2014 to 2018 ThinkPads

The final 68 ThinkPads… rested into place. Man fuck **70 series ThinkPads tho, having Skylake & Kaby Lake processor options.

Google Spreadsheet

Buying these used instead of brand new

• Most of these should be in very good condition unless it had some mishap like cracked LCD.
• Due to how how recent these are, quite a number of these laptops will be coming off the first deployment.
• Lenovo warranties are 1 year to 3 years, so you can check serial numbers if these are still under warranty!

Why choose these aging ThinkPads

• Some have pill proof keyboard or backlit keys
• Good keyboard feel for ThinkPad newcomers, & modern hardware.
• Good durability, & functional matte black design
• Battery life is great unless you bring MacBooks in.
• GOAT pointing stick that lets your hands stay close to ‘home row’. 
• DVD Drives are nonexistant in these series.
• ThinkLight removed… 🙁
• Great Linux compatibility, various guides, programs, & scripts specifically for ThinkPads
• Well maintained due to being business laptops, most are written off & auction starts at low prices due to so much inventory
• Easy serviceability, abundance of parts, & repair guides.

What are you looking for?

• Medium Size – T450 to T480, T25, L380, A475, A485, L480 to L580.
• Big Screen – T550 to T570, L550 to L580.
• Small & Portable – X250 to X280, A275, A285,
• Ultrabooks – T450s to T480s, & any X1 
• Wacom Tablet – X1 Tablet(s), & any ThinkPad with Yoga name
• Workstations – P50, P51, P52, P70, P71, P72
• Portable & ‘Ultrabook’ Workstations – W550s, P50s, P51s, P52s, T460p, T470p, P40 Yoga, P1, X1 Extreme
• Avoid – E Series, Yoga X380, 11e, & 13 Chromebook

Pricing Guide

The following is what you should expect with what you paid for. If some of these things are missing, its not recommended to pay that price.
Low     – Broken, ugly and/or laptop only without RAM/HDD/AC/BATT
Mid      – May have HDD, maybe working battery, & AC adapter.
High     – HDD or SSD w/ OS, good battery, higher spec.
# Sold   – How many sold in the last 3 months. The higher it is, the more likely you can get one at these prices. e.g. 300 is a good number, if its 0, it means very uncommon or rare on eBay, shown here for relevance.

Broadwell – 5th Gen Core, very energy efficient.
Skylake – 6th Gen Core, supposed to be good
Kaby Lake – 7th Gen Core, really good battery life, barely getting back to Ivy Bridge XM quadcore performance.
Kaby Lake R – 8th Gen Core, really good performance because quadcore now. 
AMD Pro – E10, E12 AMD CPUs prior to Ryzen
Ryzen 2K – Ryzen 2000 series CPUs, actually fucking good for price/spec ratio.
S – Soldered CPU
Q – Quadcore by default
H – Hexacore by default (six core)
M – Ultra Low Voltage CPU (Core M Family), Passive cooling
X – Xeon CPU option & can use ECC RAM
1 – 1 RAM slot (and maybe one soldered module)
4 – 4 RAM slots
No # – 2 RAM slots 

Edge laptops are trash & not recommended. L Series have gotten better in this timeframe, also fuck searching for the ThinkPad 13, couldn’t find results. 

Mainstream Laptops (14″ & 15″)

• T450 is by far the cheapest & that makes it the best!
• A Series is basically an AMD T4xx, & the A485 is quadcoring on a budget!
• L380 fills in the ThinkPad 13 gap, which it always was one. 
• The performance boost of the T480 over the T470 is kinda insane, that should of been there since Broadwell

Ultrabooks (14″ & 15″)

• Lenovo markets almost all of their ThinkPads as Ultrabooks, X1C is really the only one & T4**s is a close second.
• X1 Extreme has quadcore i5 CPUs & six core i7’s, similar body like P1
• Prices of the X1 Carbon went down since I did a price post on all of them in August 2018.
• X1 Carbon 6th Gen has a smaller bezels & footprint than previous X1Cs to get into competition with the smol XPS 13 (9360 & 9370)
• Out of these I recommend the T450s, T480s & X1 Carbon 4th Gen.

Workstation ThinkPads (15″ & 17″)

• During the launch of the P50 & P70, it was heavily criticized for being even more expensive compared to Dell & HP Workstation offerings.
• Xeon + NVMe Speeds = God-like internet cred
• For P51/71, the base CPU was the i7-6820HQ, rest are Kaby Lake R

Portable & Ultrabook Workstations (14″ & 15″)

• P1 has a base quadcore but then sixcore CPU & a Xeon option
• P5*s are basically dual core & slimmer P5*
• These p T460/70 are actually workstations that have quadcores by default, not like the T440p that JUST had a socketed CPU & base specs
• Get the P1 if you want ISV Certs, & quadro graphics, the X1E will game better.

UltraPortables (12″, 13″ & 11″11e 2)

• No ThinkPad 13 because search accuracy difficulties. Probs about the same price as L4xx with matching spec.
• Not too many A2xx series, probably because they are kept.
• Its a real shame that all of these laptops have only one RAM slot… good thing you can get 16GB DDR3 modules for now.
• 11e for the hell of it, mixed results with the Yoga version ($50 extra MSRP)

Pen Tablets (11″, 12″, 13″, 14″, 15″)

• For some odd reason Lenovo wanted to make Yoga versions of laptops for all sizes, surprised they didn’t make a 17″ variant
• P40 Yoga isn’t here, so feel free to look at the Portable Workstations 🙂
• IDK why Lenovo evolved the Yoga from 12″ to 13″, they keep on dropping sizes & models (15″, 460, 260)
• The Yoga X380 is thinner than the L380, but has fucking soldiered RAM. (why)
• The X1 Tablet has a 3:2 FHD+ display, its bittersweet that they can’t make a T4xx with this screen or even bothered to try it with the Anniversary edition. 

Buying these in 2019

Well why not? These are the latest ThinkPads you can get, unless your budget is under $300, I don’t recommend even looking at any of these. However if you do got at least $500 to spend, you’d find a pretty nice laptop to last you through the years. Don’t even listen to people who call these non ThinkPads, they’ll recommend Latitudes or HP for some dumb reason, which have always held the same standard, always being a shitty second to a ThinkPad. Since the bar is so fucking low, how can you fuck that up?

Rant aside there might be better things out there, I’m not here to argue about it, nor do I really care if you get a good deal on a competing laptop that’s lower on eBay. Its nothing to brag when these deals are everywhere and its babby’s first time getting one. *Saucey stop Drinkinking* Uh T450 ftw! 

For me, my T430s is aging away, and my Pixelbook can only do so much. I do miss my W700ds and I have sold my two desktops… I will be looking at a P7x Xeon during the 2019 Spring to fill this void <3.