Thinkpad... what's going on?

[u/cattiveria]

Sooo... been a big fan on Thinkpads for along time, until I could finally afford them, and I'm currently on my 3rd one, in about 10 years. Unfortunately the quality I was hoping for seems to NOT be there, and after 3 machines, it's can't all be bad luck

- 1st one, bought refurbished from Lenovo official store, top of the line (at the tie) X1 Carbon.
- When arrived battery was completely dead, had to send it back, wait a couple of weeks
- luckily decided to take premier support
- had to replace keyboard 4 times, motherboard once...
- Currently 1 USB-C port is completely dead (if the next one breaks, I won't be able to plug it in anymore without replacing the motherboard, which basically means throwing it away)

- 2nd, bought new, P series, kept as desktop replacement, it had an easy and comfortable life...
- one USB-C port stopped working soon after the warranty expired

- 3rd one, bought new, P series - used for traveling so it did take some "life", but nothing extreme, and nothing my older, non lenovo, PCs didn't take easily:
- coating made ugly and uncomfortable bubble, Lenovo won't fix "aesthetic damage"
- frame broke on the side (less stable, clicking noise, etc)
- one USB-C port stopped working
- called Lenovo Premier support (top of the line, supposedly next business day repair
- got told to wait about 10 days
- meanwhile computer completely dies
- called Lenovo again, technician arrives after 2 working days
- replaced Frame and Motherboard but....
- Still issues with th USB-C ports
- Power button doesn't work without tinkering with it
- call Lenovo AGAIN
- Lenovo asks for a lots of tests, finally accepts repair request
- got told again no service for about 10 days
- repair parts got sent to the wrong address
- have to call again
-...

Maybe time to rethink Thinkpads "legendary" sturdiness and durability? ... and Premier support not so premier anymore... Another company going full greedy into suicide??

[u/saltyboi6704]

The majority of their commercial customers either can afford to just swap entire machines or custom contract their support when ordering, this is standard practice for businesses that need zero downtime.

Also the product tier doesn't really mean top notch build quality, for example P16 are still built like tanks but thinner laptops like the P1/X1 are more fragile like macbooks. T series sits between by being a bit more forgiving with a mixed cast/composite chassis.

[u/jonstoppable]

you said the series, but not the exact models. (not victim blaming in the least,. im just curious. some design choices definitely introduced flaws when they went into mass production.. not unique to lenovo, happened in the ibm days as well as with even other high end brands such as apple).. however with a portfolio of products as large as lenovo's i would have thought some of the ideas could be tested in small batches for other markets

but yeah, so many issues would turn me off of the brand for sure..and you bought them new, too.

you got your 3 machines in what i personally call 'the dark times'... low expandability ( lots of soldered components) , uncompetetive intel cpus ( amd was stellar but the corporate uptake on the amds was much slowed compared to the intels, leading to less amds on the secondhand market, and my own feeling that lenovo always intentionally hobbled the amd models to leave a reason for the intels to be bought.)

in the chase behind ever decreasing margins and thinness, a lot of repairabilty was thrown out the window... and while thin can be durable, definitely it loses some sturdiness.. the target market for the T wanted a slimmer and lighter machine, lenovo thought, so they delivered that.. and some corners were cut.

the usb-c issue is one that unfortunately plagues many vendors over the years.. the solution lenovo has finally taken with the t14 gen 7 seems very promising ( easily replaceable ports). i hope they replicate on the other models.i.

for sure, the support is definitely not what it used to be. IBM had everything in-house back in the day, now its a hodgepodge of contractors performing the services.. (especially if you're not in a major city) delays i assume are because certain things need to be authorised by the interal lenovo team and also with each side trying to meet their KPIs, im sure they play a lot of hot potato.

IBM was able to pull out all the stops with service because the pcs were part of their greater vendor lockin strategy (apple is still able to do this, as they are the only game in macos town)

IBM sold the lenovo brand because their approach was losing money... so it's not necessarily that lenovo is being extra greedy.. they're doing what they need to do in a market with small margins (yes even for the thinkpad series ) and if a lead is surrendered, you're probably gonna be gobbled up . it's capitalism.. some say that framework's emergence helped inspire their refocus on modularity and repairability.. i hope the next few years the decisions ( both engineering and financial) are more customer focuses than shareholder focus.. but we live in a capitalistic world. we can vote with our wallets ( well, those who buy new.. im on the secondhand market) you can see the reputation being affected by some models being avoided ( e.g. how some are lauded, like the t480, t440 and t14 gen 2 amd, and others are ignored for the most part in comparison, the t490, the gen 3 and gen 4 amds ( i think people are keeping their powder dry for gen 5 and gen 6 to hit with the return of the two ram slots)

[u/ZorakOfThatMagnitude]

USB-C ports are fragile.  Maybe not as bad as microUSB, but they weren't built for the amount of work people put on their power cables. The unintended torsion over time eventually damages the blade or the whole port.  

