• t480 - dual RAM slots, dual batteries
• t480s/t490s/t14s - soldered ram
• t490/t14 - one bank soldered, one slot free

this is the list, nothing else, no Yogas, no Carbons. stay away from AMD models until the 5000-series, all earlier ones are a nuisance to run. feel free to get busted units - broken screen, bad keyboard, as working on those is easy, there are detailed hardware maintenance manuals available, for free and parts are cheap, plentiful and cross-model/generation compatible.

soldered RAM used be eww; nowadays with the prices, it’s neat to get basically free RAM, provided it’s at least 16 GB on-board. whichever you get will be plenty fine for the stated use cases. make sure you get a good battery, as getting those is expensive (boot off a live USB and upower -b)

remember, the goal isn’t to get “a thinkpad”. the goal is to get extraordinary value, in this case a discarded corpo workhorse that’s still got plenty life in it, at a bargain price. if you’re in an area where the stated models are plentiful and cheap, grab one. if they’re overpriced, look for value elsewhere. e.g. Dell Latitude 74xx and HP Elitebook 840 are in the same ballpark.

I recommend the T series and the X series. P series too but they’re just really chunky.

I can personally vouch for x1 carbons and the t14

I know you asked about thinkpads but I think you should consider a Latitude 7400. The non 2 in 1 model. It’s got 1 m.2 slot, 2 Sodimm slots, and the back panel comes off in one piece and is easy to get at everything. The downside is the keyboard is hard to replace. It’s one of those built in ones.

I run Debian on it and lock the CPU to 2.5Ghz and below and keep cooling pads in it and its passive. never runs the fan. Has amazing battery life and linux support. (shipped with ubuntu as an option). They’re cheap too. The build quality is really good. It has the barrel charging port, usb c/thunderbolt port, hdmi, 2 USB A, headphone jack, micro usb reader, sim card slot, smart card reader for ports. Plus the trackpad actually has buttons which I like. I don’t like the tapping that’s become common now. The webcam has a physical shutter you can slide over it too. Overall a nice little laptop once you tweak it a bit.

I almost bought a Yoga with 16GB ram and a very fast AMD processor on black friday sale at bestbuy for $500 a couple years ago. A friend talked me out of it because the 16GB ram was soldered in and not expandable. Similar machine is around $1000 now. Oh well.

Yeah get something sort of recent. Depending what you’re doing 16GB ram is more than plenty. 8GB is ok, 4GB is marginal.

My 2011(?)-vintage T510 is ok for most of my purposes, but youtube has been migrating to cpu-hungry codecs so videos these days bog down the cpu and look janky. Maybe I can change some settings to fix that.

I do like the idea of a yoga-style tablet for use as an e-reader.

I picked mine by referring to the Wikipedia articles for the “good” Thinkpad series (T, P series mainly). Here’s the one for T series: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ThinkPad_T_series

Under “Lenovo branded models” is a giant table of all the variants of each model (CPU, display, etc). It also tells you whether the RAM is socketed or soldered, and whether they have external batteries. To gauge performance I just look up the CPU for the model I considered on a CPU benchmark site. Take those with a grain of salt, but they are good for generalizing performance.

I ultimately settled for a Thinkpad T580 (instead of the smaller T480), since I like large 15" laptops, I liked the port layout, and I liked the hot swap dual battery system (also available on T480, T570, T470, and other earlier models). It also has socketed ram and USB C charging. Performance isn’t great for most gaming, but it is very good for browsing and office work.

Posting from a T series, I think that getting a T series would work out well after installing an appropriate distro on it.

The first number is usually a letter. Typically E, L, T or X. E series are often not very sturdy. The other three are fine. L generally has slightly lower specs and lacks some features. T are thick with a bunch of ports and good specs. X are thinner and lighter. Z are high-end machines with AMD CPUs.

After that you have either a three digit number (e.g. 480) or something like ‘14 Gen 2’. The numbered ones usually have an extra memory card slot, while the Gen ones usually don’t. Touchscreen is an option on most models, so you can’t say that from the model number.

The T480 is only 8 years old

Personally I like the T490 a lot. Mine has an IPS screen, usbc, a really comfy keyboard and it’s not too heavy. I got it for 280€ish before the RAMapocalypse.

A thing you may want to be aware of is that thinkpad models might have different configurations. That is, the screen or RAM amount, or internal components might differ between instances of the same model, so it’s good to keep an eye on the specifics of each offer.

As a general rule I would look at the different thinkpad series (the letter before the model number) and then at the different models (newer is usually better, but some changes like the keyboard have been controversial).

Sadly more and more modern thinkpads come with soldered RAM, which IMO is a deal breaker. Work gave me an X1 Carbon Gen 13 to use, which was indeed both shockingly fast and lightweight, but had soldered RAM and a mobo failure in the first 3 months, so I kept looking for a personal device.

Ended up with a Thinkpad E14 Gen 7 with a Ryzen 7, SODIMM ram and built like a tank. Also much cheaper than the X1. It’s heavy, but I’m also not worried about it getting thrown around in my bag.

What helped me on laptop searching was that I went on cpubenchmark.net and used a CPU I’ve known and used, as a benchmark and then compared the CPUs of some laptops within my budget to know what is and isnt worth it. As you said, the RAM and SSD can be upgraded later so its really mainly the CPU you should be concerned with in terms of core specs. Dont forget to look at charging and battery life too! And remember to check repairability especially with more modern thinkpads as some models come with soldered RAM. I learned that the hard way with my current thinkpad that Im writing this on.

Watch out for dead USBc ports and often it is only one of them. That is the most common failure of the 4year old thinkpads in our fleet.

I really really like my 2019 X1 Carbon I got from a business auction on eBay for a little over $250 a few years back. Perfect for productivity and light gaming pre 2019 titles. Mostly morrowind, Skyrim and oblivion. It’s got an i7 and runs vms well.

I usually just go to one of the local laptop refurbishing shops and have a look at what’s in stock: https://www.afbshop.de/gebrauchte-notebooks/lenovo-thinkpads/

Last time I went to buy a new Thinkpad, I came home with a Dell 7390 😂 Mine does have a touchscreen, but I guess that’d be the main factor limiting your selection here.

My choice is any gen T14 as long as it’s Ryzen graphics (for hassle-free Linux drivers), refurbished.