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Laptops · Lenovo ThinkPad

Lenovo ThinkPad P14s

23owners with an opinion
88%of verdicts positive
14/2positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and noise; criticized for battery and reliability.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 3 yearsStill going
TIL about the PS/55 Note, a precursor to the 700C for the japanese market. And 85 key XT keyboards. I'm on my 3rd Thinkpad, this one is a P14s, 3 years old now and still powerful enough for most things, esp now that I'm on linux. My previous was an X1 Carbon, which I love for the light weight and one-hand hinge, but quickly became too underpowered for Win10 + Visual Studio + SQL Server, because of its u - low powered CPU and only 16GB of RAM. I was able to upgrade the RAM of the P14s, by buying one with 1 soldered DIMM and one empty slot.
Neutral
As a VERY long-time Linux user, I agree. Multi-monitor setups, where you can unplug the monitor and have your windows gather back onto your laptop screen requires WAY too much configuration. Having your audio switch back to internal laptop speakers requires homebrewing a script. On my 2020 Dell XPS, I still haven't figured out how to enable the subwoofers - so I'm stuck with ThinkPad quality audio. I have 3 ThinkPads (one with straight ArchLinux, 2 with CachyOS) and there's always some little piece I'm annoyed with. The X1C has good battery life, the T480 and P14s are meh. I JUST bought my first HiDPI Lenovo laptop this weekend. Getting that to be a decent tradeoff between readable text and mongo-duplo-massive UI has been "fun". (Yoga 15.3" Aura edition - I really like it) But running apps in Wine is darn near impossible - the text is for ants! All of these issues go away with Mac and Windows. I'm not giving up on Linux, I'm just a realist.
Likes it
It's a question of priorities, I guess. I admit I love the mbp hardware, but I can't stand macos anymore. So when my work computer was up for replacement, I didn't think twice and went with a PC, the latest thinkpad p14s. Everything works out of the box on Linux. Is it as nice as a mac? No, especially the plastic case doesn't feel as nice under the hands as a mac's aluminum, the touchpad is quite good but worse than a mac's, and there are some gaps around the display hinge. But the display itself is quite nice (similar resolution, oled, although not as bright as a mac's), it's silent and it's plenty fast for what I do. I didn't pay for it, so I don't directly care about this point in this situation, but it also cost around half of what an equivalent mbp would have cost. I also haven't tried the battery life yet, but it should hold at least as well as my 5-yo hp elitebook, which still held for around 5 hours last year. I basically never use it for more than an hour unplugged, so battery life is low on my priorities.
Neutral
I appreciate all the innovations that him and his team brought to the ThinkPad, since this is my main set of laptops. Lenovo, on the other hand, has been a hit or miss for awhile. I had a T570, which was horrible; one problem after the next. It's just a source of parts now. There are some design issues with the T480 (no center screw in the front/bottom). Also with the T480 is, what it seems to be, the slightly flaky USB-C connectors. The external keyboard (non-bluetooth), while very useful for 2 years, has always been a struggle with the flimsy micro-usb, leaving me to hack that. But now, I somehow now lost an important key on it, I just gave up and bought a nice Tex Shinobi. The only stable-ish one is the one I am on now, a T470p. It's not been perfect, but it's the best designed TP I had (my T430s is overall good, except for battery power, but the internals for those old machines are a chore to get through.) I have a P14s at work. It's OK, but nothing to write home about. If all these TPs die, and Framework has a trackpoint version + delivers to my country, I would like to get that instead.
Likes it
Doing connected work from the subway has gotten much, much easier in the last few years. I attribute that to three things: 1. Cell service has become low-latency. This is very different from "fast", which it has also become! When I started working from the train (on HSPA+), pings in the hundreds of milliseconds were the norm. My first step was usually to SSH to a remote machine, and let just the text lag on me. Nowadays, I can run a Web browser locally without issue. 2. Cell service has, at the same time, become ubiquitous in subway tunnels. When I started, there were some areas that dropped down to EDGE (unusable), and some areas that had no service at all. Now, there is exactly one place on the Boston transit system - Back Bay Station - where I lose cell service. 3. Noise cancelling tech has gotten better. It's not just about noise cancelling headphones: both of my laptops (a 2024 MBP and a ThinkPad P14s) have microphones that can filter out screeching wheels and noisy teenagers quite well. That means I can take meetings without making them miserable for the people on the other end. These, honestly, are a huge game-changer for me. The ability to take a 30 minute meeting while commuting, where otherwise I would've had to get in early or stay late at work, actually does wonders for my ability to have a life outside of work.
