
New Lenovo ThinkPad Range with Ryzen 4000 and 4000 Pro Mobile - awiesenhofer
https://www.anandtech.com/show/15772/new-lenovo-thinkpad-range-with-ryzen-4000-4000-pro-mobile
======
koverda
On a tangential note, I recently switched from an XPS 15 to a X1 Carbon. The
thinkpad is a completely uncompromised device. It feels like a laptop from the
future, where nothing sucks. The keyboard is great, the screen is great, the
touchpad is great, the keys are all there, it's super light, but super solid,
there's a bajillion ports. Anyone considering a new laptop should give a good
look at thinkpads. They also have ridiculous sales from time to time - I got
my X1C for about 50% of retail price.

~~~
petschge
I have a X1 Carbon that is a few years old now. About 2 years ago I dropped it
(lid closed) from about 2 feet up (70cm). And it hit the tiled floor, pointy
corner first. I thought "welp here go $2000". But no! A 2x3 mm part of the
black surface finish chipped of and I see the bare silvery metal now. Oh and
the tile cracked.

~~~
adtac
the X series and the T series are some of the best laptops ever built

unless your work requires you to use macOS, you have no reason to buy a
Macbook

~~~
RussianCow
> unless your work requires you to use macOS, you have no reason to buy a
> Macbook

If hardware is all that matters to you, sure. But some people actually prefer
the software experience of macOS to that of Windows, for a variety of reasons.

~~~
rla3rd
i'm running Ubuntu 20.04 on my Thinkpad P2 Gen 2 laptop, using the Budgie
Desktop. I'd guess my entire workflow is 95% the same coming from my MBP.

~~~
RussianCow
There is still the issue of software. Lots of programs that professionals use
on a daily basis don't run on Linux and don't have good alternatives that do.
Plus, macOS is much better designed and integrated (if that means anything to
you), and generally more stable[0].

[0]: This seems to be less true every year, both because desktop Linux is
becoming more stable over time, and because macOS seems to get buggier with
every release. Still, as someone that uses both operating systems on a regular
basis, my MacBook Pro is still marginally more stable than my Linux desktop
machine on average.

~~~
philliphaydon
> and generally more stable

People say this yet still use Adobe software on macOS over windows. Despite
the fact adobe software runs horribly on macOS compared to windows.

If you buy a Mac for using adobe software you’re definitely not buying it for
workflow.

~~~
RussianCow
First, I was talking about software that doesn't run on Linux but does run
macOS, for the case where you don't want to use Windows but still need certain
programs. For those users, the Windows "workflow" is already a deal-breaker,
as is the lack of professional software on Linux, so macOS is the only
choice.[0] I also didn't call out any specific software because there is lots
of it besides the Adobe suite.

Second, can you elaborate? What makes Adobe run "horribly" on macOS? I admit I
haven't used an Adobe product in years, but I used to do some design as part
of my job, and I can't say it worked any worse on my Mac than it did on my
Windows machine.

[0]: I recognize that this isn't necessarily a huge segment of users, but I
for one would be hard-pressed to go back to Windows, even if it saved me a
thousand bucks on a laptop.

~~~
philliphaydon
The only software I could complain about on macOS is adobe software. I can't
think of any software that gives a bad experience other than that...

If you deal with large photoshop files, and you only have say 8gb of memory.
Windows will just get really slow when you move around the document.

On macOS it will crash randomly, and often. Premier you can be scrubbing the
timeline, scrub too much, boom premier just stops working.

Lightroom (this is what I mostly used for editing photography) it generates a
history of applying changes and removing them, if you begin toggling boom
crash.

This is just personal experience, but I know alot of people who do graphic
design and they now just have this natural reflex to constantly save their
work allllll the time in fear of the software crashing.

Yet on Windows I don't recall any of that software ever crashing...

[https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/photoshop-
cc-2020-c...](https://community.adobe.com/t5/photoshop/photoshop-
cc-2020-crashing-constantly-macos/td-p/10718719?page=1)

There's many more threads on about the software crashing on macOS than
Windows.

In any case I'll probably never buy another macbook again. Lenovo + Ubuntu for
me now. :)

------
sneak
I'm wondering how long, or if ever, it takes for reasonable people to resume
buying Lenovo products after they got busted using a firmware-based rootkit to
reinstall their manufacturer spyware onto a freshly formatted OS install (the
same year they got busted preinstalling third-party adware, which resulted in
an FTC settlement/fine).

Do you wait like a year or three? five? Do you never buy Lenovo again? What's
reasonable? This isn't rhetoric: I'm legitimately asking for a figure, as well
as a rationale, because I don't know the answer.

