And then the year after this is released, will they sell you new mainboards with the rest of the laptop, so you can upgrade just the parts that need updating?
Damn, everyone is using AI for copyediting now aren't they? Once you notice the patterns you see it everywhere.
* "This isn't X. It's Y"
* "Some sentence emphasizing something. Describing the same thing with different framing. Describing it a third time but punchier.
* The em-dash of course
* A hard to describe sense of "cheesiness"
I only hope the models get good enough to not be so samey in the future.
Once you see it you can't unsee it. Although maybe this how corporate blogslop has always been, and we're just now noticing now that it's infected everything.
> "These are not complaints, merely observations."
> "There are repairable laptops, and then there are ThinkPads."
> "iFixit approached the relationship as collaborators, not critics."
> "[...] they didn’t declare victory and go home. They kept pushing."
> "Designing for repairability doesn’t mean compromising innovation or premium experiences; when done well, it actually drives smarter innovation, better modularity, and more resilient platforms."
> "It would be one thing to make a highly repairable but low-volume niche device or concept. Instead, Lenovo just threw down a gauntlet by notching a 10/10 repairability score on their mainstream-iest business laptop."
> "This is [...] how repair goes from being an enthusiast’s “nice-to-have” to being baked into procurement checklists and fleet-management decisions."
There's a desperate grasping for drama and simplicity about it -- same as most mass-media news stories. I recall reading somewhere that the two watchwords of journalism are "simplify, and exaggerate". Maybe add to that: "Make all your metaphors cliches, so the reader doesn't have to think about what is meant."
I found a way to 'de-smell' LLM copy: tell it to take a second pass that processes the text output with the William Burroughs cut-up method. Works well for a small subset of use cases.
Presumably the smelly AI text problem is just ... a problem that will be solved. Or maybe we'll just get used to it.
I believe it's already a solved problem especially with base models (pre RL) but they still push the LLM voice either to make it easy to identify or because they think it's likeable, so it's not that OAI, anthropic, Google can't get rid of the assistant voice it's that they don't want to
Yeah, it's weird. It's like one person writes articles for the whole world. Probably will be fixed in a few AI iterations to present more styles, but right now it's everywhere. Articles, even forum posts.
We've gone the wrong direction on the verbosity scale.
Unless I'm reading for pleasure, I want everything in concise summaries. I don't need flowery language. Or even complete sentences.
Maybe an LLM verbosity slider that dynamically truncates text we don't need. I'll dial mine down.
I recently destroyed the screen on a Google Pixel during a repair following a shoddily-written set of iFixIt instructions. I wish I had checked the comments, where many people complained that the instruction was wrong.
It was about a very fragile part of the process, and so it seemed like an error of omission that seemed atypical for iFixIt. It made me suspect the instructions might not have been wholly human written. I feel a bit vindicated for that suspicion.
The most generous interpretation I can have for this type of article is that it's a second-order phenomenon. If it was written by a human, it was written by one who consumes a lot of AI generated content and whose standards for what they produce have slipped.
>A hard to describe sense of "cheesiness"
This is the "Reddit" factor. I picked up on it being LLM written with this sentence:
"This is the treacherous, final-boss stage where repairability usually dies,"
Ah, yes, everything needs to be phrased as an existential crossroads now. Same thing the other day when I was debating between olives or pickles on my pizza.
Now that I know pickles are a pizza topping, maybe.
LLMs bring up the “final boss analogy a lot too. I’ve gotten that in my own prompts
> everyone is using AI for copyediting now aren't they?
If the studies that say that humans prefer AI writers are to be believed then you'd be a fool not to
> I only hope the models get good enough to not be so samey in the future.
Why would you hope to be more easily fooled?
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What annoys me the most is that the information has become much less dense. There's a lot of unnecessary repetition.
I feel like I need to feed every article through an LLM just to get a summary of it.
If only a human could edit the output before posting.
Ironically, the editors probably haven't opened a text editor for months.
Ugh I have actually started hating Gemini for this specifically.
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Em dashes aren’t an actual tell IMO. Many people use them.
Surely you mean: Em dashes aren’t an actual tell IMO — many people use them.
Em dashes aren’t an actual tell IMO: many people use them.
Maybe he isn't one but has a close friend who is? That would describe me.
There are dozens of us!
— dozens!
It is though if the rest of the prose is trash.
Jokes on you—humans write trash all the time.
I don’t mind the AI generated aspect. I mind the lack of carrying that it looks like AI slop.
It indicates a baseline competency of the AI user or whomever they are trusting to use it and it will hurt brand trust and trusting humans even more.
I'm glad I haven't let AI write much for me, its better for it to help me develop my ideas and writing and do the work to learn, explore and end up with something where my brain is in the gym.
.
Passive generation might not always map well to passive consumption
I have the ThinkPad p16s AMD gen 2. What it lacks in name it makes up for with being the most headache-free computer I have ever had (including a Macbook).
Everything works pretty well out of the box, it never really overheats, Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS, the keyboard feels pretty nice, the screen is bright and easy to read, and fortunately I bought it when RAM prices weren't insane so I got the 64GB model.
I haven't tried repairing it yet but considering how well it's been working I'm not even sure I'll need ever need to. If this laptop gets stolen, I will likely just buy another ThinkPad, I'm a complete convert.
I own T14s Gen4 Intel and Linux support is perfect, even fingerprint reader works. Zero complaints. I'm mostly using it in clamshell mode connected via USB-C to display with backwards charging, it all just works! I'm also using secureboot with my keys, I cleared all MS keys and it didn't brick the laptop.
My only grievance is a bit buggy firmware. When I turn laptop on or reboot, speakers will randomly be muted (not a problem after OS boots, but for example in UEFI it'll either beep or not beep and that's random). UEFI interface was a bit buggy regarding mouse control, for example I've used to touch and drag things in boot order, but it didn't work and I have to actually press touchbar button down and keeping it like that move cursor. But touch drag works in other places. Not a big issue bit the first time I encountered it, I spent good few minutes trying to make sense of it, as I thought it just does not allow me to reorder boot entries or something like that. But these are small issues and once you've installed OS, you never deal with that.
