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Laptops · Lenovo ThinkPad

Lenovo ThinkPad T420s

11owners with an opinion
82%of verdicts positive
3/1positive/negative since 2024
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for performance and reliability; criticized for comfort.

What owners wrote

Likes it
I have several Thinkpads, but my favorite is a T420s. AFAIK, it was the last of the line that had sculpted keytops, it feels good to type on. It's a damned shame that the newer ones have those chicklet keys. i7 with 16GB RAM, HDD replaced with SSD. Runs Fedora like a top.
Likes itStill going
Thinkpads are saying hello :) Not to turn this into a Web fight or anything, but come on... Even my t420S from 2011 could be upgraded with ssd and more ram and is still used :). My daily driver is t480, 8 years old, my wive's x1 carbon 7 years old, with no intention of retiring either anytime soon. The notion of Apple , of all companies, "setting standard for long span devices", is laughable to me as I look at my ipads no longer running old software I paid for and getting slower with every forced update. Apple makes sexy devices that match many people's requirements. Good on them! But this continued notion they invented everything is grating. :-)
Doesn’t like it
I switch between Thinkpad T420s and PineBook Pro for all the hobby work. T420s has loose USB ports and the power socket is almost falling off, so I plan to replace it by a 5 years old T14 G2 in the coming months. I can afford the latest MacBook, but I'd rather not generate more e-waste that there is, and more importantly I feel closer to my users, and my code is efficient and straight to the point. My non-hobby laptop is an old cheap Dell from 5-6 years ago. The best laptop I ever had was a maxed-out Thinkpad P7x, and it came with the most meaningless job ever. I can only compare that job to the one at a unicorn that gave me the latest and greatest MacBook. Not only the job was meaningless, the whole industry made no sense to me.
Likes it
If you don't need something new for performance reasons, I agree. Just replaced the motherboard of my T420s. While waiting for the part to arrive I used a much newer laptop, which only made me appreciate just how great that beautiful old 7-row keyboard is. I suppose I'll have to give it up one day, but not yet.
Recommends it
I don't buy new computers anymore. I only buy computers that are a few years old. The last one I purchased was a Thinkpad T420s with the wide screen, maxed out the RAM, popped in an SSD, and for under $500. Works like a charm. Linux gives me no major problems. If I was going to buy another Mac, it would probably be a 2015ish 13" MBP. I currently have an 11" 2012 Air that is perfectly fine for the type of development I do and shows only minor signs of impending failure. I would def get another one of these as well.
Likes it
Nice deal. I have a T420s that was bought new and I love it as a computer -- but when I go to grab a laptop to work on 'on-the-road' I nearly always grab my old X201s + big battery that I bought on ebay for 80 bucks total. If I was to buy a T420 now-a-days i'd check out eBay. Great deals on older hardware, especially if you don't mind repairing small problems yourself.
Doesn’t like it
While I understand why you don't want to boot all the time, some of us do. Here are some reasons: * Despite years of work on it, I find sleeping on laptops on linux is still flakey. My Thinkpad T420s failed to wake up about once a week (on Ubuntu), so I tend to shut down. * I like having a clean desktop when I start on a morning. If I keep sleeping my machine, I just tend to gather up programs. Of course, you could argue I should get more sorted, but I don't really want to. * One other problem you have is to do with Linux being used on both servers and desktops. I can see your problem. Personally, if my machine ever got in such a mess that they couldn't boot, I'd just reinstall, regardless of what had broken. I suspect most people are the same. However, I can understand if you want to be able to edit how your machine starts up, and fix it when it brakes.
Likes it
I'm on a Lenovo T420s, it's a pretty solid machine. This is my first ThinkPad and I really love the screen resolution and the feeling with the keyboard, the keys are just amazing and if you are a developer I think this is one of the most important features. I oned a MacBook (the white and cheap one) and an iBook, but the "physicity" of this laptop is really good. Moreover you have 2 USB 2.0 and 1 USB 3.0 that you cannot find on an Apple product. I'm using it with Fedora 17, everything works pretty well but you need some tweaking to optimize the power consumption while on battery.