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Laptops · Lenovo ThinkPad T-series

Lenovo ThinkPad T-series T14

21owners with an opinion
68%of verdicts positive
13/6positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

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

What owners wrote

Likes it
> And I bet you can soon get a ThinkPad with the same intel chip, that should have similar battery life. Yes you can, speaking from experience. I have the T14 gen 7 with the 75 wh battery, and the 356H CPU, it only uses 4-6w/hour when coding with a lot of browser tabs open, a headless VM running, docker containers and so on, online meetings is about 6-8w/hour, this is under Linux, with default power setting from Opensuse. It can easily last more than 10 working hours, I limit mine to 80% charge as it's more than enough for when I'm on the go.
Doesn’t like it
I challenge you to find a laptop that can do what my macbook air m1 with 8gb of ram does at the $899 it was through the education store. No fan, awesome battery life, good trackpad and keyboard, the ability to not get hot while using it. I'm a senior platform engineer who at the time I bought it was a senior software developer, who can still use it for my daily tasks despite it having 8gb of ram. Until very recently the 32gb T14 I had ad work was frankly worse performant than the little air, while having a battery life of around 45 minutes a fan sounding like a jetengine and a keyboard so hot it made the sun jealous. My new model is way faster than my macbook air though, but the old model was technically newer than the air. Obviously the comparisson isn't completely fair since we run a lot of corporate enterprise stuff on our laptops, but still. I'd really like a Linux laptop, but a Framework laptop is expensive (and it has loud fans and runs hot). A tuxedo is even more expensive and has fans where you'd place it on your legs for whatever reason, and runs hot. Looking at the laptop market now, I can't see what you'd buy. A week ago I would've said the Neo (if the 8gb of ram holds up as well on the mobile chip as it does on the m1), but today I'm guessing a refurbished air with 16gb would be the only real option for someone who want's a cool low noise machine with decent battery time. Whether you run OS/X or Asahi, I really can't see what you'd buy other than these. At least i…
Likes it
> Uncles don’t let relatives buy less than 16gb ram. That has been my standard since ~2010 and our 2013 mbp is still running fine because I insisted on it. Just last weekend I bought 8gb ram thinkpad t14 for an elderly relative. 240 EUR. It replaces his thinkpad x220 where the fan and ssd slowly dies. I doubt it becomes an issue, and if it does then I can upgrade it later.
Likes it
The T series ThinkPads are back to being unsoldered the last couple gens. The regular ones anyway. I've got a T14 Gen 5 that I bought to meet the criteria of having AV1 hwdec and upgradeable RAM. It wouldn't surprise me if the T14s was still soldered, but I also avoid the s suffix models. X series is probably doomed for a similar reason (thinness over everything else), though maybe with LPCAMM2 there's some hope.
Doesn’t like it
Lenovo sells ThinkPad T-series laptops as “Linux-supported.” However, if you happen to buy an AMD version of one of these laptops, you may be surprised by how poorly the Wi‑Fi works. It’s been several years since the T14 Gen4 was released, and yet the Wi‑Fi is still not stable.
Likes it
You probably made the right decision. In my opinion, DHH is underselling how terrible the keyboard on the Dell XPS is. I bought the lunar lake XPS and I hate the keyboard so much, I turned it into an expensive Jellyfin server and bought a $275 thinkpad T14 on ebay to use instead. Maybe the keyboard on the panther lake version is better, but my fingers just get lost with the flat keys. In addition, they are super low-travel and mushy. I gave it a few months and just couldn't handle typing on it anymore.
Likes it
I was assigned an E14 once. Compared to a T14: The case is all thick ABS. It weighs like 2.4 kg, and the weight is unbalanced. The USB-C charge only works at 20V, nothing less. While charging it overheats and spins up the fans. It came with a TN screen with terrible viewing angles, that could not be used in a brightly lit room. I didn't use the laptop for two months while I waited for a replacement screen from aliexpress. Keyboard is much thinner, the trackpoint drifts easily. Camera quality is worse, somehow it cannot handle sun-lit scenes. Microphone and speakers are similar to the T14. It stopped receiving firmware updates after two years. It uses about 0.5 W while suspended, so its tiny 48 Wh battery typically doesn't last the weekend with the lid closed. The motherboard has design issues, a missing protection diode in the headphone jack microphone input ended up frying the CPU due to a ground loop. Meanwhile the T14 has eaten the same ground loop and even a 48V passive PoE in an accident and dealt with it by rebooting. A T450 from 2015 is still running.
Likes it
