Ultrabook ThinkPads – eBay Price Guide December 2019

X1 Carbon only, no Yogas or tablets
T400s thru T495s
No X or S Series here

ThinkPads are known for their durability, reliability and modularity, but these machines here aren’t known for the latter. Most of these systems have soldered processors, soldered RAM, and lesser performance than their bigger brothers. However these are some of the most “stylish” ThinkPads out there besides the classics, and most of these offer a nicer display, higher standard options, than their base models they are improved upon. If you want something lightweight with a “good” screen, that isn’t a MacBook Pro, then one of these may be for you.

Pricing Guide

Low     – The bargain bin of an ugly laptop, most likely it will be missing a power cord, drive & OS. Most of these are R2 Ready for Resale, & liquidated, in some cases they are broken systems from the original owner. Best for those who can repair computers & replace parts.

Mid      – The expected price of a decent, fully working laptop, available at a Buy it now price & best come with a power cord. For those who just want one to be fully working, this is recommended. For those outside the America, this might be the low price for your market.

High     – Typically laptops with great specs, lightly used and in excellent condition.
EX+ — Most of these are sold by top end refurbishers & or are brand new in box. For those who need warranties or for collections.

CPU — Denotes what processor generation a ThinkPad has. Additionally “S” denotes the system has a soldered CPUs (broadwell & later they are all soldered) & a “1” denotes the system has one RAM slot, & “0” means it has soldered RAM, unless otherwise stated.

# Sold   – How many sold in the last 3 months. The higher the better (300 great) or 0 means very uncommon or rare on eBay. These guides are done in six month intervals.

i7 — Some laptops have a lot of sold listings, so I did a higher spec search for them, these are listings that are sold with with an i7 CPU & one of the following; an IPS display, 16GB RAM, an SSD w/ 256GB or higher, or a HDD with 500GB or higher. I guess i gotta make one for the i9 CPUs and Xeons…. Next time!

14″ X1 Carbon

The flagship of ThinkPads, the X1 Carbon takes on the 13″ MacBook Pro and Dell XPS. Built to be super thin, these machines boast some of the better displays Lenovo offers & great keyboard feel.

• Best Value – X1C4 (FHD IPS standard, NVMe finally)
• Next Best – X1C5 Kaby Lake version
• Impervious -X1C7
• X1C5 & later have a smaller width thanks to a reduction from the LCD bezel

The X1C4 has the most different design out of all of the X series, similar to the Yoga. Only true ThinkPad masochists love the X1C2 with its loki troll tier keyboard layout.

Performance wise, the X1C1 is the worst and , X1C2 & X1C3 have similar performance but the latter has better battery life. The X1C6 is the first to have quadcore processors, thanks to Kaby Lake R, regarding performance, the base 1.6GHz i5-8250U outperforms the 2.8GHz i7-7600U of the prior year, it was about 36% more powerful in most tasks.

What about the old X1 Carbon Page with all the details?
Good question! I should go about and work on it one more time but for now.

Quick specs, base to max

• 4GB, 8GB RAM – X1C X1C2
• 4GB 8GB 16GB RAM – X1C3 X1C4
• 8GB 16GB RAM – X1C5 X1C6 X1C7

• 128GB to 256GB thin mSATA – X1C1
• 128GB to 512GB m.2 SATA – X1C2 X1C3
• 128GB to 512GB m.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 – X1C4
• 128GB to 1TB m.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 – X1C5
• 256GB to 1TB m.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 – X1C6
• 256GB to 2TB m.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 – X1C7

• 900p TN – X1C1 X1C2
• 1080p TN – X1C3
• 1080p IPS – X1C4 to X1C7
• 1440p IPS – X1C2 to X1C7
• 1440p IPS HDR – X1C6
• 2160p IPS HDR – X1C7

15.6″ X1 Extreme

Part of the “Ultrabook Workstations”, the X1 Extreme caters to business executives who don’t require the bulkiness of a workstation.

• Both systems have Coffee lake CPUs, basically it’s 8th gen vs 9th Gen
• Processing power is a slight difference between the two, but massive if you go with the i9 eightcore on the X1E2
• Graphics are the same between systems, both systems have the same base cost at $1475 USD
• X1E2 has the i9-9880H as an eight core option & 16MB L2 cache, it is an $835 USD configure to order option
• X1E2 (P53 & P1 Gen 2) also has an OLED option for $380 USD, by far a superior display with 500 nits & 100,000:1 contrast ratio, with 100% DCI-P3 color gamut.
• X1 Yoga Gen 1 & 2 had better OLED displays.

. The first X1E looks to have an average price drop of $150 for the past 6 months. It’s holding its value well in comparison to the T Series. If you went all out on the X1E2, and opted for the god tier OLED, it’s contrast ratios and color accuracy that beats the top spec’d P72.

T Series, ‘s’ UltraBook Version

Originally a low profile variant of the popular T400 series, they are now considered an Ultrabook since the T431s.

• Best Price – T430s or T450s
• Next Best – T470s, any ver
• T431s and later dropped the dual ram slots, only one is available now
• T430u is the oddball, it’s like a budget ultrabook

Before Lenovo changed up the ThinkPad lineup with the Haswell machines (T431s, T440s), the T400s models were drastically different than their ‘normal’ T400 contemporaries. They were built sort of like an 14″ X Series, but not quite as thin like the X1 Carbon. They had soldered RAM, and had a rectangular lithium battery that had worse battery life than their cylindrical Li-Ion counterparts, even though they used the same processors & graphics. But since Intel made an initiative for OEMs to build Ultrabooks, things changed with the T440s thanks to lower powered CPUs on all systems and advances to battery technology.

A brief look at specs

• DDR3 – T400s to T430u, 16GB Max
• DDR3L – T431s to T450s, 12GB Max, 4GB Soldered
• DDR4 – T460s to T480s, 20GB to 24GB Max, 4GB or 8GB soldered
• DDR4 Soldered – T490s & T495s,

• 1.8″ uSATA – T400s & T410s, expensive & small-ish capacity drives, nab a mSATA adapter instead
• 2.5″ 7mm SATA3 & mSATA – T420s to T450s (some of these models can house 9.5mm drives)
• NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 – T460s & later (they can use m.2 SATA III as well)

• 16:10 Format – T400s & T410s, WXGA or WXGA+, 16:9 from T420s
• 768p to 900p TN – T420s to T431s (unless you bough a mod chip)
• 900p TN, 1080p IPS – T440s to T450s
• 1080p FHD IPS, WQHD (1440p) IPS – T460s to T495s
• 72% NTSC Color Gamut – WQHD T480s & some FHD T490s / T495s
• T480s & T490s have a $190 FHD option called Privacy Guard, which tints the LCD at wide angles, like old DSTN displays (minus the color wash out), it has 400 nits of brightness and a 1000:1 contrast ratio
• T490s has a 500 nit, 1500 contrast ratio WQHD option with 100% Adobe RGB color gamut

Brightness inconsistency on 1080p IPS models – Via the PSREF, the T440s & T450s have 300 Nits of brightness on their displays. But when Lenovo started to have a FHD IPS display as standard from the T460, the PSREF states they are dimmer at 250 nits. However due to various manufacturers on LCDs, there’s a chance you’ll get a 300 Nit display.