Forget New Laptops, Get a Thinkpad!

New, cheap laptops are kinda garbage. Get a used Thinkpad and a couple upgrades for the same price.

[gnored]

Totally agree with you. I bought a T430 a year or so ago, put an SSD in it, and the 9-cell battery, calibrated the screen, and used it all summer for a 6 month long road trip. I don't think you can break one, or I surely would have. Love the keyboard, the battery life, and the excellent wifi system. They're tough as nails, and run like a charm. Good advice you give!

[zazu]

T420 bought second hand beginning of 2015. Now is beginning of 2023. I5 (don't know which generation) 2xssd, 8gb ram. It was on 99% of days, sometimes several days with no turning off. Two time full coffee cup spill on it, turned it off, shower it, let it dry and it worked. Typing this on it while keeping as usual 50-70 open pages in the browser.

[dr]

So true, i got a 2011 Sandy bridge i5 X220 in early 2014 for 200, upgraded to 8gb ram and swapped out the hdd for an ssd, bought a new battery recently, still going strong to this day!

[MrWillypanda]

Buy what I bought, T530, it cost me around 183USD. It got 2 USB 3.0 ports, Nvidia NV5400M (good for Borderlands 2 level games), 3 storage upgrade option (1 drive bay, 1 MSATA slot, and 1 hdd caddy), Ivy Bridge core i3-i7 that runs cooler than Sandy Bridge generation, also, if you prefer the old keyboard style, you can transplant T420 keyboard into it (I am fine with the current keyboard so I didn't), it also got option for 1080p screen modding. And that's not all, with 1vyrain you can overclock your CPU, and put an Intel 7260 dual band AC card into it. And the best thing of all. You don't need to choose which mod/upgrade you want to do, you can go nuts and do all of them, it got 2 slots for Wireless card, so you don't even have to choose between upgrading your Wifi or storage. Better yet, wanna have better graphics? it got express slot, so you don't even have to sacrifice the PCI express slot used for Wifi.

[gcw]

The secret is to find the ThinkPads that were sold to large companies. These are noticeably tougher and have a lot more replaceable parts. Consumer grade machines are ok, but might not have swappable cpu, memory, or screen.

[hellsing]

Month ago I followed your advice, and it's really good! A T440P (120$) with an IPS display (Bought for 60$), 16gb ram (30$), 240ssd (40$) and an I7 4810Mq (68$) for whooping total of 318$ for a real beast (It also has an Nvidia 940m), really happy with this machine, the keyboard is EXCELENT!

[ManInTheAttic]

Nice video thanks! I have an old ThinkPad from 1999 - win 95 etc. Still running like a champ 🏆!

[vdochev]

If only they made laptops today like that! The T440p is so great, I can't have enough of it!

[johnwilson]

Your reviews are awesome! I will tune in again after shopping for a good used ThinkPad!

[hzalman]

love it dude - looking forward to watching more!

[MadalinIgnisca]

I have the exact same idea about Dell Inspiron 54xx series. You can upgrade them insane. They have 2 Ram slots (up to 64GB accepted, I use it), 2 NVMe slots, which can do RAID 0 (insane performance) or 1 (if one dies, it recovers by replacing the dead one).

[caligulite]

I'm a simple man. I see "Thinkpad" in the title, I like and subscribe.

In all seriousness, this is a good video. I appreciate the tip about m.2 form factor especially. That's something where I might have made a mistake if you wouldn't have mentioned it. Just bought a t440p off of Ebay and expecting it next week. Really looking forward to all the upgrade potential.

Wish they would have just ditched the shittay touchpad entirely and made the keyboard non-"chiclet", but other than that, I'm pretty excited about my purchase.

[dtesta]

Ok, someone needs to say this. YES, they are upgradable. But what difference does that make after you have maxed them out? max 16GB RAM, only SATA interface for disks, making SSDs 6-8 times slower than new laptops. Bad battery life. Only 4th generation power hungry CPUs etc. For those $500 you spent on maxing out your old Thinkpad, I bet you can find a used newer laptop that does not have those limitations and run faster and better battery life! Even when switching out the CPU to the fastest 4-core you can fit in it, you still only get about 5000 benchmark score. That's half the speed of my several year old gaming laptop that I bought for $1600 new, which will definitely be less than $500 today. I agree that those old Thinkpads were a pretty good deal a few years back, but certainly not in 2020/2021. Further, those cheap $100-120 pricetags that Youtubers always talk about only exists in the US. In Europe, you will have to pay closer to 200 EUR for a base-model, which makes it even less interesting.

[AlexSeibz]

Used a T440s for two years, then a T440p for two years and then in 2020 I found an insane deal on a P51. Rockin that as my daily driver still. Loving it.

[clixium]

When you talk about prices it only applies to USA, in Europe these prices are x3, in my experience no matter in what condition thinkpad is they don't go below 250 or 300€ unless its a real low spec version. Great instructions either way 🙂

[KRAFTWERKK]

It's 2022 and i don't give a FUCK if some people don't use discs anymore. Those people can gladly buy the current line of cheap laptops if they want. But when i buy a Laptop i expect it to have at least an optical drive, when every other important IO hardware has been rationed away, only leaving us with USB, HDMI and that's it. When i slap a ultrabay Blu-ray drive into this laptop, i can play & burn CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays and don't have to rely on keeping all that stuff as rips on another USB drive. Makes me a lot more flexible and optical Media is far from dead. Especially when you're away from highspeed internet connections. And yes, those 9 cell batteries cost a fortune but are absolutely worth getting because that's the benefit of laptops over Desktops. If the power goes off your laptop at least keeps running for a while and you have enough time to properly unplug USB storages and shut down the laptop without risking hardware damage. Yes, even the i5 in these things is still fast enough for most daily tasks.You can always slap in tons of RAM and SSDs if you really need it. The i5 also has the benefit over the i7 that it doesn't run too hot. Because with an i7 you sure get a speed boost at the cost of heat development. Something to keep in mind, especially when your Thinkpad comes with a dedicated GPU instead of Intel graphics.

[habituallearner]

My daily driver is an x220 i5 with 16gb RAM running Manjaro 21 and it does everything I want it to do without complaint. It's built solidly and the keyboard is the best I've ever used. The pebbly texture on the trackpad is my only complaint. Thanks for covering Thinkpads in 2021!

[synthoelectro]

Got my thinkpad in 2018, it's an older 2012 version, been souped up, with SSD 128 GB, and just about 4 GB ram. It does everything I need when I'm away from my desktop. Ebay, cheap.

[CraigHagan]

Nice work. This video came up in my suggested as I commented on a T430 video the other day. Great to learn about the T440. I've avoided that series due to the horrible trackpad. Didn't realize that could be swapped out. Glad to see how easy it is to access the internals over my T430.

I've done all the upgrades to my T430 even a 1440p screen with a T420 keyboard and quad core processor in 2022. Why? It's kind of like driving a vintage car at this stage for me and I quite enjoy the Thinkpad line. Bought the GF a E14 for about the cost of my T430 upgrades which she loves and it's sleek. Thankfully it still has a little of the Thinkpad DNA. Great video. Thanks for sharing

[Crymzon]

About a year or so ago I got a Thinkpad E520 from a neighbor, invested fixing it up over the time i've been using it. Pretty nice laptop.