Personally I'm in the market for a high end laptop for running Linux, and I
just couldn't see myself buying something from them ever, no matter how good
their machines are, because I just don't trust _the people in the organization
who develop products_ to take system integrity seriously enough.

~~~
igneo676
My understanding is that the Thinkpad line is a bit segmented from the rest of
the company. As a result, those poor decisions haven't effected the Thinkpad
line. It helps also that I immediately switch everything over to Linux

I do understanding that it's entirely feasible for them to rootkit Linux from
the BIOS and install malware onto their Thinkpads but I just haven't seen it
happen yet

~~~
aesh2Xa1
Hm, it was a problem on the professional ThinkPad line as well.

[https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/lenovo-laptop-
virus.html?m...](https://thehackernews.com/2015/09/lenovo-laptop-
virus.html?m=1)

~~~
Stratoscope
Naw, that story is ridiculous. One person bought two "refurbished" ThinkPads
from _IBM_ and claims they found some stuff on them.

Show me one example - any example - of Lenovo installing any of this kind of
stuff on a factory fresh ThinkPad, and then we'll have something to talk
about.

Until then, I suggest ignoring biased and axe-grinding sources like
"thehackernews".

------
jagger27
Major bummer to see they're still using 16:9 displays, even when the lower
bezel area could easily accommodate a 16:10 display.

I am however very pleased to see Lenovo embracing AMD in their high end
products.

~~~
SloopJon
For all of its quirks, I love having a 3:2 display on the MateBook X Pro.
Besides the Surface Laptop and Surface Book, there's not much else on the
market with this aspect ratio.

------
manishsharan
Am I the only one who is upset that Lenovo T series has dropped external
battery ? I am running Ubuntu on a T480 with an extra battery in my bag. I
don't think any other laptop has ever given me as much joy. And I almost never
run out of juice even though I always code without being plugged into a power
source.

Bring back the external battery !!

~~~
jamesmunns
The workaround for this is that you can now get external USB batteries that
support PD, and most Lenovos use USB with PD for their main charging cable,
which means you can carry around a device that can charge your laptop on the
go.

It's not as slick as the "swap batteries, now you're fully charged", but on
the other side, the USB batteries can charged without the laptop, and you can
pick the size you're willing to carry around.

------
greendave
Good looking laptops with excellent CPUs.

It is a bit unfortunate that they don't support Thunderbolt though. The
ability to add an external GPUs/PCIe cards widens the horizon a lot for
desktop-replacement systems.

------
ldng
Well, I hope those are better under linux than the A485 and aren't running as
hot and a sluggish wireless driver ... it has been a disappointment.

~~~
lliamander
Things were already better for linux with last year's models. My E495 works
flawless with Linux.

------
ohazi
So I guess that's the new Thinkpad naming convention?

T490 -> T14

T590 -> T15

..etc

~~~
rincebrain
Yeah, I believe they're switching to branding similar to the X1 Carbons across
everything, so it'll be T14 generation 1, generation 2, etc.

I just hope this doesn't imply they're going to start making laptops a lot
like other manufacturers (e.g. less durable, more soldered down components,
...)

~~~
linguae
I can't make any statements regarding quality, but regarding soldered RAM,
unfortunately this practice has spread outside of the X1 Carbon lineup. The
ThinkPad X280 and X290 have soldered RAM with no DIMM slots, and the ThinkPad
T490 has soldered RAM but with an extra DIMM slot for some upgradeability
(compare to my T430, which has no soldered RAM and instead has two DIMM
slots). There are still some ThinkPads that don't have soldered RAM, such as
the P53 and the P1.

Regarding storage, on the other hand, I don't believe the ThinkPad lineup has
gone down the road of soldered SSDs, not even in the X1 Carbon lineup.

~~~
buggeryorkshire
Can confirm, my X1 Carbon doesn't have a soldered SSD. Best laptop i've ever
had tbf and works wonderfully under Fedora 32.

------
vzaliva
As soon as they support Linux...

~~~
apetresc
Huh? Who, Lenovo or AMD? They both have fine Linux support.

~~~
vzaliva
What about problems people mention here?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22969469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22969469)

I love ThinkPad and planning to buy one soon, but reporters of problems with
sound and WiFi drivers concerning.

~~~
eropple
The newer Carbons and the X1 Extreme have had a rougher time than most Lenovo
laptops. My T480 and T580 were pretty much perfect from the jump, but my X1
Extreme remains disappointing.

~~~
noisy_boy
I installed Ubuntu 19.04 on X1 Extreme Gen 2 and didn't have any issues.
Upgrades to 19.10 and 20.04 have been painless as well. Everything basically
works.

