Seems like I lost access to my old account, so had to create a new one.<p>I just bought this a couple of days ago. I went with the ryzen, OLED version and 32GB RAM. I ordered without an OS and run Ubuntu on it. The decision was between T14 , the carbon x1 and the framework.<p>My previous laptop was a x1 gen 3. The laptop hinge broke :/ I absolute love this machine.<p>Impressions so far:<p>* Ubuntu 23.04 and Gnome runs so good that we even setup a donation on behalf of our company to the Gnome foundation. Ubuntu 22 will keep locking up.<p>* Everything works - camera, video recording, qualcomm wifi, all function keys etc. Even fingerprint login works!<p>* Gnome tweak tool is your friend. Especially to adjust those font sizes. I switched to noto from the default ubuntu.<p>* Keyboard is great but x1 carbon is still the best :-)<p>* Maybe my eyesight is failing me but I find no great difference between the FHD of x1 carbon gen 3 and OLED with 3 times more resolution.<p>* Batter is like 5 hours of so when I am working full time. I suspect OLED has something to do with this low battery life.<p>* Love that the camera has a physical switch<p>Some other tips:<p>* When you order be sure to not order the computer vision camera. This doesn't work on linux and there is a post on LKML saying it won't work for the next 2 years atleast.<p>* I am based in berlin, so ordered from Germany. You can order the "Beleuchtete Tastatur, schwarz – Englisch (EU)" keyboard for the US keyboard. Only practical change is euro sign instead of dollar in number 4 key.<p>* In the penultimate order screen, lenovo will sneak in a support option. But there's actually a basic support option which will save you some money. I think only difference is you might have to mail in your laptop for fixes, not sure.<p>AMA.
Happy to see the refresh. These APU systems are great.<p>The alarmingly priced usb-c dock works. Three monitors around laptop, no problem. The LTE modem works out of the box on windows and works with some arguing on Linux (I built a driver from GitHub, but that's probably improved since).<p>An not-obvious benefit of the Lenovo ones is they're on the approved list for AMD's employees, so broken stuff is pretty immediately apparent to lots of people with internal paths for reporting bugs to Lenovo.
Thinkpad shill here. Before buying Thinkpads, I recommend a quick search of threads about existing units (and immediate predecessors) for overheating issues. Lenovo prioritizes performance (good!) but in the past has overestimated the cooling/manufacture.<p>Lenovo learns tho; the trend is that issue-y lines are followed by stable lines. ex:Some early X1 gens had a small % with issues and later were fine. ex:We just redid the thermal compound on a 2yo P15 this week (thermal shutdowns). Ours seemed to be an outlier and was clean + lightly used.<p>Lenovo absolutely honors warranties tho and will even allow purchasing an extended after expiration (tho w/ a 30day 'cooling' period).
TLDR (though do try to read the review: Notebookcheck is one of the most trustworthy and methodical tech review sites)<p>The main competitors here is the HP EliteBook 845 G10 and the MacBook Pro 14 M2 Pro.<p>- Design: classic ThinkPad look, a bit brutalist. Lighter than MacBook Pro 14 since it uses carbon fiber instead of metal.<p>- Networking, keyboard: great<p>- Display: 16:10 Full HD IPS, 400 nits with very good contrast ratio 1800:1, though the MacBook Pro and laptop with OLED screens will still have the edge here<p>- Performance: Ryzen 7 7840U is currently the flagship low-power laptop CPU from AMD. Comparable to the i7-1370P and the M2 Pro 12-core, especially in terms of multi-core and efficiency. It completely slaughters any U-variant from Intel. The iGPU Radeon 780M is currently the fastest iGPU in the x86 world, leading Intel's Iris Xe Graphics G7 by around 50% in most games and tests.<p>- Emission: fan noise and heat are no issue, around the same as MacBook Pro 14.<p>- Battery: same as MacBook Pro 14, i.e., really good.<p>In short, a true Windows alternative to the MacBook Pro. The main factor for this is the stellar Ryzen 7 7840U and its Radeon 780M. Ever since it appears in Windows handheld gaming consoles, it has shown to be a capable balance between performance and power consumption, asymptomatic to the M2 Pro. The only problem is AMD not making it available widely enough, with laptop options trickling down quite slowly compared to Intel. (There was rumor laptop makers have to restrict the use of the 7840U since its iGPU means a cut to their gaming segment.)<p>I used a ThinkPad X1 Carbon G9 before, and while it's great, the Intel CPU really handicapped it. Now I'm on a MacBook Air M1, but damn the Windows offerings are more and more attractive now (thanks to macOS ruining an otherwise good laptop).
The last AMD based Thinkpad T14 I got was horrible. It had great numbers on paper and benchmarks, but horrible performance in real usage. Switching between programs was very slow. Even switching between tabs in browser was slow. It tended to overheat which throttled down the cpu. It had really bad idle power management for background tasks. This had never happened before on any older T14’s with Intel cpu. I won’t get another laptop with AMD again.
Does anyone know if it's possible to buy thinkpads with a US keyboard layout in Europe? Any thinkpad with a layout that's not the non-qwerty local variant of my country takes more than 6 weeks to deliver, and that is to get UK layout, not the US layout with different enter key, which I can't even find available at all
I would love to have a SD/microSD card reader option, then I would not need any dongle.
Is anybody aware if you can repurpose the smart card reader slot on the T14 or T14s?
Note my writeup re TB4 vs USB4 in ThinkPads (and in general PCs): there's no difference <i>in practice</i>. <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/16mpz2q/on_usb4_vs_thunderbolt_4/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/16mpz2q/on_usb4_v...</a>
Tangential, what are the options for an AMD to drive a 5k screen? I chose an Intel laptop and then Mac with Thunderbolt. Seems AMD laptops with Thunderbolt are rare but exist, and upcoming USB standards could drive 5k.
> but the device failed to win us over in terms of multi-core performance<p>If a dev machine I'd get it, but biz users are email and a few small spreadsheets. I don't get why biz users need multicore anything.
Nice that the sustained performance is much better than with the Intel model.<p>The i7-1355U version takes pretty big hit, starting from 1500 units going quickly down to 1000. Probably due to thermal throttling.