Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon

The Lenovo T14s Gen 6 with Snapdragon X Elite will be available next month[1] - I'd wait for reviews for how the Snapdragon performs, especially with emulating non-native applications. - If you can, wait for Lenovo ThinkPads to eventually get a 50%-70% discount (might have to wait up to a year or so?) Like this one: https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/lenovo-thinkpad-l14-... - Avoid Intel processors. They are more expensive and get hotter than AMD CPU's for generally less performance. The ThinkPad T14 AMD Gen 5 looks decent: https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-real-ThinkPad-T480-success... https://frame.work also looks like a decent option, but avoid if you don't want to spend time dealing with little quirks. For example, (a small number of) Framework laptops literally start smoking because an input panel was wired incorrectly (mine included) and they only offer support via email, which is not very fast. --- - Until one of those laptops become available, I have been happily using my ThinkPad T480s for almost 5 years. - My ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which I gave to a friend, is still going strong after 10+ years. - (So a used ThinkPad can be a good option, too!) --- [1]: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-T14s-Gen-6-wit...

You were looking at it wrong. ;) I've been enjoying X1 Carbons for nine years now. In fact I've still got my first one, from 2012, which works great as my personal one - even though I've gotten two new ones from works since. I love the matte displays. They're not as shiny, but in the real world reflections from lights are simply diffused. Oh and they'll likely not shatter either. Milspec ratings may be marketing speech but they've really been tested for dust and water integression - keyboard actually has a design to channel water spills away from the most fragile bits. I've never tested it, fortunately, but it's still good to know _some_ manufacturers design for other things than getting their customers to replace their products ASAP as the warranty runs out, also (on top of the worst possible motherboard layouts) by making it as hard as humanly possible to repair third party. Rossman did a pretty good video on how Apple put the 52v LCD powerline just next to the 1.8v CPU one; that's next level genius right there. Story link https://www.rossmanngroup.com/how-do-i-fix-a-black-screen-on...

i think its the weight, size and durability of my x1 carbon, its old but has served me very well and is lugged everywhere with me, its been dropped, had beer, coffee and cola spilled on it but it still soldiers on! sadly though after some five years its time has come, while its still very much usable (im typing this on it now) several keys are dodgy and the casing has seen better days to name but a few issues. id been researching for some time to find something that could replace it but also had a discreet GPU, i eventually decided on the dell XPS as nothing much else seemed to fit the bill but just before i hit the button on it lenovo went and announced my dream laptop, the X1 extreme. i also once had a very nice sony vaio laptop with some unique features (before i became a fan of thinkpads vaios were my goto laptops) not only did it have a full socketed desktop P4 cpu but also the cpu fan was magnetic, you could just lift out the piece with the blades to clean the fins out

I recommend the X1C. I had a first-edition. It was wonderful, and lasted me for five years. Last year I upgraded to X1C5. It is far lighter still, the keyboard is good, it is just a joy to interact with. (debian stable)

My beard isn't completely grey yet but I've been to redhat offices in Stockholm and most people there use Lenovo laptops. I've enjoyed them for many years too. My first Lenovo "ultrabook" was X1 Carbon. It was quite obvious that there were very few (perhaps none) CRUs on it. But it has served me for 4 years and still works. The battery discharges faster now of course. So late 2019 I got an X1 Yoga to replace it, 2nd Lenovo Ultrabook. So far so good. I work in Fedora every single day, very extensively. I find these laptops and Fedora to be very dependable. But of course that means little because people who run OpenBSD make the same claims.

Had a 6th gen for nearly 2 years running Fedora. Typing on it now, love it. A couple of points. 1. There's a couple of things to make it Linux friendly - TLP, plus the throttling fix. Even though I use Fedora the Arch Linux wiki is superb for this. 2. BIOS updates are done via software update which is superb. 3. The FN/action keys are the wrong way round, just change it in the BIOS. 4. Same goes for Fn/Ctrl keys - they can be swapped too in the BIOS. 5. Screen is beautiful. I've got the HDR one and it's brighter than any Macbook i've been sat next to on the train. 6. Never got the fingerprint reader or NFC to work, but i've not tried for a year tbf - this may be fixed. 7. Speakers are complete shite. 8. Keyboard is the best you'll get on a laptop this size, it's wonderful. 9. 2x USB-C/Thunderbolt is awesome. Only thing about the XPS 13 I use for work is that the USB-C is on both sides unlike the Lenovo, makes it easier to get a charge cable round. I honestly love this laptop, even after 2 years I don't see the need for a upgrade. AMA btw.

> This reads like every forum post where someone has asked "how's X distro work on Y laptop", and then people respond with something like the following: "Runs great! No issues. Suspend/resume are wonky but I'm able to get by. Bluetooth doesn't work reliably but who needs that? Wifi is slower than in Windows." I am not sure what you are talking about. I didn't mention a single suspend/resume/bluetooth or wifi problem. I mentioned the following brands: Apple, Dell, Acer, Lenovo, MSI And laptops from these brands that I purchased and used worked out of the box. You are free to not believe me, but you shouldn't put words in my mouth. I am typing this on a Dell Latitude E7450 and there are no issues with this laptop whatsoever. Suspend/sleep works flawlessly, no audio issues, no wifi issues, bluetooth works flawlessly, everything worked out of the box on manjaro linux. Also I use my Lenovo X1 carbon with manjaro linux to develop software for a fortune 500/inc 500 corporation 8 hours a day and have been doing it for close to a year without a single issue. My work gave me the latest fully loaded macbook pro but I returned it because I hate the keyboard (it's unreliable as hell and has no travel distance and feels awful) and the touchbar is an abomination. The keyboard is one of the single most important things on a laptop and if the keyboard experience is lacking, the whole experience sucks. I am very happy with x1 carbon latest gen and manjaro linux and my setup destroys the macb

