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Laptops · Lenovo ThinkPad

Lenovo ThinkPad X270

23owners with an opinion
70%of verdicts positive
6/6positive/negative since 2024
2 yrslongest happy owner
0happy after 3+ years

Praised for repairability and value; criticized for performance and reliability.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 2 years
My solution for this use case is a used Thinkpad X270. Unreal battery life and adequate performance. Got mine in like-new condition a couple years ago for $90. It's a fine substitute for factory-spec e-waste. Mine has the cheapo screen, but it was a cheap laptop so whatever. I don't get the author's complaint about the "2K" (whatever that is) display. Cheap laptop has a cheap screen, oh the humanity!
NeutralOwned 2 years
it depends on how you use them. for my kids which are not as careful, i get more mileage out of a used laptop, because they would break a new one just as fast as a used one. (current x270 which i got used for $150 lasted about 2 years. a new one would have cost 2-3 times as much but in the hands of the kids it would not have lasted 2-3 times as long) buying used hardware is also hit or miss. i got another used laptop for $250 which is decent, but it has some strange hardware issues that i can't pinpoint. unfortunately the choices for used hardware are limited and i could not find any comparable devices in the same price range. (any alternatives would have cost more than twice as much) so generally, when i can afford it, i do the same as you. get something new with a good price/performance ratio and use that as long as i can.
Doesn’t like it
I said it before, I'll say it again: I won't consider Framework until they ditch they're crippled cursor block or offer trackpoint. I'll buy one on the day of release if they offer both options (my most recent¹ Lenovo is long overdue for replacement) ¹ I don't think I'll ever sell my X220, any I regret selling my X270. Everything after that was a disappointment.
Likes it
I think it is less of a concern to the businesses buying these things brand new and more of a concern to the tinkerers who buy/repair/resell/use older models. There's a lot of people who still use ThinkPads made in early 2010s (and earlier). I had RAM module fail on an x270 and replacing it only required opening the laptop (RAM sticks just snap into place). If soldered-on RAM fails, it's game over, or at least full board swap. Plus, no way to put more RAM/replace RAM with larger module if it's soldered on.
Doesn’t like it
I wonder if this can help with the extremely irritating bug (intentional?) on the X270 where if you give it a third party 9-cell battery, it will raise CPU_PROCHOT all the damn time, and my processor would drop to below 1Ghz clock speeds. Back when I used to have an X270 I had a shell script that ran on boot which poked a register to disable thermal throttling handling. Not at all ideal, but it made the machine usable in the absence of official Lenovo batteries which they stopped manufacturing pretty damn quickly.
Neutral
> Even on Linux they would varely play an HD Youtube video if it weren't for the hardware acceleration. Video decoding has always been a brutal workload, but that isn't Microsoft's fault. I had to replace my Thinkpad X220 with an X270 for no reason at all except h.265. It's a ULV i5 too, so the perf is almost identical to the old laptop's... until you watch video on it.
Likes it
I went from a X200 to work on my hobby OS 5 years ago, to a T440p with 16 GB of RAM for my daily computing, then upgraded to a T480 that I could fit with 64GB of RAM, and I finally added a X270 for a more compact form when I'm outside. They were all very inexpensive due to their age (when RAM was still cheap) and I'm really happy about them, I work from a console and a browser, they are perfect for my usage. I wouldn't use any other kind of laptop.
Likes itStill going
Ahh, a topic dear to my heart. > Thinkpads are repairable [...], durable [...]. What's not to like? > Thinkpads are “Cheap” because nobody who worships the things buys one new. Confession time: over the years, I've bought 4: x200s, x270, t490s t14 (gen5). All were new when purchased. All were purchased for work + personal use. All run Linux. All are still in my household and still work - the x200s is old enough to drink in some countries. For context, I also bought me one Macbook Pro (at a weird time where PC laptops were more expensive than an equivalent Mac), so it's not like I haven't seen the grass on the other side. > [IBM and Lenovo] are typical companies, who just happen to have some good designers and engineers. That sounds like a good thing. > Yes, Thinkpads are good laptops. I agree. > -A saccharine twenty something. My oldest, still working, ThinkPad is almost older than the author of this blog post?!? Get off my lawn! I'm not sure what the author aims at: maybe "TPs are good if you buy them old, and nobody buys them new". Besides myself, I know a bunch of people who have bought new ones (and no, we're not in some crazy TP fan club). I only have experience with X and T lines, though. Maybe others are crap, dunno.