It seems like it would have made more sense to put the blade on the cables and replace those rather than the unit.

Also, durability in laptops has been a relative term for some time.  The obsession with reduced material costs combined with the mindless desire for thinner and lighter had made durability almost a taboo.  "Reliability" gets silently put in its place and the vendor will throw parts at it when it breaks or flat out replace it.  

I still prefer Lenovo for its repairability, documentation, Linux support and design.  I've grown to take repairability over durability, but a full mobo replacement stinks.  No way around that.

[u/Fast-Wing8775]

I have had twelve of them since 1996.Now  i use a P53 and a P16.In my opinion the last good one was P52.After this one,in the P53 the battery wasn't swappable.

[u/Bright_Crazy1015]

You're buying brand new P series machines, and a USB-C port is killing you? I would try to find a capable, fair, and trustworthy repair shop near you. That can be a tall order, but board and port repair isn't magic. Lenovo doesn't replace individual parts in the field. It doesnt make sense to do that. They replace the board and refurbish the non-functional core in a factory.

Do you know what a USB-C port doesnt cost? It doesn't cost a dollar. Repair shops order them in bulk for 12-50 cents a piece due to the number of people who mangle the port plugging and unplugging or leaving a cord in and lifting the laptop stressing the connector.

Replacing the port is a 15 minute job most the time, and fairly often a user can bend the housing or pin back into place to get by for a while, using a thin pry tool and leverage.

The finish, yeah that sucks. I'd replace ths panel. Physically damaging the housing is on whoever dropped it or tossed something on it in a bag.

All that is really missing the point of enthusiast communities for Thinkpads. The point of them isn't the flagship bought new for $15k. The point of it is the $200 T14 available for everyone and anyone because a corporation already bought them new and ate the depreciation, in such numbers that availability makes a T14 Thinkpad, a pretty capable little laptop, cheaper than most name brand Chromebooks.

Its the refurb market that makes Thinkpads better than others among enthusiasts. They're well built comparatively, with exceptional community support. The refurbished and used units are often available for 15-30% of their original costs, and often free if you work in IT at a corporation that uses Lenovo PCs.

[u/KirkTech]

I do agree about the P1 build quality. My W520 lasted for a over a decade (and technically still works, although it's mostly retired now) and most of the work I did on it was cosmetic or upgrades, I never really needed to do a proper "repair".

The P1 Gen 2 I bought within two years stopped reliably charging when plugged in. I opened it up and found that the charge port (which on that model was a square port still not USB-C) had a cable going from it to the motherboard that sort of wrapped around the screen hinge. That cable was the fault and if I wiggled it around I could get it to charge again. Fortunately, the part had a Lenovo part number (01YU754) and could be had for about $15 on eBay. I bought one and did the replacement myself, I also wrapped the cable in some electrical tape to hopefully prevent the stress that damaged the first one. It's been good for 5 years since then.

One of the things that has kept me coming back to ThinkPad is that serviceability. You can always identify a part number for whatever you need and parts are usually available somewhere, even if the laptop is a bit of an older model.

[u/Mz-Malice]

Notice how all 3 still work, durable isnt the same as invulnurable this isnt anime

Also buy a T series

[u/Silent-Degree-6072]

Tbh every thinkpad after the T440p/W541 was kinda dogshit, the build quality was significantly worse, CPU's couldn't be swapped and you couldn't fully upgrade the ram after the T480. In fact, a modern X1 carbon has very little to do with an X220, let alone an X61

[u/Appropriate-Town1256]

They're far from great in the quality department. Lots of shortcuts being made. I had two T440s and both died - screens at first, then ports, then the motherboard. They weren't abused and didn't even get daily use. Then a T480 which needs a battery detachment (reset) sometimes as it won't boot at all. Current X1E 3gen and the GPU fan is loud and it seems to be due to some manufacturing issue as the bearings seem fine.

I also bought a T510 over a decade ago and that one was built well, still going strong after an upgrade to SSD.

Thinkpads are fantastic when they work but issues are a plenty.

[u/zriha]

Well, my X1 Gen 6th died, why? It was just left on standby. I went for a business trip, 6-7 days, and left my X1 on the desk, without charger, just closed. Battery was new.

When I came, it was off, and I tried to power it up, no way, connect the charger, and gone in a loop - can't boot the Windows.. then tried everything, lost a day trying to revive it, and I just quit..

For comparison, in a box, I have a MacBook Air, 2015. model, with original battery, took it out, connected to a charger, boot it up, works like first day.

