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Laptops · Lenovo ThinkPad

Lenovo ThinkPad T410

16owners with an opinion
57%of verdicts positive
1/2positive/negative since 2024
12 yrslongest happy owner
3happy after 3+ years

Praised for reliability and comfort; criticized for durability and software.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 12 yearsStill going
When you need one. No matter how long you wait, there will always be another chipset coming out, or a lower price. A week after you lay your money down, so it seems. Get off the treadmill. I tend to buy as good a machine as I can afford and then hold that machine for many years. I use this same philosophy for buying cars, I've owned both a SAAB and a Mercedes for 14 years each - two cars, 28 years - not bad at all. A Lenovo T410 bought in 2010 is still quite usable. I have only upgraded the storage from 500gig to 2 terabytes, and have repaired the keyboard over those twelve years or so. It's now my 'spare'. I bought a P53 with 5 terabytes of SSD and a 4K display as its replacement two years ago.
Likes itOwned 10 years
Lenovo with Intel hardware peripherals is probably the most suitable for installing Linux on. At a pinch, Nvidia displays can be used, though you are constricted to using Nvidia's proprietary Linux drivers which they tend to provide whenever they finally bother to get around to doing. I have just replaced my 10-year-old Thinkpad T410 with a Thinkpad P53. I hope it will be as versatile as my older machine.
Likes itOwned 7 years
In their three-year existence (during COVID, no less), they've shipped five different 13 inch laptop models: three Intel generations, a Chromebook edition of their latest Intel generation, and (most recently) an AMD variant. That's incredibly impressive by itself for such a new company, but on top of all that the parts from these systems are interchangeable and readily available at reasonable prices. Someone with a first-gen Intel Framework can upgrade to the latest AMD model for as little as $449.00, or around $500 for a bundle with RAM and the wifi module that you'll likely also need. If you're willing to stay a release behind (not possible with their AMD variant yet), you can remain almost current for much less money, at least judging by their pricing on their previous-gen Intel motherboards. I just ordered an AMD Framework 13 to replace my Thinkpad T480. My previous personal laptop was a Thinkpad T410, which lasted me for seven years. My T480 Thunderbolt controller died due to a firmware bug that I didn't update to fix in time. In addition to the loss of Thunderbolt, it's lead to some other issues (such as a ~30-second pause resuming from sleep) that make it annoying to use. Fixing it would require a motherboard replacement, which iFixit rates as "difficult". [1] https://frame.work/products/mainboard-kit-amd-ryzen-7040-ser...
Likes itOwned 6 yearsStill going
I've been using a T410 for almost 6 years now. It's got 8GB of RAM, an SSD and the hard drive that it shipped with is now in the ultrabay. With the 9 cell battery I get almost 5 hours of battery life with normal use. I see no reason to upgrade. Sure a newer laptop might be a little thinner or a little faster, but for what I do I'd never notice. It's not like an ultrabook is going to fit in my pocket. I'd still need to carry it in a bag.
Likes it
The trackpoint and the nice keys are one thing, but what I really want all laptops to have is dedicated home/end/pgup/pgdn keys and in a normal-looking layout (as in 7-row or as in a full keyboard). I find it weird that even framework has gone with a keyboard where a bunch of keys are missing. (Sent from my Thinkpad T410)
Doesn’t like it
I'm just about to retire my last of 3 T410s (its hinge is broken and it tends to freeze from overheating. I replaced the cpu fan on it 2 years ago). I tried all sorts of drivers. Some just don't work. Some work for like 10 minutes and stop working. Windows 11. Maybe there is some magical driver somewhere. Are you guessing or do you have a T410 with Windows 11 and you use the webcam regularly? Yeah, I saw the Apple ID thread today. I thought Apple ID was optional. (e.g. I don't have an Apple ID for the MBP I'm using right now). The article you linked to says: "My M2 Air had great speakers." It's the Mac Mini (not a laptop) that has poor speakers. Can't comment on that one. EDIT: A by the way there is that I believe a T410 can actually have different components, i.e. some might have a camera from one vendor while others have a camera from another.
Doesn’t like it
My web cam on the T410 doesn't work under the Windows version it's running and hasn't worked for many years The T410 works in Windows 11, so if it's not working for you, it's a simple driver update. But on the note of Apple just working, there is an entire frontpage thread about how Apple isn't "just working" for thousands of people whose Apple IDs have been locked out. And The Verge currently has a front-page post about their Apple editor discovering that Apple doesn't just work and in fact has quite piss-poor speakers ( https://www.theverge.com/24139303/mac-mini-laptops-desktops ).
Likes it
A 2013-2015 Mac Book Pro 15" with the old style keys if you can find one. I know a lot of orgs and devs are snatching them up these days. Mines been going strong for years. My wife bought the current gen MBP and its been in for repairs twice already over that damn keyboard. I also have a T410 Thinkpad running linux and while the screen sucks, its a tank and still runs great. Super repairable too. Gonna sound like an old guy here but they truly don't make em like they used to. If you are looking for true durability, might be that getting something a few years old is just the ticket.
Doesn’t like it
