Have ThinkPads gotten worse over the last decade? – A ThinkPad retrospective

[Redaktion]

Fundamental aspects of the ThinkPad line have been scrapped, redesigned, and tweaked over the last 10 years. Have these changes improved the lineup of laptops, or have these modifications turned the modern ThinkPads into Ideapads?

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Have-ThinkPads-gotten-worse-over-the-last-decade-A-ThinkPad-retrospective.447267.0.html

[Sjkp]

The main issue, is the quality control is not there anymore. Buying a thinkpad no longer means buying quality, they are as bad as any other laptop manufacturer if not worse on certain models, that are shipped with design flaws.

Also the service that used to be second to none, now often don't have replacement parts, so getting a very expensive top of the line thinkpad fixed that you purchased with 1 workday support now can be useless for weeks.

I really wish some manufacturer would go back to quality as their main offering. I don't mind paying a premium for a work laptop if I know I get a machine that will work reliable for years, sadly that is not thinkpad anymore.

[Dan Ridenhour]

The Tx90 series eliminated power bridge... eliminated swappable batteries all together... eliminated the full size SD card slot...  made the unit less upgradable with more soldered parts... all in the name of a mm here or there to make them them a cheaper alternative to an X series.   If I wanted an X series id buy one... everything about the T series that kept me coming back was eliminated in the Tx90 series machines.   I skipped the T590 and have thought more than once about grabbing an extra T580 as a backup.   If they don't return to what made the T series unique and attractive I'll be looking elsewhere.

[Konstantinos]

The question needs to specify: Worse for whom? For the shareholders or for the customers (sorry, I mean the brainless "consumers")

Thinkpads now are slimmer/sexier but less durable, less upgradable which means shorter "life" before you need to replace them. So, shareholders vs "consumers" score 1 - 0.

I think this was a well thought strategy and not a "mistake" or "quality issue"

[jeremy]

For power bridge: Lenovo screwed it up, long before axing it. It randomly chooses the battery to drain, so the internal battery may be drained before the external. This is absolutely absurd and illogical in every possible way. If the internal battery is drained first, the "power bridge" becomes nearly 100% useless. No other device manufacturer - not even Sony, with their slice battery - ever implemented a bridge battery so poorly.

For the KB change on the _30 series. The KB change to chiclet was not the main issue, despite constant attempts to make the narrative about that. The keycaps are not the problem at all. The layout is the problem, and what was disliked the most. It's still among the better KB layouts, but not nearly as good as the old 7 row, IMO. I get why it's gone - that space taken by the keys "has to" go to the battery, trackpad, and now the speakers. Of course, this would be less of a problem with 16:10 or 3:2 displays, since they would have adequate vertical space... Instead we have these narrow 16:9 screens that are only good for some youtube and some TV content (since it's increasingly popular for digital media to be 18:9 or "wider," and movies were long, long, long [predating electronic computers altogether] in Cinemascope or wider, which was always more squished than 16:9).

Either way, poor attempts to copy the macbook have resulted in the current "ThinkBook" - hey, Lenovo even came right out and named a whole line of laptops "ThinkBook," just to further hammer the point home. Eventually, the ThinkPads will be downgraded to the ThinkBook specs, and by then, the only real difference will be an a choice of macOS or Windows - both with ever-worse aesthetics and HW engineering.

[Wally Downey]

Everything from Lenovo since the T430 is typical Chinese consumer junk.  I bought two laptops in the past few years, both overheated and performed badly.  I've since junked them and gone back to a T420 and T430, and will probably buy a couple more to set aside for future use.  And it's not just Lenovo, nobody makes a descent quality machine today.  I'll never buy another new computer or laptop.

[gerger]

Well, i'd rather carry a lighter and slimmer laptop that is more fragile, than a heavy durable tank that doubles as a dumbbell.

But i guess it sucks for people who have used to doing deadlifts with their laptops as office exercises.

[Puppy]

And it's not just Lenovo, nobody makes a descent quality machine today.