Oh, and another complaint is that their BIOS update procedure is super weird. I have to find computer with Windows, download some exe, unpack things, find some BAT file and write to USB drive things, then boot from it. Theoretically they publish stuff to fwupd but I don't like this service. My best BIOS update experience was on Asus PC. I just put some bin file onto FAT32 USB drive, entered UEFI configuration, chose "update", selected that file and that's about it. Super easy, every manufacturer must implement this workflow.
Anyway I'm satistfied owner and my next laptop will likely be Thinkpad. Mostly because its stellar Linux support, but also because I didn't have any major issues with my current laptop.
Why are they so allergic to >60hz displays though? There is zero chance that I'm buying a laptop with a slideshow display like that in current year.
I've never had an issue with 60hz. 30hz is unusable but 60hz has always been good enough for me; the Sega Genesis and SNES had 60hz and that's always been good enough for me.
Are you a gamer? Otherwise it's really not easy to notice a "slideshow" at 60 Hz.
> Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS
My main requirement for a next laptop is running NixOS (coming from Macbook land). It’s probably this or one of the new XPS models, but not clear what NixOS support looks like there.
Still, doesn't mean you shouldn't look into other brands, obviously. Take a look at that repo to see if there's obvious compatibility stuff.
Majority of laptops works "pretty well out of the box".
Not with Linux, typically. If you don't have drivers included in the kernel, it requires a lot of effort to get things working. I've done it many times, so now I will generally only buy laptops that have decent Linux support. [1]
I've had the laptop for about two years now and it still runs just as well as the day I bought it. I'm very happy with it.
[1] No I will not stick with Windows. Please feel free to read through my comment history to see why, but TL;DR I just don't like it.
I urge you to try HP.
^ this comment is more relevant than people might think. HP regularly deploys broken BIOS updates and literally bricks your laptops. Happened in 2023 I think 7 times that year, and one time even right in the next week. Our IT got so fed up and ditched any HP laptops because of it.
Never update your BIOS unless you have a specific bug that needs fixed.
I remember a Thinkpad BIOS update ended up destroying both undervolting and overclocking, and required a "chip-clip" programmer to revert.
I built a tower several years ago and it had cooling issues from the start. I RMA’d the cooler, reapplied the thermal paste a couple times, reassembled the whole build. The CPU just always ran hot and thermal throttled. A couple months ago I was on the brink of selling it for parts, but updated the BIOS as a Hail Mary. Totally fixed it.
That advice doesn't hold up very well when in recent years we've had multiple instances of a BIOS update being necessary to deal with the problem of "the CPU gets fed too high a voltage and dies prematurely". That's happened to both Intel and AMD desktop CPUs.
It's a real problem that BIOS updates for consumer systems never come with a meaningful changelog, so evaluating whether a particular update is a good idea or not is basically impossible.
my dell is hot garbage from work
I agree with the other comments here saying that it smells of AI-generated marketing puff-piece --- ThinkPads have always been very repairable, with the official service manuals published (which is more of a guide to disassembly/reassembly, but that's sufficient especially given the availability of (leaked) schematics). Older Dell Latitudes are not too bad either.
What matters next is parts supply at affordable prices — like car manufacturers do.
Do folks have any security concerns with Lenovo? An IT leader at a medium-large US bank recently told me they won't use Lenovo due to security risks from Chinese firmware (or something to that effect, referencing and older incident I don't recall). I've only seen such policies with defense players ten or so years ago.
That said, I've owned them personally for 10+ years, so looking for objective thoughts outside repairability as the article covers.
Would that not be a concern for most computers? Aren’t most of these motherboards manufactured in China (or at least close proximity to China? Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, etc.)
But older Thinkpads (not sure about newer (~5 years old) ones, certainly not brand brand new models) have great support of alternative firmware such as coreboot and libreboot, other projects that disable Intel ME and the like.
> LPCAMM2 memory that’s fast, efficient, and easily serviced [0]
Today I Learned about LPCAMM2, which is refreshing, seeing soldered-on memory always felt like some kind of slide into disposable barbarism.
When CAMM was announced, they (Dell) mentioned that one of the reasons for soldered RAM was due to electrical tolerances not being met anymore with regular DIMMs at the speeds they were reaching. CAMM was designed to avoid this, and ensures that each trace has the same length so there aren’t timing issues.
I’m no expert but it sounds plausible to me. From a manufacturing perspective, it makes sense that they’d want modular RAM so they can configure them at point of sale instead of having to manufacture multiple motherboards with only RAM sizes being different.
Yeah I learning about LPCAMM2 memory was far more interesting than the repairability score.
Looks like the T14 Gen 7 is the first T14 to have a CAMM socket. The previous model has SODIMM DDR5-5600, more power hungry? Prior to that it was the more expensive P1 Gen 7 that had LPCAMM2.
Regarding the T14 and T16, I'm frustrated that in my market (AU), they don't sell better screens than 1920x1200. I'd like to have a brighter 3k or 4k screen.
The LPCAMM2 seems to be limited to the Intel models, according to the pc mag article.
It did worry me though, as I had also never heard of it. Is it highly available like more regular DIMM or SODIMM ram?
That is usually my concern with things like the modular ports and replaceable keyboards too. By the time I actually need to replace anything it could be 10 years from now, could I actually source these parts easily?
Regardless, that is a excellent problem to have compared to other less repairable laptops. I have been running my current laptop for 10 years, by the time it's unrepairable I might switch to this.
If this model of laptop is produced in high volume, at minimum it means that dead ones can be used for parts to cobble together a smaller number of functional ones. Well, unless it turns out that a design flaw means a few parts in particular are almost always the first to go...
I thought the issue with the soldered on RAM wasn't the fact that it was soldered, but that manufacturers would use chips that are not easy to source and in some way serialised.
So even if you got larger chips, you would still have to figure out other parts to swap that tell the CPU it's 32GB now, not 24GB.
Being soldered on is a huge issue to 99% of people and businesses wanting to repair or upgrade something.
I don’t have the tools or skills to replace soldered on memory chips when they fail. Nobody at my place of work does. Nobody was doing that type of work in a warranty centre I worked in either.
I’d need to buy an entire motherboard, which will much more expensive, and likely more time consuming, than swapping a couple of memory modules.
