Lenovo’s New T-Series ThinkPads Score 10/10 for Repairability
74 points by Signez
74 points by Signez
Full disclosure: iFixit has an ongoing business relationship with Lenovo
Any reviews for companies that are paying the reviewers money should be taken with a cargo ship of salt.
(For me, any honest review company should explicitly decline any freebies, business relationships, etc. with the owners of the products they are reviewing.)
For the most part, I tend to agree. In the case of iFixit, I think maybe this is OK? While they are, to some degree, a “review company,” I see advocacy as a larger part of their mission; they’re actively working to make things more repairable, whether that’s by selling supplies for it, writing guides, lobbying for right-to-repair laws, etc. In this case, consulting with a design team seems like a perfectly sane way to further that goal, especially when it’s so clearly disclosed throughout the article.
It’d be nice to see independent verification of this once the product actually starts shipping to the public, but I don’t have a big problem with this one. All I know about the relationship is what was disclosed in this article about the consulting services they sold to Lenovo.
especially when it’s so clearly disclosed throughout the article.
As I understand it, the disclaimer was hidden as the last line of the article until it was called out on HN for being misleading and then they made it more explicit at the top. Which also does not strike me as behaving in good faith.
It was still within the second section, but the editorial note at the top was added after the article was published.
They should be, although having bought and repaired a lot of ThinkPads over the years (family with three kids), I think the rating is deserved. I replaced displays, keyboards, fans, speakers, lid hinges, not to mention batteries, disks, and memories, and it's always a breeze.
My most significant complaint about the models made in the past decade would be definitely the soldered-on USB-C ports which inevitably die and are a pain to replace. So if they finally went modular, I think that's fantastic news.
I think it depends what the business relationship is, how many other device manufacturers they have business relationships with, and roughly what the terms of those relationships are (I imagine exactly quantifying the dollar amounts involved would be a bridge too far for most companies).
Since iFixit sells OEM parts, it stands to reason that they might have business relationships with many OEMs. The problem comes when they only do business with a limited number of them, and reward them for it. In particular, while @hoistbypetard notes that design consulting can have a real purpose, it also creates a lot of room for favoritism.
Without transparency, though, it does make it hard to trust--I would say the burden is on iFixit to demonstrate that these relationships are ok.
I imagine exactly quantifying the dollar amounts involved would be a bridge too far for most companies
It's easy if it, as it should, equals zero (but I appreciate that's a fairly hardline stance.)
Without transparency, though, it does make it hard to trust--I would say the burden is on iFixit to demonstrate that these relationships are ok.
100% agree as a required first step.
It's easy if it, as it should, equals zero (but I appreciate that's a fairly hardline stance.)
It is not only a hardline stance, it is specifically what I argued against in the second paragraph of my comment, which is the one paragraph you didn't quote.
Will I be able to order those modular thunderbolt ports in 5-10 years? Are those standard parts?
Lenovo has a good history on making the parts available for a long time. They still have parts for a 2014 X1 Carbon: https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/thinkpad-x-series-laptops/thinkpad-x1-carbon-type-20a7-20a8/20a7/parts/display/compatible.
That’s impressive and good to know because I have one of those (still working) but the price of the parts is just not worth it for consumers. No one in their right mind would pay $500 for a new LCD on a 12y old laptop.
The more repairable it is up front, though, the easier it will be for a savvy user to buy a working used laptop and harvest parts (or combine parts from two or more differently-broken laptops) the way I used to do for all my cobbled together PCs.
I usually find them on auction sites. When companies move on to the next model, the parts they stocked (a common practice for large ThinkPad shops, IME) hit the same channels that the off-lease laptops did, and find their way to eBay. I haven't specifically needed to replace a screen off that secondary market, but I'm usually around $25 shipped for a keyboard.
As @gnafuthegreat mentioned, though, 10-12 years is about when a "parts laptop" starts to become so cheap it's a no-brainer. Right now, you can get a working T470 with a shitty battery for less than $50 shipped. If I were trying to keep a T470 going, I'd probably have my eyes open for one of those.
I’m still rocking a t470s that’s nearly 10 years old. I replaced the batteries (again) last year. They were pretty easy to come by.
As an aside, I love this laptop. It’s underpowered but the battery life is amazing and it runs Linux just fine. For real work there’s Tailscale to my desktop at home. It’s an ideal setup for me.
Where did you get a battery? I tried to replace mine early this year and somehow I have worse battery life now!
I bought one from ifixit, but my laptop is t480s, but looks like the have t470s as well. https://www.ifixit.com/en-eu/products/lenovo-thinkpad-t470s-rear-battery
I still have my concerns. My A485 is due for replacement because Lenovo stopped manufacturing the internal batteries for it, but their BIOS also refuses to charge 3rdparty batteries – so I have the old one in essentially trolling the OS and pretending that there's something to switch to when the second, external-ish battery depletes.
I'm not sure if the ifixit process takes this into account, as this is something that only surfaces years down the line.
I'd like to see iFixit do the EU Energy Label thing: at some point, introduce a new scale to prevent stagnation, encourage further innovation, and encode that expectations are higher now.
As the office of the European Commission put it in 2020 (regulation passed 2017, first new labels in 2021):
This may not strictly up to iFixit. The EU had already stretched its first scale (A-G) up to an interim scale (A+++ to G) before introducing this new scale (A to G, empty and sparse at the top). I don't know if it could work in a market that's bottom-heavy?
The EU's (EC's?) internal analysis on the state of energy efficiency among market actors must be fascinating (and might be findable).
I'm holding out hope this is good, but I've had some bad experiences with Lenovo so I'll probably steer clear of this one unless it ends up being a game-changer or something
My first-generation T14 is not as robust as this article suggests. One of the USB C ports has failed. Nice to know that if I had the new model, this would be replaceable. The new model also doesn't use soldered memory! The trackpad was always a bit crap, and now it no longer registers clicks. What I want is a high quality haptic trackpad that doesn't rely on a mechanical hinge to register clicks. That would be more robust, and also would feel nicer to use, but it's unlikely I could upgrade my T14 in this way. The keyboard is still good (for a laptop, I mean).
The trackpad is the main blocker to me considering the T14 Gen 7 as my next laptop. I know that Lenovo provides haptic trackpads for other laptops, but I have no evidence that these are supported for the new T14.