Lenovo ThinkPad T495

I can’t speak for framework… but for some wider context: I have a work supplied M1 Mac book pro. An outstanding machine. I have an older intel Mac that’s still running well, but starting to struggle. I bought a dirt cheap Thinkpad t495 about 6 months ago, it’s dual booted W11 and Ubuntu and while it’s not a superstar performance wise it’s a very good machine and well worth the ~£200 I’ve spent on it. I did replace the trackpad with an X1 carbon one and also replaced the keyboard for a backlit one, I also increased the NVME storage and maxed out the ram (about an extra £150 in total). There are not many machines you can do these types of upgrades to so I’m quite please with it. I would suggest a thinkpad if you can find the right model you can upgrade.

My daily driver for several years now has been an AMD Ryzen 7 powered ThinkPad t495. $120 used. After upgrading the RAM to 64gb it felt very snappy and usable. I run NixOS / Hyprland with rofi/waybar. When an accident happened and the first t495 was damaged, I bought a second for $80, swapped the parts and was back in business. I use it for coding, web research, and a bit of CAD design via FreeCAD. Very happy with the hardware!

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 ...

Recently, I got a P14s with the AMD Ryzen PRO 7840U. Its CPU and GPU are a different architecture than the Ryzen PRO 3700U in the my old T495. The P14s seems very fast and stable with Fedora 39. I tested OpenCL as well as Steam games and general desktop usage with Firefox. But to be honest, I didn't have as much trouble as you describe with my T495 either. I ran it exclusively with Fedora since right before the pandemic. My main problem was that I could not use OpenCL at all. But for desktop usage and even Steam games, it worked well enough. I'll admit I rarely use suspend/resume, so if your problems were related to that, it might explain my different experience. I've noticed the T495 is very slow to resume compared to most other machines I've used including the P14s and lots of Intel-based Thinkpads.

I bought a Dell XPS about 4 years ago, and having used them for work I was excited to get one for myself. A few years later (I think 2 years), the battery failed to hold any charge whatsoever. When I called support to _buy_ (with money!) a new battery pack, they told me that it was impossible, that they no longer held them in stock. I will never buy another Dell Laptop again. Have been more than pleased with my Thinkpad T495, and will be buying a Framework laptop after this one dies.

I agree with TFA. Probably the best value for the buck is a 3 year old high-end Thinkpad (T or X series); you can often find one for €250-350, as many businesses will be replacing whatever is at the end of their 3 year cycle. I've been getting a new one roughly every 3-5 years and they definitely stay good enough for another 5. My latest score is a T495 (replacing an 11 (!) year old X230); it has 4 cores (8 threads), 24GB of memory, two NVMe drives, 4-5 hours of battery (~270 cycles), full HD 400 nits screen, and a GPU that actually handles some games. It's definitely less powerful than my M1 Mac mini, but it's good enough to the point that I'm not missing the extra horsepower all that much, even when doing "Actual Work" (it can get tad hot tho). Also, developing software on less powerful hardware has another, indirect benefit: your software tends to suck less, because you have less cycles to waste.

I use (and roll out at my work) Lenovo's with AMD chips, going back to the T495, then T14 Gen 1 and T14 Gen 2, not had a need to get any new laptops for a while, but would get T14 Gen 3 if we did. They have all been really good, although did need to run Ubuntu interim releases until 22.04 LTS to get the latest kernels which helped with a number of things. Also, make sure to change the BIOS sleep setting. It'll default to Windows which can cause sleep and resume to not work properly in Linux. Upgraded RAM where possible to 32GB and 512GB SSDs. Unfortunately they only ship the laptops with Windows in Australia, so need to wipe and install a fresh Ubuntu when they arrive.

It's hard to know what you are seeking. What is "decent 4K experience"? Many have all worked fine for me with desktop/office work on Linux. But I have older Dell monitors that can only do 30 Hz at 4K and I was not bothered by this. And I do not use the internal laptop screen when using an external monitor, so I have no concern for mixed/high-dpi scenarios. I use a 1080p internal display and 4K desktops with identical dot pitch, and see the 4K monitor as just more real estate for exactly the same font sizes I would use on the smaller laptop screen. I used to use the same monitor model with a desktop NVIDIA Titan X GPU for scientific work. The experience for regular desktop/browsing was identical, and only differed if I launched an 3D app that really had a use for the extra horsepower. I would suggest that no laptop GPU is really going to both drive 4K at good high frame rates comparable to a modern desktop GPU. There will be some inevitable limits due to the thermal/power design. These days, I think more about idle power and quiet operation, and don't miss having the Xeon + Titan X workstation howling in my office. I have a T495 with a prior generation AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 3700U that has a Vega iGPU. I've driven a 4K TV or a 4K monitor with its HDMI port at different times, with no drama. It is the best performing graphics I have ever used on a laptop, but is of course limited compared to a desktop GPU since it uses the dual-channel system RAM and has less bandwidth. I don'

I am using a Thinkpad T495, with Manjaro(previously Ubuntu) and it works great. The only 1 issue I've had is that the trackpoint sensitivity is too low with the default configuration. I've been using thinkpads for years, and they always seem to work pretty well with most distros.

I can recommend Thinkpads. I am very happy with my T495. It is a solid piece of hardware, really nice keyboard and probably has the best support for Linux. I heard they used to send their new laptops for free to kernel developers to ensure solid support.