> We noted a similar lack of modularity on the Wi-Fi module, where repairs or upgrades will be impractical at best.
I'm the current owner of a T14s (gen3 AMD) and the non-replaceable wifi chip has been my biggest pain point with it. I'm somewhat disappointed to see them give this 10/10 score with that problem unresolved.
according to lspci it's a Qualcomm QCNFA765 and it works great under Linux...until you suspend the machine. after it wakes up from suspend, it will only stay connected for a few seconds to a minute before dropping the connection and re-establishing it.
I've replaced wifi chips in other Thinkpads I've owned, so I naively assumed this would be the same as well - just swapping out the M.2 card. but no such luck, it's soldered in place.
I ended up using systemd to rmmod-then-modprobe the ath11k_pci module when the system resumes from sleep. this is annoying because it adds a delay of several extra seconds before the machine is ready to use, but none of the "smaller hammer" workarounds I attempted worked at all.
This commitment by Lenovo must have been driven by customer demand -- in this case, the IT departments. I wonder how much of that demand may be attributed to questions about comparisons to Framework. Even if Framework is not mainstream, it has mindshare among the IT-crowd.
The replaceable Thunderbolt sockets connecting to an internal Thunderbolt socket are a direct... homage to Framework.
Nice very cool. Unfortunately, the blog post looks like it's been generated by an LLM.
> Going from a high score to the highest score isn’t usually about making minor tweaks. It requires fighting for every small, boring, consequential decision—the ones that determine whether a repair isn’t merely possible or practical, but within easy reach.
I, as a non-native speaker, don't associate this with LLMs, but with corporate advertising texts.
They're basically the same thing. Machine language, just generated by a different kind of machine, one social, the other a transformer model.
At the same time, at least to me, the text reads like a transcript from one of their YouTube tear downs.
There are those times we may be seeing the source of LLM language training. I had the same reaction of sounding like one but agree it's likely not.
Aren’t these the guys that preinstalled a root certificate to MITM you ads? Not something that can be casually forgiven.
Lenovo had a couple black eyes back-to-back. It was 10 years ago now, but trust takes a long time to build and can be lost in an instant. They lost my trust and I don’t see them getting it back.
My first laptop was an IBM Thinkpad, and while it was a great piece of hardware, I don’t see myself ever buying another one as long an Lenovo owns the brand.
Since I have a Lenovo ThinkPad T15g, I get very recurring BSODs, for various reasons. I hate it. Windows 11 is probably to blame as well.
The best part about ThinkPads is the refurbished market that'll get you modern dev machine that'll work for you like a horse for years for 300 usd.
Lenovo (and their subsidiary Motorola) seem to be on a consumer friendliness streak
I switch from ThinkPad to Framework because they couldn't send me a replacement keyboard. They want me to send the keyboard back to get a refund but I never receive it so... I never did get a refund.
Later, Framework send me a laptop in 1 week and later a replacement screen in less then a week. It's been 3 years ago now.
What do you think of the build quality of your Framework? Have you had any issues over the last 3 years?
I'm rocking a framework 13" intel 12th gen still and I love it. The only issue I had was being part of the few that got a batch of bad hinges. I didn't know there was a replacement program I could have used and just replaced them myself with the heavier hinge option. At this point I have every expansion port thing they offer and keep them in my bag. My laptop can have any I/O I want :) pretty cool.
I'm not in a refresh cycle, but I would seriously consider this platform having used the older X series, and found them workhorses. I destroyed an X30 keyboard and the replacement was fast and easy. Bringing that experience into the modern era is a good thing.
One thing which worries me, is how easily the Qualcomm core platforms run novel OS because I don't see indications they are avoiding blob dependency either in the core, or in peripheral control. It will probably be fine if you run the Lenovo tailored linux release, but if you want to run a BSD or something else you might find either you're on a slower path, or you have less battery life, or you simply can't drive some devices. (I am a user not a kernel/devicedriver developer so if I misunderstand blobbyness and why things like wifi cards often don't work please don't hate me)
But for hardware replacement? This is ace! I like the other sources which people use too, but Lenovo has a worldwide warranty, and has agents almost everywhere so your ability to be on-the-road, pick up a phone, quote a number and get a part is significantly enhanced. (in my experience)
This is great. I’m still rocking a nearly 10 year old T470s. Great machine with Linux on it, still snappy enough- Tailscale is there when I need to do serious work (on my desktop at home!)
I replaced the batteries a few months ago and it was painless.
I have a T470. I have changed the screen (after I dropped water on it and shorted it), changed the batteries after 5 years, increased the RAM, and added an M2 drive. All of these were painless operations. Couldn't be happier with my purchase.
Same here. The only problem is that I "only" have 24Gb of RAM. I wish I could upgrade but it's a hard limit. And keyboard quality seems to have been degrading over the years since 2020. Is this new model good in terms of keyboard?
If you are ever bored, maxing out a T440p, T430, or T480 is a fun exercise and not very difficult nor expensive. CPU, RAM, SSD, coreboot, modern LCD panel, Liteon keyboard. Load with Linux, BSD, OpenCore.
I have a hard time finding a good battery.
I bought an internal and external battery and the external one quickly started bloating.
I had al of these. The CPU is the weakest component here, and only T480 supports 32 GB RAM.
(Typing this from a T14 gen 1.)
> nor expensive
With OpenAI completely destroying the component supply chain in 2026 I think this requires citations
DDR3 was not so much affected as DDR4 or DDR5.
I have used not thinkpads but Lenovo IdeaPad from 2023. Very fragile. It has caused me to run many times to the repair shops.
Whereas Lenovo laptops (non Thinkpads) from 2007 and 2021 are very solid nearly unbreakable.
They've also become eye-wateringly expensive.
I represent pricing in $/warranty year. (If you want me to believe the product is worth more, stand by it in the form of a warranty. But if a company isn't going to put their warranty where their mouth is, well.)
Lenovo used to warrant their product; my previous Thinkpad, which came with a then-pathetic (Thinkpads used to be four year warranties!) 3 year warranty, for ~$1200, or $400/warranty year.
I can't mock up a purchase for either laptop reviewed, as neither are available at any price. So, we'll do the predecessor. Those start at $1300/y; that represents an increase in price of ~14% YoY … which obviously is not tracking inflation.
