I have the ThinkPad p16s AMD gen 2. What it lacks in name it makes up for with being the most headache-free computer I have ever had (including a Macbook).
Everything works pretty well out of the box, it never really overheats, Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS, the keyboard feels pretty nice, the screen is bright and easy to read, and fortunately I bought it when RAM prices weren't insane so I got the 64GB model.
I haven't tried repairing it yet but considering how well it's been working I'm not even sure I'll need ever need to. If this laptop gets stolen, I will likely just buy another ThinkPad, I'm a complete convert.
I own T14s Gen4 Intel and Linux support is perfect, even fingerprint reader works. Zero complaints. I'm mostly using it in clamshell mode connected via USB-C to display with backwards charging, it all just works! I'm also using secureboot with my keys, I cleared all MS keys and it didn't brick the laptop.
My only grievance is a bit buggy firmware. When I turn laptop on or reboot, speakers will randomly be muted (not a problem after OS boots, but for example in UEFI it'll either beep or not beep and that's random). UEFI interface was a bit buggy regarding mouse control, for example I've used to touch and drag things in boot order, but it didn't work and I have to actually press touchbar button down and keeping it like that move cursor. But touch drag works in other places. Not a big issue bit the first time I encountered it, I spent good few minutes trying to make sense of it, as I thought it just does not allow me to reorder boot entries or something like that. But these are small issues and once you've installed OS, you never deal with that.
Oh, and another complaint is that their BIOS update procedure is super weird. I have to find computer with Windows, download some exe, unpack things, find some BAT file and write to USB drive things, then boot from it. Theoretically they publish stuff to fwupd but I don't like this service. My best BIOS update experience was on Asus PC. I just put some bin file onto FAT32 USB drive, entered UEFI configuration, chose "update", selected that file and that's about it. Super easy, every manufacturer must implement this workflow.
Anyway I'm satistfied owner and my next laptop will likely be Thinkpad. Mostly because its stellar Linux support, but also because I didn't have any major issues with my current laptop.
What’s wrong with fwupd? I’ll admit that that the CLI is not exactly awesome, but it seems like a fairly clean implementation of the actual UEFI spec for updates.
I disabled possibility of updates in my BIOS, so I must first enter BIOS, enable updates in BIOS, then I have to tinker with my boot configuration as I'm using secureboot with custom keys and no bootloader, I also need to allow changing UEFI boot variables, well, lots of things I just don't want to do for my setup. A lot of moving parts with zero sense over something as simple as update from the USB drive.
Basically right now my setup is super simple and restricted and I have to make it significantly more complicated and insecure to allow fwupd to work.
Not sure if its intel specific, but for the amd variants you can download an .iso instead of an .exe and boot from that to upgrade. No need for windows
T14s Gen4 AMD user here w/secureboot enabled. Just used fwupd to upgrade BIOS two days ago, because I didn't realize the BIOS boot-order lock was preventing it. Rebooted, changed setting, rebooted, upgraded firmware automatically, rebooted, changed setting back. Yes it took 30 minutes, but I don't expect I'll need to do it again.
While most of the hardware works, hibernate doesn't, which annoys me. Fingerprint scanner also only works randomly at login, Linux issue I assume. Machine was crashing once a week (logs suggest it was AMDGPU related), but not since the firmware update, so fingers crossed that's fixed. In retrospect I wish I got the L14, didn't realize I would need more RAM at the time.
> Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS
My main requirement for a next laptop is running NixOS (coming from Macbook land). It’s probably this or one of the new XPS models, but not clear what NixOS support looks like there.
Not with Linux, typically. If you don't have drivers included in the kernel, it requires a lot of effort to get things working. I've done it many times, so now I will generally only buy laptops that have decent Linux support. [1]
I've had the laptop for about two years now and it still runs just as well as the day I bought it. I'm very happy with it.
[1] No I will not stick with Windows. Please feel free to read through my comment history to see why, but TL;DR I just don't like it.
