It involves installing imwheel, !writing a script!, setting the script to run on boot and then rebooting (and/or restarting the script). So no. There's definitely no "it just works". Not even on a laptop that is supposed to have official HW vendor support for Ubuntu. Also,…

Doesn’t like it

You can repair a Mac by handing it (and possibly your wallet) to Apple and letting them replace entire large subsystems to remedy the issue and pair the new parts. A few years back (pre-Apple Silicon) I got a new top case, keyboard, battery, and trackpad because the button in the trackpad had failed. Pretty good deal on a laptop that was nearly 3 years old, in fairness. To repair (or upgrade) a Framework, you buy the part and install it. That's worth something to me! Incidentally, I also have a last-gen ThinkPad P14s Gen 5 AMD and it's a flimsy POS. Already needed a new motherboard and battery and spent three weeks sitting at the service center while they rounded up the parts. Wish I'd bought another Framework 13.

Doesn’t like it

I have a P14s Gen 5 AMD, which afaik is just a T14 with some certifications, and it's flimsy. The whole chassis is plastic and quite flexible. It's also currently at a Lenovo service center because the battery lasted a whole month before failing and claiming to be "non-genuine." ThinkPads ain't what they were. My x230 is still going.

Likes it

I’ve never bought one of the dedicated Linux laptops, but I’ve had pretty good luck with AMD stuff. My current laptop, Thinkpad P16s AMD Gen 2, was pretty straightforward to get working with NixOS. No special drivers, and everything, including WiFi and function buttons on the keyboard, worked fine without any kind of special concessions. This was also the case for my last non-Mac, from 2017-2020, I got Ubuntu installed on there without many headaches, and it wasn’t a specific Linux laptop, though again it was AMD.

Likes it

Just bought a P14s gen5 AMD with a 16:10 OLED, reconditioned, for about a grand. Two SoDIMM slots and one m.2 NVMe slot. Now rocking 96GB RAM, for which I paid the princely sum of 200 pieces of silver. Loaded openSUSE on it - everything works. It feels plasticky (magnesium chassis T/P-series belong to the ages) but it's a damn sight more computer than I could get from Apple for that money. Well, apart from the battery life, RAM bandwidth, OS-hardware integration, and build quality. It's more RAM than I could get from Apple for that money, for sure.

Likes it

Yes, author of the post here. BTW, I have a 500EUR Thinkpad (P14s Gen 1 AMD) that I like very much but it is heavier, the fans spins often and the battery life is bad (like, 2 hours in a good day). So definitely in a whole other league. I bought this Thinkpad thinking that I would bring everywhere, but after trying to get the battery life to something acceptable and never getting at a good level, I decided to just forget it and leave at my desk. I still love the fact that I can get a 8 core CPU in such a small profile and have 40GB of RAM, but if you ask me which device I would bring in a trip... well, you know the answer already ;).

Likes it

T480 weighs 3.6lb vs. 3.5 for a 14" M1. I'm surprised you noticed. MBP doesn't have a trackpoint. Still can't run Linux as well, lacks USB A so still requires constant dongles despite improved port selection. I moved from a 2018 15" MBP to a P14s Gen 2 AMD. The speakers, screen, trackpad are worse. But I don't care. I'm not stuck using a horrible OS with miniscule amounts of storage to keep the price down. The machine doesn't go from frigid to boiling in 3 minutes either. I can't imagine I'd be happier with a 14" MBP, I just don't care enough about saving 5 minutes to put up with macOS and locked down hardware. The only thing I miss from the 2018 MBP is the ability to charge from the left or right side.

Likes itDoesn’t say they own it

I bought an MBP 14" (Max, 32 core GPU, 32GB RAM, 2TB SSD) which I mostly don't regret. The things that give me pause are the battery life is only (only, haha) 9 hours or so, the resolution isn't ideal (the integer scaling options are either tiny or gigantic) and it was... $3,700? If I'd bumped down to the pro I would've saved money and gotten better battery life. When I made this decision, I was between the Framework and a ThinkPad P14s Gen 2 AMD. I still think I made the right choice, but I think the P14s would've been a great option. Lenovo hasn't released an AMD Gen 3 for the P14s, so you'd have to live with the ThinkPad T14 Gen 3 AMD instead (they're the same laptop, it turns out). It's: - Ryzen 6850U - 32GB RAM - 14" 3840x2400 IPS Matte display (500 nits, 100% DCI-P3) - 1080p camera - $1,600 The extra nice thing about this is you get Ryzen and USB4, which lets you use eGPUs and the like. --- All that said, I can't at all vouch for Lenovo support. If this is the defining characteristic for you I'd do more research before picking one of these up.