That's enough to put smaller manufacturers who don't benefit from large supply chains, like Framework, in spitting distance.
But is it comparable? The base screen is "45%NTSC", and AFAICT from the reviews, the consensus is "don't do it". The other option is an sRGB screen. The base SSD is half the size now, but it is also upgradable to 1 TiB if you fork over $. The OS can be removed now, which actually knocks $90 off the "base" price! The dGPU is just quite literally gone. And nine years later, and the RAM is still the same size, but as we all know, software definitely hasn't gotten more bloated in the past nine years.
So, oddly, my current Thinkpad is down for the count right now. After 9 years, it suffered the first real HW failure: the motherboard. The first one took ~3 weeks to ship, and it was defective. The next one only took ~2 weeks, and the patient is still in surgery, so fingers crossed?
My biggest repairability question: … have they fixed the power brick to not have the cable melded into the brick? The cable is what breaks, and it costs probably like $3.50, but because it's molded into the main AC/DC converter brick, you have to scrap the entire thing and Lenovo charges for those like they're made from the tears of angels. If you just make a connector there, you raise the cost of the brick a few cents, maybe a few dollars … and save $50? $60 down the road in repairs, and untold amounts of eWaste.
Yikes. Has iFixit jumped the shark? An AI generated press release on behalf of Lenovo, who is (from my perspective) essentially paying them for good PR? And this paid relationship - Lenovo paying iFixit - isn’t disclosed until the very last line of the article, so you have to first read 1500+ words of AI slop?
That made me start looking into their scores. The Thinkpad E14 Gen 7 gets a 9/10 despite soldered ports, a pile of easily breakable plastic clips, a flimsy plastic case, and a riveted keyboard/top case assembly. To me that sounds _worse_ than the M5 MacBook Pro, which scores 4/10 (soldered storage unlike the E14, easily replaceable ports, and a riveted keyboard/top case assembly.) I would personally rather have replaceable ports than non-soldered storage, but putting my personal preferences aside, I think it’s hard to argue that difference between the two is worth going from a 4/10 to a 9/10.
Thank you for saying it. There was somehting nagging me after a while. Even the quotes from Lenovo read as being AI generated, which begs the question if the quotes are real or paraphrased of factual at all.
You’re welcome. It’s a real shame IMO. I used to be a huge Lenovo guy, until the quality of the products dropped off a cliff a decade and change ago. Disappointing to see that instead of making a better product they decided to pay iFixit to write AI-generated puff pieces.
iFixit makes sense when you think of it as a content mill made to sell overpriced screwdrivers.
The last time my ThinkPad 755C was in the way and shuffled around as part of re-arranging, it still booted up.
The only other device I've owned which might have that sort of longevity is my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110 (which I quite miss for its transflective display).
Really wish the Lenovo Yogabook 9i was in the ThinkPad line and that it had a Wacom EMR stylus....
they've been the framework laptop since before there was a framework laptop.
worldwide onsite service response times and parts availability are top notch as well.
Do they still block third party PCIe (eg, wifi) devices in their firmware?
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> There are “repairable” laptops, and then there are ThinkPad T-series laptops
By elevating ThinkPad T-series above other laptops by reputation, do iFixit weaken their notion of objective repairability ratings?
Hooray! Now can we get a decent OS for them?
(No, not Windows.)
(No, not Linux.)
TempleOS?
Nice, also my thinkpad required a full dismantle to change the keyboard, so I am rightly pissed given it's a premium product.
Yeah, I was shocked that a keyboard replacement of my company issued X1 is basically a full teardown. When it was time to replace my private laptop a year later, I opted for the L-series, which is much better in that regard and also much cheaper. Keyboard replacements are a pretty standard thing for me, because I don't like my local layout and if you limit yourself to buying with the layout you want, you can only go to Apple or Framework nowadays.
This is great and should be applauded, but repairability is but one aspect of many in a good laptop. I wonder if other aspects had to suffer to achieve this, and if they did by how much. The answer to that question could make or break the laptop for many users.
The article states:
> Lenovo tells us, “The biggest challenge in getting to a 10/10 was balancing repairability with all the other expectations of a commercial device: performance, reliability, thermal efficiency, form factor, and design integrity. Repairability isn’t achieved by a single change: it requires many small, intentional decisions across the entire system, and each of those decisions can introduce trade-offs.
Yes, however companies say a lot of things. We'll need to see some hard numbers and reviews based on real world usage to know if their claims ring true.
why are you so negative?
All the repairability in the world is moot if the laptop isn't good enough to sell itself on its other merits. If it turns out to be hot and loud or have poor battery life for example, that's going to steer many to buy elsewhere.
Probably because this is not repairability, but rather dividing device into smaller not repairable parts that can be replaced by purchasing parts from the manufacturer at inflated cost.
Is there any laptop that you can replace individual pieces of the motherboard? Laptop motherboards are all the same.
I love this. T14 gen 7 was the first NB I a actually bought for myself, and it's great to know that USB-C ports can just be replaced that easilly without soldering and that it was designed from the start with repairability in mind. Non-A USB ports is something that always ends up failing.
Does it mean I can buy chips that are on the boards and solder them if they go bad?
It sounds like repairability means dividing device into smaller not repairable parts and make extra money off of it.
For instance, can I get those replaceable ports on Mouser?
Repairwashing.
Shame the keyboards have a copilot key. That doesn't sound so bad until you see that the thing emits a key chord, not a scancode, making it annoying to remap. But you can.
The most annoying part is that the key matrix isn't set up to 3-key rollover with the copilot key like it would be for a real modifier key. (I'd assumed they'd just keep the matrix they used when there was a modifier in that spot. Nope.) Consequently, some key combinations, e.g. ralt-rcontrol-spacebar, don't work. Press them, nothing happens. Infuriating.
I love my Thinkpad!
No thanks. I don't like all their awful plastic. Make it from metal and glass.
Mine has a magnesium chassis, did that change along the way?
And then the year after this is released, will they sell you new mainboards with the rest of the laptop, so you can upgrade just the parts that need updating?
Damn, everyone is using AI for copyediting now aren't they? Once you notice the patterns you see it everywhere.