~~~
eropple
I have an X1 Extreme Gen 1 and it's had power/battery issues since I got it.

~~~
specto
Yep same on the Gen 1, it's an awful machine.

------
acd
Great that we now have AMD CPUs in Lenovo laptops.

The Lenovos they should be named AT490, AX490 and AL490 so the next Lenovo
model would be named AT500 and so forth. Where A would mean AMD.

------
daffy
Is there something like the Intel-Management-Engine backdoor on this too? Is
it possible to replace it with coreboot or libreboot?

~~~
pb82
Yes, there's the AMD PSP
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Platform_Security_Processor)).
It's an ARM core with similar concerns, but even less is known about it.

------
tracker1
Still want to see a 4800H/4900HS with an RTX 2070 Max Q option...

Edit: and at least 32gb ram. It really feels like Intel is paying the laptop
mfgs off on this one. Almost every AMD laptop this generation is gimped with
single-socket ram upgrades and/or capped with RTX 2060 graphics.

~~~
jdashg
What are you doing that needs such a wide CPU _and_ beefy GPU? That's a real
narrow niche between GPU-heavy gaming laptops, and cheaper many-cored
desktops.

I would love a 4900 with no dGPU, myself. (wide-CPU compile workloads) The
iGPU in these is plenty for my portable needs, especially at 1440p.

Ideally we'd have good external GPU support, so we choose to hook it up to a
real heavy-hitter.

~~~
tracker1
Does it really matter? The fact is, I use that much CPU/Ram for work tasks...
and I'd like a 2070 as a baseline for the occasional gaming.

Since AMD systems are likely 1-2 years away from seeing good, broad
Thunderbolt support (probably aligned with USB4), eGPU isn't an option. AMD
currently does more, with less power than the Intel counterparts in the upper
end classes of systems.

Find me a laptop with a 2070 Max Q that isn't at the higher price point that
the AMD 4800H doesn't fit into.

------
qatanah
How does Thinkpad compare to the trackpad of mac nowadays?

The only thing that makes me use mac is the trackpad and retina. I have 15"
late 2015 mbp, so far the best mbp out there w/o the butterfly keyboard.

Im still considering to go back to thinkpad for my next laptop since i had
t42p, t60 before.

~~~
dade_
I have an X1 Carbon Gen 3 tablet. I have had plenty of issues, but the
trackpad is the best I have used since my MacBook Pro, and I don't think a
better trackpad experience is better on Windows. Also better than the Surface
line, though those would be the next best IMO.

------
obrajesse
The hardware is lovely, but the quality of the hardware support service is not
what it used to be.

I recently had to get service for my current generation X1 Carbon.

Completely understandably, Lenovo are not currently able to provide on-site
support at residential addresses. However, right now the best case for a depot
repair appears to be around 3 1/2 weeks. Call center staff say that they have
been prohibited from giving any kind of a timeline for a repair or even an
escalation call-back by management.

Lenovo says this is due to Covid, but friends of mine (And a very chatty call
center rep) report that it began in January when they moved their primary
repair operation from Tennessee to Texas.

------
khasan222
15+ hours of battery life on all of them? I would upgrade my machine for that
alone.

~~~
kvark
I find the battery life in Lenovo laptops degrading very quickly, comparing to
Apple macbooks. I used X1C 4th gen as well as X1 Extreme extensively, and
their batteries are pretty close to dead, only delivering ~1-2 hours of work.
At the same time, I'm typing this from a 2016 MBP, which is alive and well,
batter is good enough still.

Maybe it's just Linux, which I run on Thinkpads. Overall as a system though,
the difference is drastic, not in favour of Lenovo.

~~~
buggeryorkshire
My X1C6 is ~2.5 years old, and I still get around 7 hours of battery. Screen
is usually quite low brightness as I live in the UK and it's mainly
terminal/VSCode/browser.

I used to have a couple of things tweaked like TLP etc but when I reinstalled
from scratch with Fedora 32 I didn't do any of that. Still get awesome battery
life, i'd definitely buy one of these newer Thinkpads in a year or so.

------
maxioatic
I have a X1 Carbon 3rd gen (2015) that is starting to get beat up (man is it
durable though). I've been waiting to upgrade to a Thinkpad with a Ryzen 4000,
so I'm super excited about these. I might switch to the T series though (for
more RAM) and replace my aging desktop as well.

As an aside I've been running Ubuntu 16 for the last couple years no problem.
Recently updated to Ubuntu 20 and it's been great so far.

------
greggyb
My dream laptop isn't there yet, but this is hopeful. I want an X13 or T14
with an -H series CPU. I think the X13 is unlikely, but Asus has shown us that
you can fit a 4900HS into a 14" laptop.

It's not an absolute necessity for me. I do my primary computing on a desktop,
and always offload compute onto it from a laptop for anything heavy. It's nice
to have some local grunt, though.

------
alexbanks
Is it possible to get a ThinkPad without the rubber thing in the center of the
keyboard?