Ahh, a topic dear to my heart. > Thinkpads are repairable [...], durable [...]. What's not to like? > Thinkpads are “Cheap” because nobody who worships the things buys one new. Confession time: over the years, I've bought 4: x200s, x270, t490s t14 (gen5). All were new when purchased. All were purchased for work + personal use. All run Linux. All are still in my household and still work - the x200s is old enough to drink in some countries. For context, I also bought me one Macbook Pro (at a weird time where PC laptops were more expensive than an equivalent Mac), so it's not like I haven't seen the grass on the other side. > [IBM and Lenovo] are typical companies, who just happen to have some good designers and engineers. That sounds like a good thing. > Yes, Thinkpads are good laptops. I agree. > -A saccharine twenty something. My oldest, still working, ThinkPad is almost older than the author of this blog post?!? Get off my lawn! I'm not sure what the author aims at: maybe "TPs are good if you buy them old, and nobody buys them new". Besides myself, I know a bunch of people who have bought new ones (and no, we're not in some crazy TP fan club). I only have experience with X and T lines, though. Maybe others are crap, dunno.
Doesn’t like it
This sounds like a hardware / firmware problem specific to your particular sound chip / card. Similarly, Bluetooth on my Thinkpad T14 is slightly wonky, and it sometimes fails to register a Bluetooth mouse on wake-up (I have to switch the mouse off and back on). This mouse registers fine on my other Linux machines. The logs show a report from a kernel driver saying that the BT chip behaved weirdly. Binary-blob firmware, and physical hardware, do have bugs, and there's little an OS can do about that, Linux or otherwise. Macs have less hardware variety and higher prices, which makes their hardware errata lists shorter, but not empty.
Likes it
I have a Lenovo thinkpad T14 gen 1. Certainly not the fastest, but in have yet to find a problem running Linux. It suspends, hibernates and I haven’t found any quirks yet Everything works and it’s built like a tank. Battery has 600 cycles and I still get 4 hrs out of it, when in low power mode. I’m pretty sure the newer models aren’t that well built and supported. Maybe the gen 3 and 4 of the T14 is similar good. But YMMV..
Likes it
Author here, posting a self-review. I've realized most of my blog post is not really about NixOS, it's just about this particular TUXEDO laptop requiring special tweaks to work properly. I've set up Debian 13 with Nix (plus Home Manager) in a VM to try it out and have realized that on the real laptop I would need to perform the same tweaks: install special drivers, install the TUXEDO Control Center (albeit using a supported .deb), and add those same kernel params. The only "care-free" option would be using TUXEDO OS, which I could explore. I've run NixOS on e.g. an AMD ThinkPad T14 and it was seamless, with no tweaks needed. I suppose using something other than NixOS would indeed make some things easier (in my case Vanta, `pinentry` programs, Playwright and Cypress) and would perhaps let me live a more hands-off experience. I currently run `nix flake update` on my system way too often... but other than that, NixOS is not really getting in the way, at least as far as using this laptop goes.
Doesn’t like it
I did see this happening with AMD too. AMD drivers had a bug around 2020 that newer AMD Thinkpads couldn't drive 4K displays. It was one of the reasons I stopped using Linux after buying a new Thinkpad T14 Gen 1. Half of the hardware outright didn't work. It took a good 2 years for them to fix it.
Likes it
Probably because I got used to it. I had used 'desktop' in the past - like 1998-2008 - but later as I got laptop and needed to be more 'mobile' the laptop was more desired. Then I 'spent' many years (2012-2022) on a couch with IKEA laptop stand - that worked too. Lately when I have finally done a proper desk again - I added some 'desktop' for either FreeBSD package building with Poudriere or for some casual gaming as AMD Ryzen 1700 with 8C/16T and AMD Radeon 5700 does quite good job at it. ... and I do not use just 'any' laptops. I still use ThinkPad XY20 series from 2011 - they all have that great 7-row keyboard and are VERY usable. As for the upgrades of the hardware - mine ThinkPad W520 can have TWO 2.5 disks at the same time and additional THIRD disk in mSATA port. I also have 4 RAM slots - populated at maximum 32 GB total ... and about a price? Its possible to get one for $200-$300 range. Even if you want something more modern - like ThinkPad T495 with AMD Ryzen - I recently got one for $240 - along with 4 cores and 16 GB RAM. I also got ThinkPad T14 with 6C/12T AMD Ryzen also with 16 GB RAM for $260. These are not expensive toys ...
Doesn’t like it
As a Clojure/ ClojureScript developer myself I just wonder what You do that compilation is such an important part of Your workflow and at the same time don't need as much RAM as possible? Yes, the MacBook Pro isn't bad at all for Clojure(Script) development. I was pretty angry that the Lenovo ThinkPad T14 Gen3 has a full channel of soldered RAM and just a single slot for expansion since I really use a lot of RAM and would prefer to go with 64 GB full dual-channel and not a hybrid 48 GB with 32 GB being dual-channel and 16 GB being single channel. (Yes, it does actually work.) Most builds that I do are done asynchronously using GitHub Actions or similar. Yes, it does take some time but the build+deploy isn't that time sensitive.