* "This isn't X. It's Y"
* "Some sentence emphasizing something. Describing the same thing with different framing. Describing it a third time but punchier.
* The em-dash of course
* A hard to describe sense of "cheesiness"
I only hope the models get good enough to not be so samey in the future.
Once you see it you can't unsee it. Although maybe this how corporate blogslop has always been, and we're just now noticing now that it's infected everything.
> "These are not complaints, merely observations."
> "There are repairable laptops, and then there are ThinkPads."
> "iFixit approached the relationship as collaborators, not critics."
> "[...] they didn’t declare victory and go home. They kept pushing."
> "Designing for repairability doesn’t mean compromising innovation or premium experiences; when done well, it actually drives smarter innovation, better modularity, and more resilient platforms."
> "It would be one thing to make a highly repairable but low-volume niche device or concept. Instead, Lenovo just threw down a gauntlet by notching a 10/10 repairability score on their mainstream-iest business laptop."
> "This is [...] how repair goes from being an enthusiast’s “nice-to-have” to being baked into procurement checklists and fleet-management decisions."
There's a desperate grasping for drama and simplicity about it -- same as most mass-media news stories. I recall reading somewhere that the two watchwords of journalism are "simplify, and exaggerate". Maybe add to that: "Make all your metaphors cliches, so the reader doesn't have to think about what is meant."
I found a way to 'de-smell' LLM copy: tell it to take a second pass that processes the text output with the William Burroughs cut-up method. Works well for a small subset of use cases.
Presumably the smelly AI text problem is just ... a problem that will be solved. Or maybe we'll just get used to it.
I believe it's already a solved problem especially with base models (pre RL) but they still push the LLM voice either to make it easy to identify or because they think it's likeable, so it's not that OAI, anthropic, Google can't get rid of the assistant voice it's that they don't want to
Yeah, it's weird. It's like one person writes articles for the whole world. Probably will be fixed in a few AI iterations to present more styles, but right now it's everywhere. Articles, even forum posts.
We've gone the wrong direction on the verbosity scale.
Unless I'm reading for pleasure, I want everything in concise summaries. I don't need flowery language. Or even complete sentences.
Maybe an LLM verbosity slider that dynamically truncates text we don't need. I'll dial mine down.
https://justsendtheprompt.com
I recently destroyed the screen on a Google Pixel during a repair following a shoddily-written set of iFixIt instructions. I wish I had checked the comments, where many people complained that the instruction was wrong.
It was about a very fragile part of the process, and so it seemed like an error of omission that seemed atypical for iFixIt. It made me suspect the instructions might not have been wholly human written. I feel a bit vindicated for that suspicion.
The most generous interpretation I can have for this type of article is that it's a second-order phenomenon. If it was written by a human, it was written by one who consumes a lot of AI generated content and whose standards for what they produce have slipped.
>A hard to describe sense of "cheesiness"
This is the "Reddit" factor. I picked up on it being LLM written with this sentence:
"This is the treacherous, final-boss stage where repairability usually dies,"
Ah, yes, everything needs to be phrased as an existential crossroads now. Same thing the other day when I was debating between olives or pickles on my pizza.
Now that I know pickles are a pizza topping, maybe.
LLMs bring up the “final boss analogy a lot too. I’ve gotten that in my own prompts
> everyone is using AI for copyediting now aren't they?
If the studies that say that humans prefer AI writers are to be believed then you'd be a fool not to
> I only hope the models get good enough to not be so samey in the future.
Why would you hope to be more easily fooled?
What annoys me the most is that the information has become much less dense. There's a lot of unnecessary repetition. I feel like I need to feed every article through an LLM just to get a summary of it.
If only a human could edit the output before posting.
Ironically, the editors probably haven't opened a text editor for months.
Ugh I have actually started hating Gemini for this specifically.
Em dashes aren’t an actual tell IMO. Many people use them.
Surely you mean: Em dashes aren’t an actual tell IMO — many people use them.
Em dashes aren’t an actual tell IMO: many people use them.
Maybe he isn't one but has a close friend who is? That would describe me.
There are dozens of us!
— dozens!
It is though if the rest of the prose is trash.
Jokes on you—humans write trash all the time.
I don’t mind the AI generated aspect. I mind the lack of carrying that it looks like AI slop.
It indicates a baseline competency of the AI user or whomever they are trusting to use it and it will hurt brand trust and trusting humans even more.
I'm glad I haven't let AI write much for me, its better for it to help me develop my ideas and writing and do the work to learn, explore and end up with something where my brain is in the gym. . Passive generation might not always map well to passive consumption
I have the ThinkPad p16s AMD gen 2. What it lacks in name it makes up for with being the most headache-free computer I have ever had (including a Macbook).
Everything works pretty well out of the box, it never really overheats, Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS, the keyboard feels pretty nice, the screen is bright and easy to read, and fortunately I bought it when RAM prices weren't insane so I got the 64GB model.
I haven't tried repairing it yet but considering how well it's been working I'm not even sure I'll need ever need to. If this laptop gets stolen, I will likely just buy another ThinkPad, I'm a complete convert.
I own T14s Gen4 Intel and Linux support is perfect, even fingerprint reader works. Zero complaints. I'm mostly using it in clamshell mode connected via USB-C to display with backwards charging, it all just works! I'm also using secureboot with my keys, I cleared all MS keys and it didn't brick the laptop.
My only grievance is a bit buggy firmware. When I turn laptop on or reboot, speakers will randomly be muted (not a problem after OS boots, but for example in UEFI it'll either beep or not beep and that's random). UEFI interface was a bit buggy regarding mouse control, for example I've used to touch and drag things in boot order, but it didn't work and I have to actually press touchbar button down and keeping it like that move cursor. But touch drag works in other places. Not a big issue bit the first time I encountered it, I spent good few minutes trying to make sense of it, as I thought it just does not allow me to reorder boot entries or something like that. But these are small issues and once you've installed OS, you never deal with that.
Oh, and another complaint is that their BIOS update procedure is super weird. I have to find computer with Windows, download some exe, unpack things, find some BAT file and write to USB drive things, then boot from it. Theoretically they publish stuff to fwupd but I don't like this service. My best BIOS update experience was on Asus PC. I just put some bin file onto FAT32 USB drive, entered UEFI configuration, chose "update", selected that file and that's about it. Super easy, every manufacturer must implement this workflow.