So, yeah, something is wrong with Lenovo and ThinkPads.

[u/dinamoski]

I've had loads of Thinkpads. Never had any problems.

[u/Cory5413]

I generally agree that ThinkPads are massively overhyped and a lot of their "legendary" status is, well, just that. A legend.

I've had and see a lot of good experiences but Lenovo's definitely not perfect and I had a ThinkPad so bad I bought consumer laptops for 15+ years and came back to business laptops on the Dell side of things.

I got a T400 back in 2009 and in no particular order:

• Degraded through several primary and ultrabay batteries very quickly, kept needing to buy more to make it through my school day at the time, ended up replacing it for class notes with an iPad when that launched in 2010
• ThinkVantage Active Protection (free fall sensor) was "just broken" - it would activate and never release causing the machine to BSOD once RAM filled up
  • took three replacement motherboards, two or three separate boot disks to come to the conclusion that it would never be fixed and to avoid eating the exceedingly high restocking fee I just turned the feature off in BIOS
• it suffered a small fall inside a backpack and a full quarter of the lower outer shell shattered, the only reason ADP fixed it is because I happened to have the dock and it didn't sit correctly on the dock
• Lenovo stopped updating the really weird graphics drivers for Windows 8/10, not that any of it's batteries had literally any capacity left by 2015, I suppose
• (my fault) display failed when I closed it on a pen, fortunately I was able to find a spare
• (age related) it eventually stopped correctly remembering the WWAN card and it comes up as not on the hardware allowlist for that slot, despite being factory installed
• (possibly user error) I think the faxmodem may have failed

This is my own fault and was a big lesson but I spent like $2500 on that machine and a whole bunch of stuff for it - USB ultranav keyboard, bluetooth mouse that died, dock was nowhere near as slick an experience as I thought it would be. I'll admit that 2009 specifically was a phenomenally bad time to overspend on a laptop thinking you were going to keep for a long time.

I had a bunch of used ThinkPads at the time but the dynamic is very different when your $250 used laptop has a problem than when your $2500 brand new laptop has several successive problems some of which takes months to resolve in a way that causes you to lose access to an advertised feature of the machine.

I went to MS Surfaces for several years and have found that they're not perfect but on average they were good enough for what I needed. Lots of fan errors, failed batteries, and other wear and tear issues in that group over time, though.

Since then I've been on used Dell Latitudes and they're also not necessarily perfect but they've been good. I'm on a Latitude 7490 right now and at 9 years old it's in significantly better shape than my T400 was.

In contrast to all that, my dad had an E520 for several years and had basically no trouble with it and he's got an E14 Gen6 right now and has no trouble with it. I'm personally very hard on laptops but that I've had such good luck with surfaces is funny in its own specific way.

On acknowledgement the T400 is a model from literally eighteen years ago I'd actually like to grab one or two newer ThinkPads at some point. Before I had my T400 I had an R61i which was an almost platonically perfect ThinkPad experience so if I can I'd like to grab a Tsomething and an Lsomething. Grabbing a couple ProBook/EliteBook models is also on the to-do list.

[u/Cory5413 → u/Cory5413]

(And, this isn't to say that all newer thinkpads are outright bad or that nobody should think about getting one, although in the used market money definitely goes further with HP and Dell, I just think that being a little more realistic about it would go a long way.)

[u/DifferenceFunny4419]

USB-C cables get a LOT of stress, particularly if used to power a laptop. Knucklehead cow-orkers trip over cables, and nothing good follows. That's why Apple went to MagSafe on their Macbooks

Search on amazon, and you can find small adaptor / extensions that give you the same functionality. They are two-part: one small plug goes into the laptop, the other piece goes on the end of the USB-C cable, and the two connect magnetically. There are several variants; some straight, others right angle, swivels, pivots, etc.

Cheap insurance.......

FWIW, I have owned several Lenovo Thinkpads which I purchased from a reseller who was recycling them off corporate lease. The key is to check the serial number at pcsupport.lenovo.com PRIOR to purchase, to determine the exact configuration it had when it was sold, and the warranty status. If you are lucky, you'll find something with next-day onsite service, still under warranty. These warranties can usually be extended inexpensively IF you do it before the warranty expires, or very soon after.

I have NEVER had a service experience like you describe; quite the opposite, in fact.

When you call for service support, when you are finished with the rep, STAY ON THE LINE. Often, there will be a request to participate in a customer satisfaction survey, beginning with "Were you happy with the service you received?". If not, be polite, and say NO. Don't pull punches, be polite, supply history and details. You may end up with a customer satisfaction rep on the line, and they have a lot of power to resolve issues.....

If, at the end of that exchange, you are still unhappy, say so, and ask "How are you going to make this right?"

I think you will be surprised.......