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Laptops · Lenovo ThinkPad

Lenovo ThinkPad T490

14owners with an opinion
62%of verdicts positive
6/5positive/negative since 2024
6 yrslongest happy owner
2happy after 3+ years

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

What owners wrote

Recommends itOwned 6 yearsStill going
About 15 years ago I had a Dell, then two Asus, and about 6 years ago I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad (T490), which I still use. The Thinkpad was a major step up in quality compared to everything I had before - I haven't even needed to replace the battery, though I think it has dropped from around 5 hours to 3-4 (I unplug it multiple times a day, every day, to use it in the kitchen or while sitting on a couch).
NeutralOwned 3 yearsStill going
Just curious, how’s the trackpad compared to a recent MacBook Pro? I’ve been using my Thinkpad T490 with Debian for 3 years and it’s fine. But then I tried the new MacBook Pro and that trackpad is very nice indeed. Feels a lot more precise. And the attention to smaller details and a consistent UI is nice to see too. I’ve also been kind of peeved about several small things in Linux lately. Installing apps is not simple anymore. It started as apt-get and deb files. Now there’s flatpak and app images and electron which all have different install flows. Sometimes my Ethernet connection would, after resuming from sleep, drop to 100 Mbps until I reboot. Suspend doesn’t really work consistently. Tried installing Alfred (spotlight-like search / app launcher) and that seems to be flakey too. Mapped it to alt+ space but that doesn’t always enable it to come up.
Doesn’t like it
> what laptop? what hardware? Does it matter? Your claim is that everything works, and I am here to tell you that I am a real person running real machines that do not work. Unless you're planning to fix the particular bugs and missing features that I'm hitting I don't see where the specifics actually matter. (Anyways, the first machine is a https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Lenovo_ThinkPad_T490 with Intel graphics; this appears to work but is less stable than Xorg. The second machine is a https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Lenovo_IdeaPad_Flex_3_Chr... that doesn't run Wayland at all, which I grant is bizarre since the stock ChromeOS uses Wayland. You are welcome to point out that this is more than a little off the beaten path, at which point I will of course point out that Xorg somehow handles it just fine.) > but most of this is on the toolkit side, not Wayland (even though here one thing is mentioned as Wayland specific, just briefly went through the post) It varies; a11y isn't a single thing. Deep application integration to allow eg. screen readers to work well probably needs toolkit integration. But there are also things like dwell click, which is really helpful when my RSI is flaring up. In X, I just run `mousetweaks --dwell` and it works, and it works in any window manager or desktop environment, with absolutely no help needed from toolkits or applications. In Wayland, it's sometimes available on a per-compositor basis, which I would describe as purely inferio…
Doesn’t like it
Partially true. Convertible laptops are the worst of both worlds. Most desktop OSes simply don't provide a good tablet PC like a tablet can. My T480 has 2 batteries and lasts 10 hours but that can be extended by swapping the external one. I have 4 so that's about 20 hours. 32 GiB of RAM, 2 TB SSD, magnesium top case, and WiFi 7. The T490 OTOH succumbed to Appleization.
Likes it
I've used Thinkpads consistently for 25-30 years, and still do. I can't really draw a line between "before" and "after" but if I take a long enough period I can definitely see differences in the experience getting watered down or generally worse, from less flexibility to lower reliability. I still have and regularly use a fully functional X200, somewhere in the box I have a fully functional T42 and an R31 whose only defect is a small screen blemish caused by me closing the lid with something on the keyboard. But my multiple X1 Gen1 and Gen2 all have various failures (screen, battery, webcam, or keyboard), my T450 has big battery issues, my T470s have screen/GPU and battery issues. T490 is fine for now, X1 Gen11 has crappy battery and is overheating from the get go. These are different generations, different lots and still affected by the same constant issues.
Likes it
Switched to FreeBSD at home as well and it was such a wonderful decision. As a long time Linux user, what was unexpected and eye-opening was seeing how FreeBSD does things. Somethings better and somethings worse. The better things are WAAYY better. And, for many of those things that felt better, in summary it's really the culmination of the entire ecosystem. The whole package is just better to me. The cohesive system is really a killer app. Oh, and pf is great too. I havn't given up on linux; it's just running as a VM in bhyve now. I also run Freebsd on a Thinkpad T490 laptop. Works great.
Doesn’t like it
Slack is the worst I have to deal with on a daily basis. Fans always spin up on my T490 and it takes 10-15 seconds for all DOM elements to fully render. This is a laptop I have no problem compiling browsers on and it gets hammered by what could be replaced by existing XMPP clients that initialize faster than a blink of an eye. https://once.com/campfire Haven't tried this but it's a Slack alternative from the Basecamp folks, source included and works on airgapped networks. Second worst offender I have to deal with is Jira web. I've had CTOs tell me they know it's crap but they force their startups to use it from the get-go because it makes getting acquihired easier because the other company likely already uses it. Truly Kafkaesque.
Likes it
I've found my last 3 Thinkpads (T480, T490, T14) to all be excellent for Linux work. No real downsides, everything works as it should. If there was one thing that's let me down, it's that their webcams aren't great with occasional audio issues. My current driver though is a Flex 5i Chromebook, running ChromeOS and Linux via Crostini. Last time I had a Chromebook, I wiped it and ran straight Linux. But now Crostini is incredible, very easy to set up and seemless with ChromeOS. It runs my dev projects without problems, along with vscode and obsidian. Make sure that the device has at least 8gb of RAM though.
Likes it
I run PopOS (System 76's Ubuntu derivative) on my T490, and it works flawlessly with all the upgrades (aftermarket SSD and RAM). I think the only major system-level config I've done is install TLP for better power management. I would recommend PopOS over plain Ubuntu because they have some nice utilities for managing things like hidpi, and in my experience hardware "just works" more often, e.g. wifi. Caveat, I didn't get the discrete GPU, those can be hell, and I made sure to get an Intel wifi chipset (same price) since it has the best Linux support.
Doesn’t like itHasn’t owned it
T480 also has dual batteries with one being removable. I upgraded the top cover to magnesium, added WiFi 7, upgraded to 32 GiB, swapped from a HDD to a SSD, and changed the motherboard from i3-7300U to the i7-8650U. The only repair I ever did was replace the screen because I messed up once and dropped it. Oddly enough, it supports an eGPU over Thunderbolt 3 and 25W TDP unlocking so it was once used as my compact gaming machine. Mine also has 3 spare extended batteries and a custom external charger for them. T480s and T490 are inferior compared to the T480's usability of ports and batteries.