Anyway I'm satistfied owner and my next laptop will likely be Thinkpad. Mostly because its stellar Linux support, but also because I didn't have any major issues with my current laptop.
Why are they so allergic to >60hz displays though? There is zero chance that I'm buying a laptop with a slideshow display like that in current year.
I've never had an issue with 60hz. 30hz is unusable but 60hz has always been good enough for me; the Sega Genesis and SNES had 60hz and that's always been good enough for me.
Are you a gamer? Otherwise it's really not easy to notice a "slideshow" at 60 Hz.
> Linux support required basically no effort with NixOS
My main requirement for a next laptop is running NixOS (coming from Macbook land). It’s probably this or one of the new XPS models, but not clear what NixOS support looks like there.
There's actually a compatibility listing and the hacks required to make them work! https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware
In the case of my ThinkPad, you can see there is literally no extra work required: https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/lenovo/t...
Still, doesn't mean you shouldn't look into other brands, obviously. Take a look at that repo to see if there's obvious compatibility stuff.
Majority of laptops works "pretty well out of the box".
Not with Linux, typically. If you don't have drivers included in the kernel, it requires a lot of effort to get things working. I've done it many times, so now I will generally only buy laptops that have decent Linux support. [1]
I've had the laptop for about two years now and it still runs just as well as the day I bought it. I'm very happy with it.
[1] No I will not stick with Windows. Please feel free to read through my comment history to see why, but TL;DR I just don't like it.
I urge you to try HP.
^ this comment is more relevant than people might think. HP regularly deploys broken BIOS updates and literally bricks your laptops. Happened in 2023 I think 7 times that year, and one time even right in the next week. Our IT got so fed up and ditched any HP laptops because of it.
Never update your BIOS unless you have a specific bug that needs fixed.
I remember a Thinkpad BIOS update ended up destroying both undervolting and overclocking, and required a "chip-clip" programmer to revert.
I built a tower several years ago and it had cooling issues from the start. I RMA’d the cooler, reapplied the thermal paste a couple times, reassembled the whole build. The CPU just always ran hot and thermal throttled. A couple months ago I was on the brink of selling it for parts, but updated the BIOS as a Hail Mary. Totally fixed it.
That advice doesn't hold up very well when in recent years we've had multiple instances of a BIOS update being necessary to deal with the problem of "the CPU gets fed too high a voltage and dies prematurely". That's happened to both Intel and AMD desktop CPUs.
It's a real problem that BIOS updates for consumer systems never come with a meaningful changelog, so evaluating whether a particular update is a good idea or not is basically impossible.
my dell is hot garbage from work
I agree with the other comments here saying that it smells of AI-generated marketing puff-piece --- ThinkPads have always been very repairable, with the official service manuals published (which is more of a guide to disassembly/reassembly, but that's sufficient especially given the availability of (leaked) schematics). Older Dell Latitudes are not too bad either.
What matters next is parts supply at affordable prices — like car manufacturers do.
Do folks have any security concerns with Lenovo? An IT leader at a medium-large US bank recently told me they won't use Lenovo due to security risks from Chinese firmware (or something to that effect, referencing and older incident I don't recall). I've only seen such policies with defense players ten or so years ago.
That said, I've owned them personally for 10+ years, so looking for objective thoughts outside repairability as the article covers.
Would that not be a concern for most computers? Aren’t most of these motherboards manufactured in China (or at least close proximity to China? Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, etc.)
But older Thinkpads (not sure about newer (~5 years old) ones, certainly not brand brand new models) have great support of alternative firmware such as coreboot and libreboot, other projects that disable Intel ME and the like.
> LPCAMM2 memory that’s fast, efficient, and easily serviced [0]
Today I Learned about LPCAMM2, which is refreshing, seeing soldered-on memory always felt like some kind of slide into disposable barbarism.
[0] https://www.ifixit.com/News/95078/lpcamm2-memory-is-finally-...
When CAMM was announced, they (Dell) mentioned that one of the reasons for soldered RAM was due to electrical tolerances not being met anymore with regular DIMMs at the speeds they were reaching. CAMM was designed to avoid this, and ensures that each trace has the same length so there aren’t timing issues.
I’m no expert but it sounds plausible to me. From a manufacturing perspective, it makes sense that they’d want modular RAM so they can configure them at point of sale instead of having to manufacture multiple motherboards with only RAM sizes being different.
Yeah I learning about LPCAMM2 memory was far more interesting than the repairability score.
Looks like the T14 Gen 7 is the first T14 to have a CAMM socket. The previous model has SODIMM DDR5-5600, more power hungry? Prior to that it was the more expensive P1 Gen 7 that had LPCAMM2.
Regarding the T14 and T16, I'm frustrated that in my market (AU), they don't sell better screens than 1920x1200. I'd like to have a brighter 3k or 4k screen.
The LPCAMM2 seems to be limited to the Intel models, according to the pc mag article.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/lenovo-thinkpad-t14-gen-7-hands-o...
It did worry me though, as I had also never heard of it. Is it highly available like more regular DIMM or SODIMM ram?
That is usually my concern with things like the modular ports and replaceable keyboards too. By the time I actually need to replace anything it could be 10 years from now, could I actually source these parts easily?
Regardless, that is a excellent problem to have compared to other less repairable laptops. I have been running my current laptop for 10 years, by the time it's unrepairable I might switch to this.
If this model of laptop is produced in high volume, at minimum it means that dead ones can be used for parts to cobble together a smaller number of functional ones. Well, unless it turns out that a design flaw means a few parts in particular are almost always the first to go...
I thought the issue with the soldered on RAM wasn't the fact that it was soldered, but that manufacturers would use chips that are not easy to source and in some way serialised. So even if you got larger chips, you would still have to figure out other parts to swap that tell the CPU it's 32GB now, not 24GB.
Being soldered on is a huge issue to 99% of people and businesses wanting to repair or upgrade something.
I don’t have the tools or skills to replace soldered on memory chips when they fail. Nobody at my place of work does. Nobody was doing that type of work in a warranty centre I worked in either.