I've had linux on every laptop I've owned for years, and I haven't really had a problem with any of them running linux, except for display port support on a dell xps.
Aside from that one dell laptop, though, I generally avoid HP and dell entirely, so perhaps that's why.
Weird. I must have uncommonly good fortune, as I don't think I've had Wi-Fi or sound issues for longer than that. I remember when I first tried out swaywm and having some sound issues because I also started moving to pipewore from pulseaudio, but nothing from an out of the box install of a decent distro.
^ this comment is more relevant than people might think. HP regularly deploys broken BIOS updates and literally bricks your laptops. Happened in 2023 I think 7 times that year, and one time even right in the next week. Our IT got so fed up and ditched any HP laptops because of it.
That advice doesn't hold up very well when in recent years we've had multiple instances of a BIOS update being necessary to deal with the problem of "the CPU gets fed too high a voltage and dies prematurely". That's happened to both Intel and AMD desktop CPUs.
It's a real problem that BIOS updates for consumer systems never come with a meaningful changelog, so evaluating whether a particular update is a good idea or not is basically impossible.
I would strongly advice against buying HP laptops if you want to install linux because MX linux worked well on mine pre-owned HP, Zorin OS worked well but somehow I could not install AntiX linux and secure boot of HP troubled me too much and I could install OpenBSD on it but each time I would restart then it would kernel panic and I would havento reinstall. Combined with a long holiday when I left it at home. Now my HP is practically bricked. It is not starting
I built a tower several years ago and it had CPU temp issues from the start. I RMA’d the cooler, reapplied the thermal paste a couple times, reassembled the whole build, etc. It wasn’t my main machine, but every time I sat down to use it the CPU would run hot and thermal-throttle. It’s an i9 with P/E cores, so I just chalked it up to Linux power management woes. A couple months ago I was on the brink of selling it for parts, but updated the BIOS as a Hail Mary. Totally fixed it.
I guess I did “ have a specific bug that needs fixed”; I just didn’t know it!
People don't have a choice to update their BIOS, as updates like this are automatically installed, by both Windows and the underlying Intel ME tools.
(And I'm trying to avoid talking about microcode updates, which is a whole other story of fuckups)
Regarding Thinkpad BIOS: I have a Raspberry Pi Zero and a self soldered RP2040 programmer [1] in my travel kit for a reason. When travelling, a lot of the Cellebrite rootkits rely on an OEM BIOS, so they typically reflash your BIOS in the "we gonna check your laptop" phase.
I've never had an issue with 60hz. 30hz is unusable but 60hz has always been good enough for me; the Sega Genesis and SNES had 60hz and that's always been good enough for me.
> Is there any other area where you would tolerate 35 year-old performance as "good enough"?
Yeah. Speakers, printers, lightbulbs, garage doors, etc., etc.
I can tell the difference between 60 Hz and higher rates, but I think that most people could not care less. You don't buy a Thinkpad to game on, the most intense workout the display is liable to get is scrolling down a page.
Even 50hz is fine. I'd go so far as to say, barring any medical or sensitivity issue, if any person prioritizes a 120hz screen they are a victim to habit or marketing.
It adds zero value to the experience, and you're just looking for things to be annoyed by / brag about.
Modern displays are already cutting edge. They have improved in every way that's meaningful in the last 35 years. Refresh rate is just not meaningful enough. "35 year old performance" it most certainly is not. You just seem hellbent on using this arbitrary (to most people) benchmark as a filter.
FYI, I run my 17 pro almost exclusively on power saving mode to cap frame rates because the battery life extending by 30 mins is more infinitely more valuable than frame rate over 50. I've capped my fancy monitor's frame rate to 60 so it matches my macbook air. And it's all fine in this world, nothing here is "one notch above unusable".
"Even 4gb of memory is fine", "even 720p is fine", "even 2ghz CPU is fine", "even a membrane keyboard is fine", "even USB 2.0 is fine", "even 2 hours battery life is fine"...