> long-life > and durable keyboards It wasn't that long ago they had terrible keyboard lifespans which could be a death knell for the laptop, and overheating CPUs which limited performance way behind spec. They've come far in recent years, and I certainly wouldn't be sad if it was my main machine yet I don't expect them to be an outlier forever. In some dimension Apple (and any serious manufacturer) is always going to be ahead - and they certainly are in non-gaming portable CPU/GPU combos right now. Alas, they aren't ahead in many other dimensions; my Fedora X1 Carbon is my strong preference over my M4 macbook pro and a large part of that is the basic usability of the system and window manager (sway), which is something Apple will never match until we meaningfully switch interaction paradigms.

Isn’t that what I said? That it’s very good? I had a surface laptop, it was fine, not as good as a MacBook imo. Had a razer laptop, it was good, got very hot though. Had an X1 Carbon Extreme that I liked, wasn’t as good build quality or screen or camera or trackpad as my MBP from work at the time though, was still expensive af. What are you thinking of that’s better than a MacBook Pro?

Current-gen X1 Carbons are sold with 400 or 500 nit IPS displays. I have complaints with nearly every other aspect of the ThinkPad---even the universally praised keyboard---but the display has been stellar.

I was issued an equivalent Latitude 7490 at a gig in 2019 and enjoyed using it (under Linux). It's robust and easily upgraded, but a little heavier than I would like. I replaced the battery a year or two ago. I generally haven't had much trouble with second hand Dell and Thinkpad machines; perhaps buying second hand means that the real lemons are already ewaste? Though the XPS machines bought new were fine aside from the annoyingly brief battery life. Currently using a Thinkpad X1 Carbon Gen 13 under Linux for work stuff and I like that (much lighter) so if I can get one second hand with enough memory I might choose that when/if the Dell eventually feels too slow.

As a VERY long-time Linux user, I agree. Multi-monitor setups, where you can unplug the monitor and have your windows gather back onto your laptop screen requires WAY too much configuration. Having your audio switch back to internal laptop speakers requires homebrewing a script. On my 2020 Dell XPS, I still haven't figured out how to enable the subwoofers - so I'm stuck with ThinkPad quality audio. I have 3 ThinkPads (one with straight ArchLinux, 2 with CachyOS) and there's always some little piece I'm annoyed with. The X1C has good battery life, the T480 and P14s are meh. I JUST bought my first HiDPI Lenovo laptop this weekend. Getting that to be a decent tradeoff between readable text and mongo-duplo-massive UI has been "fun". (Yoga 15.3" Aura edition - I really like it) But running apps in Wine is darn near impossible - the text is for ants! All of these issues go away with Mac and Windows. I'm not giving up on Linux, I'm just a realist.

I miss the M-series silicon, but plain old Ubuntu runs like a charm on Thinkpads. I much prefer the Ubuntu UX and native Linux environment. Battery life is slightly worse, driver support is perfect - every peripheral I've tried is perfect, performance and security are top-notch. My two complaints are battery life and compiling Rust code taking a bit longer. But everything else is better on Thinkpad. I use a Thinkpad and MacBook Pro interchangeably. Note: I use an X1 Carbon, so that's more like a MacBook Air. They're not 1:1 and my complaints are partly due to my choice.

> There was a giant scare that this Chinese company was going to destroy ThinkPad It's been long enough to say that Lenovo really did right by the Thinkpad name. I recently switched from an X1 Carbon to a Macbook Pro because of Windows issues, and I miss the Thinkpad is built and feels. The case isn't as sharp, I prefer the trackpoint, plastic is weirdly more durable because it can flex, and all the parts are replaceable.

Thirded! I jumped from DOS in the mid 90s to Solaris to Linux in about 2001. BEen on it since. I got my first personal laptop in 2004 or so (IBM thinkpad T42). Then went through 2 X series laptops and am currently on an X1 carbon. I consulted for a company for 2.5 years where I used a mac. Maybe it's just me but I found the mac ecosystem very crummy. On Debian, when I wanted postgres, I did an apt-get and got it sort of like Trinity in the matrix asking for helicopter pilot skills. With the mac, I installed it using brew. That didn't work so there was an app for it and that had its own quirks. I put it down to my lack of familiarity with the system. I would have invested time to get familiar with it but, and this is my second point, Linux was did "just work" for 95% of what I wanted. All the annoying things about sound drivers, wifi cards, usb, fonts, video etc. from the 90s were not problems anymore. There were a few things that I needed to get running but they weren't deal killers. Definitely not as rough as what I had with postgres on the mac. Hardware wise, I agree with the OP, I don't think think anything comes close to Apple's offering at that price point. The reason I stay away from it is because of the software. I much prefer Linux. There are also tangential points like working on the exact OS and machine where I'm going to actually deploy/debug production apps on is useful. This is alleviated to some extent by using a Linux VM on a mac if that's what you do.

Here's what happened to the thinkpads I've owned... R51 - sold R50p - died (bad VRAM) X201 - Ethernet chip died, speakers died, bad keyboard - sold X230 - died X230 - sold in relatively good health X1 carbon gen 4 - best laptop I've owned out of all of the previous thinkpads by far People go on about thinkpad reliability, but I've had two straight up die on me... To be frank, I don't get the hype for the older models. They're slow and clunky. The newer chiclet keyboards are fine once you get used to them.