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Laptops · Lenovo ThinkPad

Lenovo ThinkPad T450s

18owners with an opinion
86%of verdicts positive
4/1positive/negative since 2024
10 yrslongest happy owner
3happy after 3+ years

Praised for repairability and reliability; criticized for performance.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 10 yearsStill going
> I don't think I would enjoy using a 4 year old Lenovo Ideapad today Why not? I have a M1 Max supplied by my employer, and it's awesome. But guess what I use as my daily driver? An old t450s, running Ubuntu. Does everything I need, I can fix and replace anything in it (including the battery), and the keyboard is awesome. I think it's 10 years old. I mean, for most of the work I do my computer is just a client anyway.
Doesn’t like itOwned 6 years
I had to replace a perfectly good T450s because of terrible performance when using external 4k monitors. I had it for 6 years, upgrading everything I could, and it could probably last for at least another 4 hears if not for the outdated CPU. Replaced with a ryzen elitebook because RAM is expandable to 64Gb, hoping it will last for up to 10 years. The difference in performance is staggering compared to the old core i5, well worth the cost of a base model.
Recommends itOwned 5 yearsStill going
There are many different models/configurations of ThinkPads so there is no real answer to your question unfortunately. Purely anecdotal, but I've been using a T450s for over five years and I don't see myself really upgrading anytime soon. If I do upgrade, chances are I'd get another ThinkPad. I like how little they can cost and how they don't conflict with Linux.
Likes it
I ran a T450s all through college. My late grandmother gifted me the money after high school graduation to buy my first laptop. I'd learned to code on the old gateway pentium 4 (Windows XP) machine with 512 MB of RAM from the factory. I'd resurrected it as a teenager and completely gutted it. I scoured the web endlessly looking for something that was _not_ touchscreen (hard to find at the time), linux-compatible, and rugged enough for the neglect of a college student's backpack. It was a linux user's dream. I swapped out the spinny HDD with an SSD. It had hotswappable batteries, a spill resistant keyboard with a drain system, and I ran every linux distribution I could get my hands on, eventually settling on the xfce flavor of Ubuntu. I still have that machine, and will keep it for my son when he's older. I plan to replace the battery and SSD with something more reliable. These days I use an m2 macbook air for portability... but that thinkpad is still something I will treasure for years.
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.
Likes it
My current main laptop is a T450s from 2014 or so. It's got 12 GiB of RAM, enough to run most dev tools comfortably. The slowdown in CPU speed acceleration has meant that a PC from between five and ten years ago, or even more, is not as flagrantly obsolete as it once was, and I'd rather keep life in my old machines, especially when new machines start to grow features I don't want (like Pluton).
Neutral
My 26 core lenovo/xeon workstation is quieter than my T450s. The former is exactly the same noise level 100% of the time regardless of idle or compiling code. My thinkpad spins its fans up to a nice hum when compiling code. Some rackmount server hardware is fairly quite these days too. Variable speed fan profiles and a cool room do wonders to keep the fan speeds fairly low. Probably the noisiest think in my rack at home these days is the Ethernet switch.
Likes it
I work from home 1-3 days a week. I'm also father of 3 boys (2, 8, 10) and wife is working full-time. My only setup is my ThinkPad T450s. That's all. At some point in my carrier I used 4 monitors, specific low profile keyboards and mice at the office but I don't miss that. It took some time (years!) to adjust my workflow to a single screen and maybe I'm not as productive as I could be but I'm still among the most productive employees at my company. What I achieved is that I'm equally productive and +/- comfortable anywhere: at work, on the couch or office room at home, on a train, at airport, in the garden, anywhere. That consistency is more important to me than maximum efficiency. So that and I choose what kind of tasks I work on when I'm alone or when family is at home because you can't expect to fully isolate yourself.
Doesn’t like it
I got the t450s recently off eBay. I would not make the same purchase again. Instead I would go for the x series models. This is because the keys on the t450s size laptop (which is larger) are too far apart for coding. Then there's the tn panel screen, the viewing angles are so bad that at 14" you have to choose whether you want the top or the bottom of the screen to be clearly visible -the other side will appear washed out. I never noticed this on the X230 which probably has an equally shitty screen, because its size is just right to never be an issue. If I could return the t450s I would go for x240 or x230. Upgrade the battery, and toss in SSD if it doesn't already have one. Also, check out mini PCs like the gigabyte brix. I use them as headless dev boxes on the local network. Run 24/7 without issue for months now.
Neutral
I have a ThinkPad 450s with touch, and I regret buying one with a touch screen. It's almost impossible to see the screen under daylight, expensive, consumes more power and I only use touch when I use the laptop in cramped places, like a plane flight. Great machine otherwise, but I couldn't find my use case for touch enabled laptops. For a while, I thought it would be useful if the screen was detachable as in the MS' Surface device, but realized that I'm also not using my iPad that much to justify the use case.
Likes it
>[1] My non-technical wife, who has a Mac, recently needed to use my work laptop. Her first reaction on seeing the screen was "wow, your firm cheaped out, huh?" I've got a totally maxed out ThinkPad T450s with i7, 20GB of RAM, and FHD IPS display. Oxymoron: tech reasons of how great your computer is; and an argument on why a non technical people don't like it.
Neutral
Life is too short not to buy a Mac. I have an rMBP 15" and its awesome. After years of using Macs, I got a ThinkPad T450s because of the keyboard. It's now sitting on a shelf while I set it up for my dad. It's okay . The screen is okay, pretty bad backlight bleed.[1] It's got a weird memory configuration--you can run dual channel only up to 8GB. The keyboard is fantastic, but the touchpad is awful. [2] Apple's touchpad is unmatched, and induces less cramping than the trackpoint. Windows is getting better. I think Windows 10 is pretty good. But its not better than OS X, and Visual Studio is the only Windows app I miss. Even Office 2016 is just as good on the Mac (unless you have particular Excel-related needs). Retina support is still far better in OS X, and its 2015 and a non-retina screen isn't acceptable any more. [1] I got the AUO screen, I hear the LG is better, but that's one thing you risk on the PC side--everyone has less tight sourcing tolerances than Apple. [2] The touchpad on my work-issued T430 is better. That's another fact of PC-life: Its pretty much a crapshot whether the next iteration of any given model will have major regressions in trackpad quality or battery life or screen quality. PC manufacturers just don't care--they'll source whatever part is cheapest.