Neutral
You have to configure it with the lowest-spec SSD and then replace that with an aftermarket 4 TB SSD at around $215. The P14s I bought last week, with that and the 8 GB Nvidia GPU, came to a total of USD $2150 after taxes, including the SSD. Their sale price today is not quite as good as it was last week but it's still in that ballpark; with the 255H CPU and iGPU and a decent screen, and you can get the Intel P14s for $2086 USD. That actually becomes $1976 because you get $110 taken off at checkout. Then throw in the aftermarket SSD and it'll be around $2190. And if you log in as a business customer you'll get another couple percent off as well. The AMD model P14s, with 96 GB and upgraded CPU and the nice screen and linux, still goes for under $1600 at checkout, which becomes $1815 when you add the aftermarket SSD upgrade. It's still certainly a lot to spend on a laptop if you don't need it, but it's a far cry from $5k/year.
Likes it
I can relate. I've spent almost 30 years working primarily on Linux. I moved Windows to be under VM when I needed it around for occasionally using MS Office, first under vmware and later under kvm. Now I don't even use it as a VM, since work has Office 365. My work got me a similar M4 MacBook Pro early this year, and I find the friction high enough that I rarely use it. It is, at best, an annoying SSH over VPN client that runs the endpoint-management tools my IT group wants. Otherwise, it is a paperweight since it adds nothing for me. The rest of the time, I continue to use Fedora on my last gen Thinkpad P14s (AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U). Or even my 5+ year old Thinkpad T495 (AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 3700U), though I can only use it for scratch stuff since it has a sporadic "fan error" that will prevent boot when it happens. But, I'm not doing any local work that is really GPU dependent. If I were, I'd be torn between chasing the latest AMD iGPU that can use large (but lower bandwidth) system RAM versus rekindling my old workstation habit to host a full size graphics card. It would depend on the details of what I needed to run. I don't really like the NVIDIA driver experience on Linux, but have worked with it in the past (when I had a current gen Titan X) but also did OpenCL on several vendors.
Doesn’t like it
Running as a user where things need to work is not the same as being headless wherrle all you need is CLI access, disk and network ... My lenovo p14s is a great linux laptop unless you want it to sleep (which it does!) It even wakes up! But 50% of the time the trackpad does not wake up properly ... Making hard to be used as a laptop that I can get things done on
Neutral
The worst for me was also my first one, T570. Two motherboard changes because of a flex-y body that put too much pressure on the hard drive connector. I had to use it for a few months because my main computer had to be fixed. I thought I can get more time out of it - nope. That flex-y body probably put too much pressure on something else and after many attempts (for some reason) of resetting the CMOS battery and using it a little, the thing would go right into a boot loop. I bought a new T480 (can use the battery from the T570! :D ) and this is soo much sturdier. Also have a T470p -- besides my screen issue, that thing is a really sturdy. I have a P14s Gen 3 (so basically a T14s with the power-hungry GPU :D ) from work. I don't think the fit and finish is great, but it properly feels sturdy at least.
Doesn’t like it
I have a T14s (AMD) which works very nicely, battery lasts for long 7-8 hours and things generally work. Before that, I had a P14s Gen1 for work. No matter what, that system runs a bit hot and battery times are awful. I haven't dedicated days to searching for fixes, but that's my point, it used to _just work_, and in this case, it works poorly. It used to be the case that outside of certain specific setups (like a dual-GPU machine), Lenovo Thinkpads would just work, Ubuntu certified or not. But that P14s G1 really soured my experience. I would advise you to check the return policy, maybe double-check if anyone has blogged about their device. FWIW I have had many thinkpads over the years, they _mostly_ work well. But there have been more misses as of late. I will add that I also own a Z13 Gen 1 and that it works well. Albeit the battery drains much faster because of the high-res oled screen. And I do think the palm-rest is a bit uncomfortable, the edges are too sharp, but that's not a Linux issue :D
Likes it
If you really cared you could get fanless PCs. A few of the Surface Pro models have been fanless. I had a gorgeous fanless Xiaomi Mi book that had virtually no branding. Basically any fanless PC post SSD introduction are just as silent. From what I've heard some of Apple's newer MBPs with fans can get noisy under load too, particularly the 14". I wouldn't call my ThinkPad P14s AMD gen whatever loud either. The fan will spin up when multiple cores are under heavy load but compared to the 2018 MBP it replaced it's essentially silent.
Likes it
Lenovo Thinkpad p14s(t14) gen 4, 7840U, $1300, oled 2.8K 400 nits P3, 64gb RAM, 1TB, keyboard excellent, speakers shitty(using sony wh-1000xm4), battery(52.5Wh) life not good not bad, OLED screen draws huge amount of power. weight ~3 lb.