Sleep and hibernate have never broken for me on various ThinkPads, what hardware and distro are you using? Happened right around the switch to systemd with Debian Sid on my old T410, which by that point was probably 5 years old. IIRC, the system would resume from sleep or hibernate but the console would not recover properly, so you had to force a VT switch to get the video to reinitialize. Just a huge PITA. I agree, it had been stable for some time up to that point, but when it broken again, that was the last straw for me, and as a consequence I've stuck with Windows 10 on my Carbon. These days tlp gives power management on Linux a good set of defaults. Powertop tweaking should not be necessary as long as you use a distro that supports tlp. Could be. But I'm happy with Windows 10 on my Carbon and have no intention of switching. It used to be that Linux was on balance the better choice for my use case, being more stable (as in, fewer crashes) and more transparent, with a superior dev experience. Yes, it was always a platform for tweakers... things never seemed to consistently work quite right (hell, back around 2010, it was a miracle if sleep or hibernate worked at all). But since you could open up the hood and mess around, I was willing to live with that given the benefits. As a result, for 20 years Linux was the operating system I ran on every piece of hardware I owned. I even built a 3-tuner MythTV backend and two front-end systems for my home back when I still h
Recommends it
I use a TVS Mechanical keyboard with Cherry blue keys. This is the only model we get in our country. I would like to have quieter keys but this is much better than the mushy keys. Laptop is Thinkpad T410. Thinkpads always have awesome keyboards with good key travel and tactile feedback (atleast the older ones). That and the fact that I can always open the laptop and fix anything myself means I will be a Thinkpad user for a long long time.
Doesn’t like it
Of the two listed: 5510 hands down. The reason why doesn't have much to do with the specs. I've rocked Thinkpads for years, but I just can't get behind Lenovo anymore. Anecdote time: Couple years ago (in the T410 era) I was on an IT team looking for new laptops for a small company. We got a guarantee from a Lenovo sales person and someone from their support side that we could pay for NBD repairs and they'd fix machines with Linux. When our first repair need came up, they refused to do anything until we re-installed Windows. For a bad display (it was all pink), nothing to do with Windows! We ended up keeping a spare, vanilla Windows 7 HDD around for when we needed it, but it left a bad taste. Couple that with their more recent headlines about spyware in Windows machines, and back doors on some their mobile devices, and well... Fuck Lenovo. My vote for Thinkpad would be fueled by nostalgia at this point. I'd give Dell the money for just trying and doing a damn fine job making Linux laptops people want to use. I've come across threads where they're supporting alt distros like Arch.
Neutral
I use a ThinkPad T410 (2010) with i5, 8 GB RAM, and 7200 RPM HDD and a headless Debian server running on an Intel Atom (also circa 2010) with 2 GB RAM and 7200 RPM HDD. Most of my development is done on the headless server using ssh + tmux + vim, though I will use Visual Studio or gvim on the ThinkPad if my current development is targeting Windows.
Doesn’t like it
As for refurbished models, stay away from T410 with discrete (NVIDIA) graphics. I own one and experience nothing but troubles with the thermal design. I am doing everything to keep the GPU from frying my fingers on the keyboard and/or causing emergency shutdowns - got the heatsink replaced by customer service - cleaning the fan regularly - tune software fan control, nevermind the noise - check and replace thermal grease - switch away from graphics-heavy desktop environment (Unity...) - switching off webgl support in my browser - ... Well now that I put it like this, I am thinking it might not be worth the whole effort :)
Doesn’t like it
Replying to both questions about my bad experiences: One of my first work laptops was a handed-down lenovo, so that may or may not have been lenovos fault... However the person doing the handing down was certain not buying a new lenovo. It performed ok, but never anything stellar. It had a lot of weird quirks - it would suddenly flip it's CapsLock state, so i'd need to turn it on to shut it off. It would stay like that till I rebooted. Eventually, the red button died... but it didn't just die, it forcibly dragged my mouse to the bottom of the screen. I had to fight with the thing to find the option to disable the button in the control panel before I could regain control of the computer. Plugging in an external mouse didn't help, the red button overrode all mouse commands. Finally ,the thing all but gave out on me. I got a 2nd hand me down laptop, a Dell, before finally getting a real PC to work from. That was my old job... This current job, I have a T410, and I hate the thing. Everyone here has the same laptop (one guy has a slightly better model, but he hates his as well). They lock up, they have poor performance, they come with worthless bloatware, things fail for no reason... it goes on and on. Here are some examples: Performance: It came with 4GBs of RAM. My old Dell had 4GBs, and I could keep 2-3 Visual Studios open at a time, no problem. This thing struggled to keep a single instance open. Keeping 2 open, damn near unusable. It would routinely take me 40-50 seconds to s
Likes it
What I do: all form of web devel.. 40% 'building' 60% 'maintaining'. Desktop: generic dell dual 2.66ghz 4gig ram, dual 22in wide screen displays. I do most of my 'work work' here. I use a kensington 'expert mouse' in lieu of a real mouse. Laptop: Lenovo T410.. never use a mouse for this. i turn off the touch pad and use the little nib. Software: (not much compared to most people) Ubuntu for my linux distro , xmonad for window placement , vim for coding , git for source control , ff/chromium for browsing. , grooveshark for listening, I use a couple vim plugins, mainly nerdtree. My vim is heavily customized. My ff is heavily customized with vimperator, i also use firebug, measureit, and adblock I have a nice pair of pass-through headphones, I don't remember the make or model. I have a crappy razr-era cell phone and a couple old digital cameras. I am pretty happy with my setup, I don't do too much cranking and neither of my systems really lag unless there is some serious javascript going on in FF. I do virtually all of my work through a shell and spend more time in vim than anywhere. I occasionally run windows inside a virtual machine to hack on flash. I'd like to move my OS to a SSD. I also wouldn't mind a headless badass private server. Vimperator and learning to customize vim have been the best things I have ever done for my computing environment.