The T models without the S usually have no soldered RAM, or only one soldered slot. The ThinkPad T480, for example, has two upgradable RAM slots and one or two NVMe slots. Heck, even the Wi-Fi card is removable.
When talking about ThinkPads, I always recommend going with the T line and skipping anything with S at the end.
Oh you're right, they seem to only have 1 slot soldered. They should advertise that more on their website. Seeing 8GB (soldered) + 1 expansion would be clearer
Until the T495, which was the last generation before the T14 came along, it used to be that the T with an S at the end would have one soldered RAM stick and one available to upgrade, while the T without the S would have both available, hence why the T without the S was my recommended model.
I would always recommend buying used with the minimal amount of RAM for cheap, and then upgrading everything manually, from RAM to NVMe to Wi-Fi card.
With the T14, however, it seems Lenovo fucked up big time. No more extra removable battery, no more empty RAM slots. The one soldered does seem to be 3200MHz, so Ryzen benefits greatly once you fill the second RAM slot with another 3200MHz stick — since Ryzen, and especially the integrated graphics, love dual channel fast memory —, but if you choose wrong when you buy, you are stuck.
That sucks and does create a problem for my future self. Right now I have a T495 and my wife has a T480 with an extra big battery, and we were going to upgrade both to the T14 for Ryzen 4000, but soldered RAM is a travesty.
I wonder where we are going to go now. I mostly use desktop workstations because working from home for 11 years now, I learned that workstations help with work discipline, but a laptop always end up being needed.
I hate Dell with a passion, the Asus Zephyrus G14 suffers from the same issues as the ThinkPad T14, and HP uses ugly fonts in their keyboards, which bugs me. The Pinebook Pro is nice, but mine hasn't arrived. Maybe the Slimbook from that German KDE shop?
I was so sad when they dropped the extra battery from the X280.
My X270 is a true road warrior with the spare 6-cell that I bought and I can get about 30 hours of battery life out of it with the way I work. It's the perfect travel laptop.
When talking about ThinkPads, I always recommend going with the T line and skipping anything with S at the end.