Yeah it's all "fine". If these were the specs of the only laptop available to me then yeah it would be "fine". I could get things done. One or more of those things are deal-breakers for an awful lot of people.
For me, a rubbish display is a deal-breaker. I can't accept that they would compromise in this aspect, presumably to save a few bucks.
It's likely as difficult for me to understand how you could possibly prefer battery life over refresh rates as it is for you to do the opposite. And I'm not even talking crazy refresh rates here, 120hz or even 90hz at a minimum.
Would you buy a high-end laptop with 15 minute battery life? I'm not buying a new laptop with a 60hz display.
You're entitled to your preferences. In my opinion:
Functional:
- battery life
- screen resolution (binary, <2k and >2k for laptops), brightness (binary: works in the sun or not), viewing angles (binary: good enough vs not), color (binary, good enough vs not) etc
- connectivity options
- ram
- build quality
etc etc
Aesthetic:
- color
- finish
- refresh rate
- OS theming, animations and all that
- material
When you say "why won't they do 120hz?" I hear "Why won't they release a magenta colored device". That's fundamentally different than "why won't they add usb c"
I don't think there's any value in 120hz. Nearly all content I consume is in 30-60 fps anyway. I don't need to see marginally smoother os animatations lol and thats nearly all 120hz is good for.
PS Gamers might actually functionally need high refresh rates. I'm not in that space, but I recognise that for some specializations it might be absolutely deal-breaker.
I understand it not being a priority for a lot of people but it's odd to me that there appears to be resistance to it. It is very easy for you to reduce the refresh rate if you need to maximise battery life, but I have no option to increase it beyond what the hardware supports.
I wonder how much reduction we could see in eye strain, nausea, fatigue and headaches if higher refresh rates were normalised.
I remember one time showing a non-techy person the difference between a "Pro Motion" iPad Pro vs a lower spec iPad. They probably had no idea what refresh rates were before I took a moment to scroll up and down in the web browser for about 5 seconds side-by-side. They had their "ohhhhh" moment and bought the much more expensive Pro on that basis alone.
These are business class laptops, there's no dedicated GPU. Where are you're going to utilize this high refresh rate? I'm pretty sure 99% of the time the integrated graphics would be working hard to churn out 120 frames of static views.
I bet the vast majority of people would be perfectly happy to have 60hz display, longer battery life, and save a few bucks at the same time.
Funny bonus anecdote: I reinstall my OS in december, only a few weeks ago did I realize it wasn't set to 144hz but 60hz, since I was busy with work since and didn't play any games I did not even realize.
> "Even 4gb of memory is fine", "even 720p is fine", "even 2ghz CPU is fine", "even a membrane keyboard is fine", "even USB 2.0 is fine", "even 2 hours battery life is fine"...
No these things aren't. 60 hz is fine though. What does it matter that it's "old"? It matters whether it's functional.
I for one prefer battery life over refresh frequency and will always choose 60 hz when available.
My toilet seems to work fine, and I think it's 35 years old.
But in general I agree, just with different variables. I'm ok with 60hz but I won't use a screen less than 4K. Part of the reason I bought the ThinkPad is because it was one of the few I could find at a reasonable price that had a 4K screen.
No. I guess everyone has different levels of sensitivity to refresh rates. It is immediately noticeable and very distracting to me when using a 60hz display.
It's not acceptable on a high-end laptop nowadays (120hz minimum). Imagine the reduction in headaches, fatigue and nausea if we stopped tolerating this penny-pinching.
Everything works pretty well out of the box, it never really overheats, Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS, the keyboard feels pretty nice, the screen is bright and easy to read, and fortunately I bought it when RAM prices weren't insane so I got the 64GB model.
I haven't tried repairing it yet but considering how well it's been working I'm not even sure I'll need ever need to. If this laptop gets stolen, I will likely just buy another ThinkPad, I'm a complete convert.