Likes it
I have a 2017 Dell XPS13 that's been hammered as a developer laptop and is still going great guns. It's on its third battery, and I've just replaced the screen. I bought a newer one in 2022 and sold it again a couple of months later because, although it had a faster processor and more RAM, it felt flimsier. I'm also currently upgrading a refurbed Lenovo X270 for my granddaughter who's starting high school, and I am thoroughly impressed. Newer Lenovos are slimmer and slicker, but this thing will still be trucking after the cockroach apocalypse.
Likes it
In September of 2012, I bought a T430 from Lenovo. I loved that thing! Covered it with stickers, even upgraded it as the years went on. Eventually, it had a Core i7-3820QM with 16GB RAM, 1080p screen (with an adapter), SSDs (plural, I put one in the UltraBay)... I installed Coreboot with Tianocore, upgraded the WiFi card... I even modded in the keyboard from a T420. In June of 2022, 10 years later, I bought an X270 off eBay. I could still use the T430, it was just starting to feel sluggish... I just felt like I needed a new laptop. I'm very happy with the X270 and I hope to use it as long as possible. It was also fun to start covering it with stickers all over again! I still have the T430, it's just not being used and it's sitting in a storage locker (with my vintage computer collection).
Neutral
> bulky 16" ThinkPad. I'm surprised nobody mentioned the thinkpad x1 extreme laptop. It was basically the lenovo/thinkpad response to the xps 15. It's way thinner than the ThinkPad T16/P15 lines. they claim it's a 16" laptop but only because they made the bezel smaller enough to fit a larger display in the same space. it's usually mostly on par with the dell xps but i'm not sure about the specs though... my personal laptop is a rusty thinkpad x270 (i'm torn between the newly announced m4 macbook air or the upcoming framework 12) and i've been issued a m3 macbook pro for work.
Neutral
Used ThinkPads used to be my way to go without even thinking about it but nowadays i don't think it's worth it anymore. Many laptops i'm interested in come with soldered ram, meaning i can only buy something that's old and will stay old. A lot of X280 and X13 come with 8gb or 16ram, which is truly a shame. I had 16gb ram in my X220 in 2014, ten/eleven years ago. A lot of interesting ThinkPad models now come with a fixed keyboard i cannot change. Being somebody that likes us-ansi keyboard but that does not live in the US this means most eBay offers are not appealing to me. Last ThinkPad i bought (X270) i just replaced the keyboard and ram (8->16gb). I cannot do that anymore with most models. My X270 (for private use) it's getting old and I'm considering going for a brand-new laptop this time. I have doubts between a new ThinkPad or a Framework. If Framework had an option to get trackpoint/ultranav that would be a no brainer. I'm seriously torn on this. I'll probably go with a Framework 13 though. I keep my laptop for many years each time so the idea of having the possibility to bump a laptop to up to 96gb ram (2 x 48gb ddr5) in some years is truly appealing.
Doesn’t like it
Is that just AMD? On my thinkpad X270 playing videos in Firefox is just a mess. All sorts of problems while Chromium is just fine. It's also fine on a copy of my system that I run on a thinkcentre tiny.