Likes it
I got P14s with 64GB of RAM, 1TB SSD and other specs maxed out for $1050 (patiently waited for a sale from Lenovo). Other than the battery life, the P14s is roughly equivalent to a Macbook Pro M2 Pro for $3500. Windows sucks in the default install, but if you know what you're doing you can remove all the junk from it and make Windows almost as efficient as, say, Linux (and way more efficient than macOS). In my opinion, Macbooks are for people who'd rather pay more than take care of and optimize their laptops. I could have paid 3 times as much for a similarly spec'ed Macbook, but then I'd have to put up with a silly notch, not having a right Ctrl key, a keyboard getting shiny after a couple of months and other annoyances. So why even bother with Macbooks?
Likes it
Recently, I got a P14s with the AMD Ryzen PRO 7840U. Its CPU and GPU are a different architecture than the Ryzen PRO 3700U in the my old T495. The P14s seems very fast and stable with Fedora 39. I tested OpenCL as well as Steam games and general desktop usage with Firefox. But to be honest, I didn't have as much trouble as you describe with my T495 either. I ran it exclusively with Fedora since right before the pandemic. My main problem was that I could not use OpenCL at all. But for desktop usage and even Steam games, it worked well enough. I'll admit I rarely use suspend/resume, so if your problems were related to that, it might explain my different experience. I've noticed the T495 is very slow to resume compared to most other machines I've used including the P14s and lots of Intel-based Thinkpads.
Neutral
The P14s is actually fairly close to the T14. I think the P series used to be intended as beefier compared to the T series, but at least in case of 14-inch models, there doesn't seem to be much of a difference nowadays. The P14s is thin and light similarly to modern T series. I think some of the larger P series models are available with discrete GPUs and possibly more powerful CPUs, though. (I have a private T14 as well as a P14s from a couple of generations ago for work.)
Likes it
Performance-to-endurance ratio - unfortunately, no. But P14s (owned one before M1 Pro) has great build quality, performance is comparable, screen is good enough, keyboard is much better, sound is adequate, ports are better, portability is better... It's also very quiet even when under load. You're definitely not missing that much if you go with it instead of MBP 14, in my experience.
Neutral
I just bought a laptop for the first time in 10 years or so and I've spent quite some time and effort looking for it (bought 4 laptops, sent them all back and bought a 5th one). My priorities were - best keyboard possible - good layout you can get used to (ANSI vs ISO, dedicated pgup, pgdn, home end keys not too far from each other and arrow keys), good tactile feedback - case stability - good touchpad. I prefer physical buttons instead of or at least next to clickpads which is getting increasingly difficult to find - decent cpu perf, measure what's important for you (turns out for my use case AMD 5800U's 8 cores didn't make a difference compared to Tiger lake for my work) - upgradeable RAM or at least 32GB soldered - OK screen (350+ nits, reasonably color accurate, preferably matte) - battery life 6h+ on wifi - thermals and noise - does the fan make high pitched noise, how often does it kick in, is the case/keyboard warm - no nose webcam - USB-A AND USB-C ports (+placement: both on both sides), ideally also HDMI, headphone jack, thunderbolt - fingerprint reader/Hello, hardware TPM2.0 - 3 year warranty, on site service - after all this also portability I tried HP Zbook power, HP Firefly 14, HP Elitebook 840, Thinkpad X1 Carbon, Thinkpad P14s and Schenker Vision 14 and settled for the 840. The Carbon is also a nice machine, the P14s is massive while not bringing any major benefits, the Schenker had some built quality issues but otherwise looks great. I've found HP's keyboard j
Doesn’t like itHasn’t owned it
Specs of the third party semiconductors are like half of what you have to look at in a laptop. As tools they are subject to a lot of wear and tear, desktop computers you can compare on pure specs, but not laptops, the plastic frame of the P14s will make your investment last way less than the metal body Macbook Air. On that note, Lenovo leadership is being super short sighted in diluting the ThinkPad brand with these models. Didn't they use to have the IdeaPad as the product line made of less durable materials?
Likes itHasn’t owned it
I ended up buying an MBP 14" because of the apps, but I very very nearly bought a ThinkPad P14s G2 [0]. It's fast, cheap (wait for a deal) has good battery life (for a non MacBook Air), has a great, bright, matte 4k screen, and an Ethernet port . If I could afford to be Linux only like I have been in the past I would've definitely gone this route. [0]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-P14s-G2-AMD-la...