I’d need to buy an entire motherboard, which will much more expensive, and likely more time consuming, than swapping a couple of memory modules.
> We noted a similar lack of modularity on the Wi-Fi module, where repairs or upgrades will be impractical at best.
I'm the current owner of a T14s (gen3 AMD) and the non-replaceable wifi chip has been my biggest pain point with it. I'm somewhat disappointed to see them give this 10/10 score with that problem unresolved.
according to lspci it's a Qualcomm QCNFA765 and it works great under Linux...until you suspend the machine. after it wakes up from suspend, it will only stay connected for a few seconds to a minute before dropping the connection and re-establishing it.
I've replaced wifi chips in other Thinkpads I've owned, so I naively assumed this would be the same as well - just swapping out the M.2 card. but no such luck, it's soldered in place.
I ended up using systemd to rmmod-then-modprobe the ath11k_pci module when the system resumes from sleep. this is annoying because it adds a delay of several extra seconds before the machine is ready to use, but none of the "smaller hammer" workarounds I attempted worked at all.
This commitment by Lenovo must have been driven by customer demand -- in this case, the IT departments. I wonder how much of that demand may be attributed to questions about comparisons to Framework. Even if Framework is not mainstream, it has mindshare among the IT-crowd.
The replaceable Thunderbolt sockets connecting to an internal Thunderbolt socket are a direct... homage to Framework.
Nice very cool. Unfortunately, the blog post looks like it's been generated by an LLM.
> Going from a high score to the highest score isn’t usually about making minor tweaks. It requires fighting for every small, boring, consequential decision—the ones that determine whether a repair isn’t merely possible or practical, but within easy reach.
I, as a non-native speaker, don't associate this with LLMs, but with corporate advertising texts.
They're basically the same thing. Machine language, just generated by a different kind of machine, one social, the other a transformer model.
At the same time, at least to me, the text reads like a transcript from one of their YouTube tear downs.
There are those times we may be seeing the source of LLM language training. I had the same reaction of sounding like one but agree it's likely not.
Aren’t these the guys that preinstalled a root certificate to MITM you ads? Not something that can be casually forgiven.
Lenovo had a couple black eyes back-to-back. It was 10 years ago now, but trust takes a long time to build and can be lost in an instant. They lost my trust and I don’t see them getting it back.
My first laptop was an IBM Thinkpad, and while it was a great piece of hardware, I don’t see myself ever buying another one as long an Lenovo owns the brand.
Since I have a Lenovo ThinkPad T15g, I get very recurring BSODs, for various reasons. I hate it. Windows 11 is probably to blame as well.
The best part about ThinkPads is the refurbished market that'll get you modern dev machine that'll work for you like a horse for years for 300 usd.
Lenovo (and their subsidiary Motorola) seem to be on a consumer friendliness streak
I switch from ThinkPad to Framework because they couldn't send me a replacement keyboard. They want me to send the keyboard back to get a refund but I never receive it so... I never did get a refund.
Later, Framework send me a laptop in 1 week and later a replacement screen in less then a week. It's been 3 years ago now.
What do you think of the build quality of your Framework? Have you had any issues over the last 3 years?
I'm rocking a framework 13" intel 12th gen still and I love it. The only issue I had was being part of the few that got a batch of bad hinges. I didn't know there was a replacement program I could have used and just replaced them myself with the heavier hinge option. At this point I have every expansion port thing they offer and keep them in my bag. My laptop can have any I/O I want :) pretty cool.
I'm not in a refresh cycle, but I would seriously consider this platform having used the older X series, and found them workhorses. I destroyed an X30 keyboard and the replacement was fast and easy. Bringing that experience into the modern era is a good thing.
One thing which worries me, is how easily the Qualcomm core platforms run novel OS because I don't see indications they are avoiding blob dependency either in the core, or in peripheral control. It will probably be fine if you run the Lenovo tailored linux release, but if you want to run a BSD or something else you might find either you're on a slower path, or you have less battery life, or you simply can't drive some devices. (I am a user not a kernel/devicedriver developer so if I misunderstand blobbyness and why things like wifi cards often don't work please don't hate me)
But for hardware replacement? This is ace! I like the other sources which people use too, but Lenovo has a worldwide warranty, and has agents almost everywhere so your ability to be on-the-road, pick up a phone, quote a number and get a part is significantly enhanced. (in my experience)
This is great. I’m still rocking a nearly 10 year old T470s. Great machine with Linux on it, still snappy enough- Tailscale is there when I need to do serious work (on my desktop at home!)
I replaced the batteries a few months ago and it was painless.
I have a T470. I have changed the screen (after I dropped water on it and shorted it), changed the batteries after 5 years, increased the RAM, and added an M2 drive. All of these were painless operations. Couldn't be happier with my purchase.
Same here. The only problem is that I "only" have 24Gb of RAM. I wish I could upgrade but it's a hard limit. And keyboard quality seems to have been degrading over the years since 2020. Is this new model good in terms of keyboard?
If you are ever bored, maxing out a T440p, T430, or T480 is a fun exercise and not very difficult nor expensive. CPU, RAM, SSD, coreboot, modern LCD panel, Liteon keyboard. Load with Linux, BSD, OpenCore.
I have a hard time finding a good battery.
I bought an internal and external battery and the external one quickly started bloating.
I had al of these. The CPU is the weakest component here, and only T480 supports 32 GB RAM.
(Typing this from a T14 gen 1.)
> nor expensive
With OpenAI completely destroying the component supply chain in 2026 I think this requires citations
DDR3 was not so much affected as DDR4 or DDR5.
I have used not thinkpads but Lenovo IdeaPad from 2023. Very fragile. It has caused me to run many times to the repair shops.
Whereas Lenovo laptops (non Thinkpads) from 2007 and 2021 are very solid nearly unbreakable.
They've also become eye-wateringly expensive.
I represent pricing in $/warranty year. (If you want me to believe the product is worth more, stand by it in the form of a warranty. But if a company isn't going to put their warranty where their mouth is, well.)
Lenovo used to warrant their product; my previous Thinkpad, which came with a then-pathetic (Thinkpads used to be four year warranties!) 3 year warranty, for ~$1200, or $400/warranty year.