That's true. I am back to self assembled PC because I can choose the exact components I want. No component lottery Lenovo exhibits for (terrible) displays or noisy fans.

[justuselinuxalready]

To put something in perspective: since approx. the X230, battery life reached the point of being able to do a whole day's work without a charger. That hasn't changed too much since (assuming you aren't making heavy use of the CPU/GPU, in which case it may have got worse). For many, this is "good enough".

The real problem with the T4x0/T5x0 lines may be the marketing perspective: these are the cheapest models of their lines, with more expensive 's' models and the X1. What some of us are missing is 'robust & performance' models. What we did get are 'workstation' machines, good in some respects but generally with expensive workstation graphics cards that may be an unwanted extra.

Oh, and screens got stuck at 16:9 without limited availability of high-resolution models (and many of those including unwanted extras like HDR since they are seen purely as the 'top end' option).

[CafeineDreamer]

I wouldn't say they have gotten worse....

I currently use a T470 as my daily driver, having upgraded from a T440p. And it is much the same system. Solid and reliable. I have a X230, X201, T420, and have had a couple of others going back to the X600.

The redesigns don't make them any less capable, just less convenient.

Even the ideaPads, like the 720s make a decent daily driver.

Yeah they have changed over the years, but gotten worse?

[xti90]

WLAN card being soldiered is not good, I've seen them die. Heck I just got a T480 in that had a failed Intel WLAN card. WLAN cards are cheap, motherboards are not.

[Systems Decoy]

The title does not really represent the content of the article. I would expect notebookcheck to be more articulate here. As for the question posed in the title, worse for whom? These changes don't affect their target audience, large corporations who buy these machines on three year leases with an adequate support plan, and have enough spare units on standby to mitigate the odd system that's sent out for repairs. There has been evidence to suggest that reliability has taken a hit. For some random employee out in the field, a failed DC jack is no different than a failed USB C port, the laptop is going back to IT regardless.

[Systems Decoy]

no evidence*

[JonAllen]

As the operations director for a small SaaS startup, I settled on lenovos after hearing great things from relatives and other small business owners (I personally have been a Dell guy) we have a few E series and I have a yoga 920.

Support has been great for the E series, even out of warranty. And they are easy to service , as I've done a few times (changing store bought e series with HDDs to SSD's, replacing wireless cards). My yoga- it's a great machine, but the support has been mediocre at best. My father has a 7 year old T series and he couldn't be happier after an SSD upgrade.

[Loki Rautio]

The title does not really represent the content of the article. I would expect notebookcheck to be more articulate here. As for the question posed in the title, worse for whom? These changes don't affect their target audience, large corporations who buy these machines on three year leases with an adequate support plan, and have enough spare units on standby to mitigate the odd system that's sent out for repairs. There has been no evidence to suggest that reliability has taken a hit. For some random employee out in the field, a failed DC jack is no different than a failed USB C port, the laptop is going back to IT regardless.

I'm mostly talking about small businesses, or businesses that don't have upgrade cycles frequent enough for 2-3 year upgrades, or businesses that don't buy extended warranty coverage. Failed ports are failed ports, and it'll overall cost the company more to get the port fixed if it's on the mainboard. Sure, warranty coverage is great, but I'm sure there are some companies that would prefer to do repairs in-house. This is especially true for organizations that have data security policies which don't allow shipping their devices out to the manufacturer for repair.

Regarding reliability, the reliability of the ThinkPads themselves haven't exactly gone down, no. However, the chance of a problem cropping up before a year or two goes up as you add more complex components to the board. RAM can fail, WIFI cards can fail, GPUs can fail, etc. Ram and WLAN are fairly easy to swap in a few minutes, which means a failure only results in a small amount of downtime as mentioned. Being able to hand an employee their laptop back in a matter of minutes is crucial for some companies.

I understand that large companies on a contract are their main market, but there's a chance of alienating a number of their customers by making it impossible to replace any components.