Doesn’t like it
Probably the most common reason for the integrated wifi card becoming “non-deterministically non-recognized” is that the OEM fucked up the rf-kill in that there are slight differences between what the EC firmware and ACPI expect and how the hardware is implemented (missing pull-ups, EMI induced into high-impedance logic trace somewhere…). Anecdotally, on any laptop that I have seen with these kinds of issues (basically every new Intel laptop I bought between 2017 and 2020, which includes lot of weird no-name tablet-in-laptop-formfactor crap, but also ThinkPad X270), it progresses such that the WLAN becomes unusable in Windows but you would hardly even notice in Linux, where it just works. [edit: obviously comparing Windows to Windows is nonsense, it works in _Linux_]
Likes it
I have a T420, an x270, and have looked into modern ThinkPads like the P-series workstations, plus my current main computer is a System 76 Oryx Pro 9, so I can answer this a bit I think. System76 laptops have [extremely good repairability for modern laptops]( https://tech-docs.system76.com/models/oryp9/README.html ) imho. Their legal terms and availability of parts, part info, and schematics make them much friendlier to repair than any other modern laptop, and they've explicitly and purposefully designed the laptops with swapping things in mind (think replacing the keyboard, speakers, cooling system, and screen, fairly easily). I'd say solidly superior to any new or recent ThinkPad, and even superior to my x270, but still not as good as my T420 of course — although it's the closest I've seen a non-Framework laptop come in potential at least. They've also got superior upgradeability to my x270 (two RAM slots and two m.2 NVME SSD slots), but obviously it's nowhere near the insane levels of the T420, at least unless people start to leverage the easy swappability of the parts to replace them with newer parts instead of just replacing broken ones with new identical ones, at which point it might come closer. Reparability and upgradeability are two sides of the same coin after all. Build quality wise, at least with my Oryx they're very much leaning toward "modern ultrabook" and not "military-certified tank", but they're built much sturdier than your average Lenovo or Dell ultrabook…
Likes it
My ThinkPad x270 (i7-7600U) operates without using the fan for most things; only when compiling things for more than ~15 seconds do the fan turn on (and when opening Slack). Can probably tweak it a bit more by adjusting the limits and/or adjusting the upper CPU frequency limit, but I haven't bothered. I do run Linux, and have a fairly light-weight environment (dwm etc.) I don't know how much that matters.
Likes it
My tastes are fairly similar to yours. I'm curious which boxes aren't ticked by the more recent X200 series Thinkpads since the X230 in your view? I recently purchased one, and I did a bunch of research before deciding which to get. I settled on an X270 because it's user upgradeable, supports two SSDs, has two batteries, has hardware VP9 encoding/decoding, includes a USB C port, and is hopefully much closer to the ruggedness of the impeccable X200-X230 range than the newer models. The only thing thing I felt like I compromised on was the lack of support for 32 GB of memory. I was able to purchase an i7 X270, 4TB SSD, 16GB RAM, and replacement batteries all for under $1k, and it blows any new laptop that costs twice as much out of the water for my needs.
Recommends it
Hi! Been running Linux on laptops for years (over a decade). Everything from XPS to Thinkpad and System76. My first recommendation is to check the Linux distro wiki and see what hardware is officially supported. Ubuntu, RHEL / Fedora, and the major distros have lists and tell you what is officially supported; even sometimes down the the piece of hardware (i.e. Thinkpad fingerprint reader) and precise serial numbers. If you're not going to look at the distros wiki or you're not sure what distro you're going to run, the general rule of thumb is the older the hardware the better chance it is of being supported. Now, my personal opinions: I've owned two Thinkpads (x270 & x220), had a dell XPS 13 from work ~4 years ago, and my wife currently owns a System76 Lemur Pro (I have a Thelio Desktop). I've run Ubuntu and RHEL flavored distros on all these. Personally, the Thinkpads blow the Dells and System76 in terms of quality out of the water, and I'd argue they do with hardware support as well (if you're running RHEL / Fedora). The System76 works great with Ubuntu since the drivers and firmware are open (and POP!OS), but I'm not impressed with the quality of the product. Keyboard is low quality, as well as finish (footpads ungluing, finish on keys / track pad coming off, etc.). Dell makes a nice computer, but when I had my XPS 13 there were some major issues with HiDPI (I'm sure it's fixed now). I also didn't like the keyboard and the charging port was finicky. Gonna be honest, you're
Likes it
I grabbed a used X270 right before lockdown here. I’d intended to get one for vacation as a “beater” laptop for vacation instead of my MBP. Wound up using it a lot around the house, porch, and yard. Less worried about rain and dust with it. Some light gaming works well too. Plenty of life left in it. So much that I picked up an X220 on a deal. 10 years old and still pretty swift with an SSD and enough RAM.
Doesn’t like itHasn’t owned it
Not sure if battery issue is fully related but... As a former owner of a T470, Lenovo included a pretty beefy component from intel that was supposed to be feature complete by itself for dynamically managing thermals, including funky ideas like detecting if you were potentially using the laptop on your legs etc. and reducing thermals then, but giving full power when running plugged on the desk. Time comes for delivery, Lenovo finds out that intel did a half-assed job (not the first time, compare Rapid Start "hibernation" driver earlier) and the result is kabylake T470 (and X270 which share most of the design) having broken thermals when running anything other than windows without special intel driver, thus leading to funny tools that run in a loop picking at an MSR in the CPU in a constant whack-a-mole with piece of code deep in firmware.