Lenovo ThinkPad X220T

7owners with an opinion

83%of verdicts positive

3/0positive/negative since 2024

10 yrslongest happy owner

1happy after 3+ years

Praised for durability and comfort; criticized for reliability and display.

What people wrote

Likes itOwned 10 years

We're regressing. My last computer was a thinkpad x220t, with a life of 10 years. After that I bought an ideapad. It is now in its 3rd year, and the hinges between body and screen have already broken off and been reglued in 3 different places. That last repair was once to many, and I see myself buying a new laptop in the near future.

Doesn’t like itOwned 4 years

I've had X220s and X220Ts for a few years, and I agree that they're probably one of the best laptops you can get second-hand. But they aren't as cheap as they used to be on eBay and they're only getting older. I had to cycle through three X220/Ts in four years because they failed for various reasons. Screen died. Bios just decided to stop working. Finally I decided to ditch my last one by choice this summer and got a Thinkpad X13 Yoga Gen 3 and I really love it. Battery life of at least ten hours for what I'm doing. Still great Linux support. It's not too much lighter than the X220T, but it's a whole lot thinner and that's important trying to shove a whole lot of stuff in one bag. Also: USB-C charging means I no longer have to carry around a big proprietary brick and cable. I can just use the same charger as my phone. That's also important when it comes to weight and space savings. The reason I chose this model in particular is because like the X220T, it also has the digitizer pen garaged in the frame. Really hard to find laptops that met that, and USB C, and thin, and Thinkpad keyboard + mouse nub. In fact I think it's the only one. If this (fingers crossed) lasts me a while, amortized I don't think the cost up front will be that much more than what I would've had to have spent upgrading and transferring parts between eBay franken-ThinkPads over the same time.

Likes it

Used a Lenovo X220T with a cracked screen and missing keyboard a few years back. Worked like a champ (as a server). Cooling was much better without the keyboard.

Likes it

Yeah, Apple's products are pretty long lived in my experience. My '07 macbook lasted till 2020. It was almost as tough as any thinkpad I've had. My x220t, 2008ish, is still going. Both did damage to the hoods of a few cars. Last I heard, my iPod nano from 20+ years ago is still being used daily. Only other portable music player I've had last that long was a Walkman. I've got friends with old ass powerBooks that still get used frequently.

Neutral

I think what you're describing is still the case, but the way you described it isn't quite accuratie. The default kernel used is linux-libre. If you need more hardware support and binary blobs, you use regular linux, the same one basically all the other distros use. You're not using an unofficial fork of anything (or some might argue the default is more of an unofficial fork). You do have to go out of your way somewhat to get the standard linux instead of linux-libre, and I don't believe you can just load your required firmware into linux-libre instead. It's one of the FSF-approved distros so there are indeed strict guidelines (FSDG) on proprietary software, often to the point that it puts people off, and the official IRC and probably the mailing list as well don't talk about the non-free bits, yes. However if you join the #nonguix IRC channel or use the guix channel (like a repo or PPA) of the same name you'll find many of the same faces from the core community there. It's just a bit hush-hush due to the guidelines. Remember Guix System is a step more extreme than Debian, so even something like Debian's official non-free repo is not allowed. Personally I have run Guix System on a ThinkPad X220T and ThinkPad T440p which are old enough to not really need any blobs aside from the ones for WiFi, and you can remove or replace the card in them. I believe any machine newer than this is going to need blobs for the integrated graphics or other things. I have been debating whether I'd…

Likes it

The keyboard and keyboard layout are really great and primary laptop still is an X220T. However, the resolution is horrible (1366x768), the CPU is slow, it's heavy, mine has no USB3 and the charger is quite bulky.

Likes it

I had an X220t once. It was a great machine, but I kept my W500 instead. The latter is even better built and easier to disassemble. I like its keyboard quite a bit more as well. To me, the T/Wx00 line was the last of the best the brand had to offer.