I can't mock up a purchase for either laptop reviewed, as neither are available at any price. So, we'll do the predecessor. Those start at $1300/y; that represents an increase in price of ~14% YoY … which obviously is not tracking inflation.
That's enough to put smaller manufacturers who don't benefit from large supply chains, like Framework, in spitting distance.
But is it comparable? The base screen is "45%NTSC", and AFAICT from the reviews, the consensus is "don't do it". The other option is an sRGB screen. The base SSD is half the size now, but it is also upgradable to 1 TiB if you fork over $. The OS can be removed now, which actually knocks $90 off the "base" price! The dGPU is just quite literally gone. And nine years later, and the RAM is still the same size, but as we all know, software definitely hasn't gotten more bloated in the past nine years.
So, oddly, my current Thinkpad is down for the count right now. After 9 years, it suffered the first real HW failure: the motherboard. The first one took ~3 weeks to ship, and it was defective. The next one only took ~2 weeks, and the patient is still in surgery, so fingers crossed?
My biggest repairability question: … have they fixed the power brick to not have the cable melded into the brick? The cable is what breaks, and it costs probably like $3.50, but because it's molded into the main AC/DC converter brick, you have to scrap the entire thing and Lenovo charges for those like they're made from the tears of angels. If you just make a connector there, you raise the cost of the brick a few cents, maybe a few dollars … and save $50? $60 down the road in repairs, and untold amounts of eWaste.
Yikes. Has iFixit jumped the shark? An AI generated press release on behalf of Lenovo, who is (from my perspective) essentially paying them for good PR? And this paid relationship - Lenovo paying iFixit - isn’t disclosed until the very last line of the article, so you have to first read 1500+ words of AI slop?
That made me start looking into their scores. The Thinkpad E14 Gen 7 gets a 9/10 despite soldered ports, a pile of easily breakable plastic clips, a flimsy plastic case, and a riveted keyboard/top case assembly. To me that sounds _worse_ than the M5 MacBook Pro, which scores 4/10 (soldered storage unlike the E14, easily replaceable ports, and a riveted keyboard/top case assembly.) I would personally rather have replaceable ports than non-soldered storage, but putting my personal preferences aside, I think it’s hard to argue that difference between the two is worth going from a 4/10 to a 9/10.
Thank you for saying it. There was somehting nagging me after a while. Even the quotes from Lenovo read as being AI generated, which begs the question if the quotes are real or paraphrased of factual at all.
You’re welcome. It’s a real shame IMO. I used to be a huge Lenovo guy, until the quality of the products dropped off a cliff a decade and change ago. Disappointing to see that instead of making a better product they decided to pay iFixit to write AI-generated puff pieces.
iFixit makes sense when you think of it as a content mill made to sell overpriced screwdrivers.
The last time my ThinkPad 755C was in the way and shuffled around as part of re-arranging, it still booted up.
The only other device I've owned which might have that sort of longevity is my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4110 (which I quite miss for its transflective display).
Really wish the Lenovo Yogabook 9i was in the ThinkPad line and that it had a Wacom EMR stylus....
they've been the framework laptop since before there was a framework laptop.
worldwide onsite service response times and parts availability are top notch as well.
Do they still block third party PCIe (eg, wifi) devices in their firmware?
> There are “repairable” laptops, and then there are ThinkPad T-series laptops
By elevating ThinkPad T-series above other laptops by reputation, do iFixit weaken their notion of objective repairability ratings?
Hooray! Now can we get a decent OS for them?
(No, not Windows.)
(No, not Linux.)
TempleOS?
Nice, also my thinkpad required a full dismantle to change the keyboard, so I am rightly pissed given it's a premium product.
Yeah, I was shocked that a keyboard replacement of my company issued X1 is basically a full teardown. When it was time to replace my private laptop a year later, I opted for the L-series, which is much better in that regard and also much cheaper. Keyboard replacements are a pretty standard thing for me, because I don't like my local layout and if you limit yourself to buying with the layout you want, you can only go to Apple or Framework nowadays.
This is great and should be applauded, but repairability is but one aspect of many in a good laptop. I wonder if other aspects had to suffer to achieve this, and if they did by how much. The answer to that question could make or break the laptop for many users.
The article states:
> Lenovo tells us, “The biggest challenge in getting to a 10/10 was balancing repairability with all the other expectations of a commercial device: performance, reliability, thermal efficiency, form factor, and design integrity. Repairability isn’t achieved by a single change: it requires many small, intentional decisions across the entire system, and each of those decisions can introduce trade-offs.
Yes, however companies say a lot of things. We'll need to see some hard numbers and reviews based on real world usage to know if their claims ring true.
why are you so negative?
All the repairability in the world is moot if the laptop isn't good enough to sell itself on its other merits. If it turns out to be hot and loud or have poor battery life for example, that's going to steer many to buy elsewhere.
Probably because this is not repairability, but rather dividing device into smaller not repairable parts that can be replaced by purchasing parts from the manufacturer at inflated cost.
Is there any laptop that you can replace individual pieces of the motherboard? Laptop motherboards are all the same.
I love this. T14 gen 7 was the first NB I a actually bought for myself, and it's great to know that USB-C ports can just be replaced that easilly without soldering and that it was designed from the start with repairability in mind. Non-A USB ports is something that always ends up failing.
Does it mean I can buy chips that are on the boards and solder them if they go bad?
It sounds like repairability means dividing device into smaller not repairable parts and make extra money off of it.
For instance, can I get those replaceable ports on Mouser?
Repairwashing.
Shame the keyboards have a copilot key. That doesn't sound so bad until you see that the thing emits a key chord, not a scancode, making it annoying to remap. But you can.
The most annoying part is that the key matrix isn't set up to 3-key rollover with the copilot key like it would be for a real modifier key. (I'd assumed they'd just keep the matrix they used when there was a modifier in that spot. Nope.) Consequently, some key combinations, e.g. ralt-rcontrol-spacebar, don't work. Press them, nothing happens. Infuriating.
I love my Thinkpad!
No thanks. I don't like all their awful plastic. Make it from metal and glass.
Mine has a magnesium chassis, did that change along the way?