~~~
vinay427
Ha, meanwhile I wouldn't buy a ThinkPad (or any other laptop) without it.

As for your question, I've never heard of at least the "real" ThinkPad series
laptops (X/W/T/...) sold without the TrackPoint. Does it really bother you
when typing? If it's the appearance, you can likely find a black nib for
purchase or maybe remove the included nib and blacken it out.

~~~
dgzl
Same. Once I learned how to use it, I can't go back.

Recently my work laptop was switched to a Dell without the nub and I noticed
reduced workflow immediately.

~~~
oefrha
I grew up a fan of the track point, back when trackpads were either
nonexistent or hot garbage (at least on PC laptops). Which is to say I
definitely “learned how to use it”. Then I switched to Mac laptops a decade
ago. Since then I’ve got to touch the track point a few more times and it felt
so dated. People still tout the precision, but I can get the same level of
precision on a quality trackpad, plus much needed fluidity in general, not to
mention multitouch gestures.

~~~
jaifraic
For me, it's not about precision. With the Trackpoint I can rest my hands on
the Keyboard/Homerow and I can use the pointer without having to move my hands
at all.

~~~
oefrha
That’s fair. I personally don’t mix typing and trackpad usage very much so
that advantage is pretty minimal for me.

~~~
dgzl
I think the advantage is bigger than you believe, and I would bet you mix
typing/trackpad more than you believe also.

~~~
oefrha
Could be, but I’m positive that I use gestures more than I mix
typing/trackpad, so there’s that.

~~~
dgzl
Overall I think you'd still be faster in keyboard, but gestures and such offer
a lot in terms of simplicity which is a fair trade a lot of the time. If your
workflow revolves around typing however, I would still put trackpoint above.

------
scalatronn
All I want is X1 yoga with 3:2 screen ratio and AMD ryzen... guess I will wait
for X years for them to do anything...

------
2OEH8eoCRo0
I was just on Lenovo's site two days ago looking for new Ryzen laptops. Sweet!

------
myu701
Can anyone with experience in HP Elitebook laptops recommend which Thinkpad
models I should look at? I like the idea of a Ryzen processor and I prefer
ports/power over portability/pose.

------
lliamander
I really can't wait for AMDs deal with Asus over the Ryzen 4000HS chips to
end.

The idea of a T14 with a 4900HS (a T14p, if you will) and no dedicated GPU
would make a fantastic compact developer machine.

------
windex
Do these have soldered-on RAM, batteries, and/or SSDs? I usually end up
upgrading my laptops over a period and the flexibility in being able to do
this is important to me.

~~~
esaym
We won't know 'til they are released. But currently the premium for the higher
end (and thinner) "T" series is the cpu and ram are soldered. There might be
one blank ram slot, not sure. Ironically for the cheaper 'e' series, the ram
is socketed (not sure about the cpu). So hopefully for the new 'e' and 'l'
series, they'll stay the same. More than likely because the 'T' series are
being pushed to be thinner and thinner, they will remain soldered.

------
anewguy9000
can any thinkpad owners comment on the random shutdown bug?

[https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-
Laptops/X1-Ca...](https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-X-Series-
Laptops/X1-Carbon-Gen-7-regularly-mistakes-empty-battery-and-shuts-
down/m-p/4561156)

------
solarkraft
Looks like a joke. There is seemingly not even one configuration with a
display resolution above full HD.

~~~
nsriv
They're beginning the rollout in the E-series which is their budget line of
Thinkpads. Not sure what your metric is, but getting better than Full HD in a
Windows portable for $639 is par. (Surface Go 2, being the one exception I can
recall).

~~~
solarkraft
I'd pay 1,5k€ for a machine with really good specs (USB-C charging, good
build, 15", good screen, preferably an AMD processor, good/great touchpad,
perfect linux support, upgradable RAM), but haven't yet found a laptop that
matches these requirements. I _don 't_ care so much about light weight, as I'm
looking for a semi-workstation.

The closest thing I've seen so far is (apparently, it's almost impossible to
even find out the model code this is supposed to have, I think it's GA401IV-
HA026T?) the Asus Zephyrus G14. There's talk about a 15" version (heck, I'd
happily take 17" or more), I sure hope it won't be more expensive.

------
slaw
T15 should have touchpad in the middle, not to the left.

------
jadbox
Are they all just using an integrated gpu?

