Lenovo ThinkPad T495s

6owners with an opinion

80%of verdicts positive

1/0positive/negative since 2024

0happy after 3+ years

Praised for reliability and portability; criticized for battery.

What people wrote

Likes it

I bought a ThinkPad T495s despite some of their warts because the Linux compatibility is generally good, and they can be found for cheap secondhand. Battery life is not great, but it's powerful enough for coding and spinning up test k8s clusters. I used to have an X1 Carbon 9th-Gen, but the thermals were so bad it would throttle after only 2 minutes under load. I could get a MacBook Pro and have a smoother experience, but the advantge of secondhand is that I don't care about the hardware. It gets destroyed who cares, just buy another one.

Doesn’t like it

No thanks. I had a Ryzen T495s. Nothing but aggro that thing. I religiously avoid AMD because in the last decade I've had nothing but trouble from all of their hardware. Intel and NVidia only these days. I've got an i5-1235U T14 gen 3 which I paid £730 for (new, but damaged box) and stuffed another 8Gb stick and a 1TB WD SSD in it. That is fine for my personal use as it's mostly an Office and light code machine.

Likes it

I have the previous gen (T495s) running Debian testing. Don't you have issues with power usage? That's my only gripe with this laptop. Battery lasts maybe 3 hours max while on Windows it should last 8+.

Likes it

I’ve been a bit of a Thinkpad fanatic ever since my dad got a T42p somewhere in 2004. I have been on Thinkpads since 2006. I bought old ones on eBay and now have a collection of about 15 machines. The 700c, two butterfly keyboard 701cs, the 240 and a lot more. I’m currently on a T495s. From my experience I can say that the “old IBM machines were reliable and well constructed” is not true. They were bulky and over time, everything breaks. Especially the heavy stuff as bulky things take so much more wear & tear. The newer machines are much thinner and lighter and still very good. At least the T and X lines. I exclusively buy Thinkpads for my team and have been very happy with them. The only thing I really miss is the thinklight. Not super useful, but it was just so cool. Edit: I always buy barely used machines of about 2 years old, this seems to be the most cost effective.

Neutral

I’ve run at least one Thinkpad in parallel with a MacBook for the last 15 years. In 2020 I sold my last Thinkpad, an AMD T495s. The M1 MBA destroyed my tolerance for another Intel laptop entirely.

Likes it

I don’t think the author is alone in keeping an older thinkpad running by upgrading its components, that’s part of why they’re such popular machines with tech people. I have to say though, his complaints about the newer machines doesn’t resonate with me, my T495s works great (the only issue is the awful Lenovo buying process)

Recommends it

I use a T495s with the 400-nit low power display and it is by far the best screen I've ever seen on a laptop. I have no idea what you're talking about; of course, if you go with the 1366x768 screen that Lenovo seems to continue to offer inexplicably, you're shafted, but the 1920x1080 400-nit screen is incredible. It's matte, thin, extremely low power (powertop tells me it's under 1W right now at 30% brightness, which is already too bright for a well-lit root), and is easily replaceable. And it's not touch either, which is an advantage in my book.

Likes itDoesn’t say they own it

I ran thinkpads for years. There is a nice market for previous generation ones new in box with 3 year next business day warranties for stupid money. I got my daughter a 13 month old T495s for £600 for example. That’s still under warranty now. But yeah I’ll bitch and moan and just give apple the money like I always do now n