Neutral
x86 doesn't need to die because there's nothing wrong with it (or at least, many of its issues are either not talked about or misrepresented.) Marketing hype and people who buy into that have established and cemented a narrative where the despotic x86 chains us to higher power draws and unreasonable architecture choices that we could otherwise do away with if only we could adopt the noble ARM magic silicon. In truth ARM doesn't actually present any real gains (efficiency or otherwise) over x86 in pretty much any space as an inherent consequence of its ISA. The narrative has its origins seeded by way of the principle market that ARM found widespread success in being.... microprocessors and extremely low-end processor like those found in handheld gaming devices and eventually phones. Naturally these processors were designed to sip voltage by way of not actually pushing a whole lot of numbers. The market matured and so did the architecture, and we started to see cellphones that could really sling their weight! It's all smoke and mirrors though, as even in TYOOL 2024 the moment you do something intensive that your phone does not have a hardware accelerator for (eg, compiling software) it becomes apparent the thing you're holding in your hand is about as good as a core 2 duo when it comes to crunching numbers with a lot of branches. Then of course Apple came along and brought ARM back to the desktop space after decades of being relegated to power-sippers. People's jaws hit the flo…
Neutral
I like the Thinkpad T-Series. I own a T430 (equipped with a i5 quad-core processor and Full-HD IPS display), T450s, T480s, and T14. I can confirm that even a decade-old T430, after some upgrades, is still sufficient for using firefox + terminal + tmux + nvim, programming, running containers, and managing k8s clusters with kubectl and k9s. If someone is actively looking for a second-hand device on eBay, I recommend the T480 as it has a very good price/performance ratio. Pick one with a i5/i7 quad-core, 32 GB Ram, FHD or WQHD IPS display and you will be fine.
Doesn’t like itHasn’t owned it
Looks like the T14 Gen 7 is the first T14 to have a CAMM socket. The previous model has SODIMM DDR5-5600, more power hungry? Prior to that it was the more expensive P1 Gen 7 that had LPCAMM2. Regarding the T14 and T16, I'm frustrated that in my market (AU), they don't sell better screens than 1920x1200. I'd like to have a brighter 3k or 4k screen. The LPCAMM2 seems to be limited to the Intel models, according to the pc mag article. https://www.pcmag.com/news/lenovo-thinkpad-t14-gen-7-hands-o...
Recommends itHasn’t owned it
One more vote for used and reasonably recent Thinkpad T series. These are laptops used by businesses and rotated every few years. T480 is getting a bit old, I think T14 gen 2 has the best price/usability ratio at the moment. I'd get at least 16Gb RAM, 32Gb if you can afford it (many recent laptops do not allow RAM upgrades). Windows is pretty resource hungry. You can replace SSD with a bigger one if you want. If you're not comfortable getting used from eBay get "refurbished" one from Amazon. Honestly there's no much differences in how they're handled, but you will be able to return if something's wrong. It the US the cost will be just under $400 for a decent business-class machine. If you want you can reinstall OS from scratch (Windows product code comes in laptop's ROM), I always do to avoid bloat/malware/whatever from the seller.
Doesn’t like itHasn’t owned it
I don't think the build quality is very far off in any sort of terms that matter. Sure, Apple gives you a hollowed out block of aluminum and that's really nice and fancy but that doesn't really matter in any tangible way except feeling nice. Framework has pretty minimal keyboard deck flex and other measures of build quality that actually impact usage. I think it fares better than a good chunk of PC competitors like the ThinkPad T14. The only thing Framework really needs is a haptic trackpad and it'd be pretty much there in terms of the build feel. I also like how Apple puts the air intakes on the side rather than the bottom where they're frequently blocked by a lap or a soft surface.
Recommends itHasn’t owned it
Most manufatures that used TrackPoint's in the past positioned them wrong... Too low or high within the keyboard or the buttons were in uncomfortable positions. I would say mainly IBM and Lenovo have the positioning correct as well as on some models TrackPoint buttons. So if you had tried most of dell's attempts and tought it was useless, that's because it was even though its a simular implimentation :) I would certainly buy a Thinkpad T14 with the classic keyboard layout > in a heart beat... > standard price not x2 mess that was the Thinkpad 25. (( I currently have 6 working thinkpads ))