A look at the ThinkPad T480 

I love how "last thinkpad" ranges from T43 to t480

The problem is that most electronics these days are made less and less serviceable and upgradable and in case of failure they just end up in landfills, since repairing them is nearly impossible. It's a great way to create e-waste, but this mentality has spread in most manufactured goods - from small appliances to cars. But the T480 will be on my radar if my X230 ever gives up.

I just bought a T480 in 2022 with the i5-8350u, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Honestly, I couldn't complain about anything. Laptop has been good, hasn't experienced any lags with it. And upgrading some parts of it feels satisfying. Anyone who ever uses a Thinkpad should learn how to service and upgrade it themselves, because it's super easy (and satisfying). It's like a mini desktop because of how upgradeable it is. Things on the T480 that you can upgrade on your own: - Screen (to WQHD, full HD 400 nits etc) - The stock trackpad to a glass trackpad - Keyboard to a backlit one if yours isn't - 72Wh battery which is hot swappable with the current 24 Wh - The plastic lid to magnesium lid - Buy up to 64GBs of RAM - Dual SSD using the LTE slot (useful when dual booting multiple OS) Those are the upgrades I know, but who knows if there are other ways to upgrade it.

Certified Lenovo Tech here, the one that rarely made it to my bench for repairs was the t420. It was a solid performer with sometimes a thermal paste issue, but not much more than that.

There's an old saying "if it ain't broke don't fix it". Listen Lenovo

I absolutely LOVE my T480 and have upgraded it significantly. Two upgrades addressing points you raised are A. getting a glass trackpad from an X1 Extreme, and B. Getting a dual heat-pipe cooler, allowing the CPU to stay cooler and achieve higher frequencies for longer. I do agree that having charging ports not soldered to the board is a good idea, but to me that is the ONLY downside to the T480. With the updated thunderbolt firmware apparently fixing the bug, it is unfortunate that happened and Lenovo should repair any units, but it is no longer an issue. Full list of my mods and upgrades: Glass Trackpad from X1 Extreme LowPower FHD Display from T490 (Part number N140HCG-GQ2 Rev.B1) 72wh external battery 2x8gb DDR4 1tb 2.5inch Sata SSD Intel AX200 Wifi 6 Patch WWAN antennas installed HP branded Cat 9 LTE Modem installed (Same part as Lenovo part, but $30 instead of $150) Dual heat-pipe cooler (for DGPU models) Modded BIOS to remove WWAN Whitelist

I loved the ThiccPad. It reminds me the happier golden age of the internet.

I got a P1 gen1 through my uni. Best machine I could have asked for. ram not soldered, 2 nvme slots, full size sd, 80wh battery, everything is rather easy to replace. and its so light and thin its amazing.

Thank you for the 22-minute review. Enjoyed every minute of it. Looking forward to your future video about T480.

Thanks for your videos Sebi. You inspired me to buy and upgrade the T430 after a while looking around for a good machine and not being able to find one. I've not looked back since!

Censored to prevent a comment war over how much thermal paste I should use, hahahaha, I remember when LGR did the same thing hahahah

Hey Seb, I just wanted to let you know that I modded my t440 with a t450 trackpad and my t430 with an I7-3632qm, dual heatpipe fan, Artic Mx4 paste, 500gb ssd and 2x8gb DDR3L ram for a total (including the machine) of roughly 300$ CAD. I bought an Asus with the 3632qm for 100$, sold some of the parts, which greatly brought my cost down.

I've been using ThinkPad's for work since 2010 and my personal favorite model is the T480. I liked it so much I bought one for personal use and got a great deal on it. I'm not knocking the older models because I've had a great experience with them too. I was particularly fond of my T430 before it was upgraded by my IT department.

I bought a refurbished t460 about a year ago and your videos have me wishing I went for either a t480 or an older model + upgrades! That said, I'm happy with the computer I bought and the retailer upgraded the specs during the refurbishing to 16 GB ram and a 500 GB SSD.

Excellent retrospective video. I love my T480 as well and your video covers all the things I can think of concerning T480.

Thanks for this very informative video. I've been using a T420 for a few years and it has served me well. I've heard some horror stories about newer models so have not felt the urge to upgrade. The only slight niggle is that the webcam stopped working about two years ago after a windows update, I've tried several 'fixes' since then, none of which work. This seems to be a common problem. One thing I like about the older machines is that they have a cd/dvd drive. I will likely upgrade to the T480 when the time comes.

Extremely well made and informative video. From a fellow diehard ThinkPad fan, thank you

I`ve got a used T440 and I simply love it! It´s got an i5, it came with 4 GB, only one slot. I replaced it with an 8 GB and runs fast. It has two batteries, and two other slots for storage, one for a small 15 GB SSD for cache, but since I replaced the drive for an SSD, I use it for storage. I also discovered another slot, underneath the internal battery, for an MSata drive, I got one in Amazon, 128 GB, so now it has three drives. It is also touch, with fingerprint reader. I really love this machine.

Great review (as always, and I especially enjoy seeing ThinkPads with the Pittsburgh area scenery) with comparisons of past and recent thinkpads. I can only hope that there will be a return to more modular, upgradeable designs. Surprising that the T14 only goes up to 16 GB of soldered RAM (unless I’m missing something). I had a charging connector on a T450s that snapped off and it was such a breeze to replace. Oh well!!!! One can only hope that the Lenovo design team will go to bat for us one day and urge management to not make decisions based solely on cost -- there are enough ultrabooks out there). Look forward to seeing your T430 upgrade videos.

I have a X1 Cabon and I just noticed the camera shutter cover!, thanks for that mate.

Its really sad, that the charging port is not a separate part. It hurts the survivability of the laptop so much! Ive changed charge ports on so many thinkpads, giving them the chance to live even longer.

I've been using an i7 X230 for all my remote work throughout quarantine and it's great

Got the same model myself and absolutely loving it

I just got me a second handed T470 touch screen variant. This one is, as I'm seeing in your video, almost the same computer as the one you're reviewing (same keyboard, same fingerprint sensor, it does come with thunderbolt and has the caps and Fn indicators). Differences are then the processor (huge one here) and some ports and aesthetics. I guess it was a nice purchase then.

17:05 OMG I'm so glad to see someone else also has a broken fan shield! I was so sad when I saw mine was broken XD

Wow such a detailed video about a single laptop!! 👍👍👏👏

Great review bro about ThinkPad each segments I love your channel ❤️

I have this laptop, before I had t420 and I fell in love with both!

At my work I've owned, T420, T440, T470, and T490s (now) . My favorite T420 the real tough laptop. I work at a mining cooper, 4500 masl, 20C below zero in winter.

Finally! I have been waiting for this :)

Just received my x240. Good device. I love it!

Very detail cover on the difference between all Lenovo models, best bang for your buck on the work laptop category! Ps probably cause by the new screen upgrade you did!

as someone who mainly uses a t480 for my personal work i'd say it's a decent laptop for the price. Here are a few of my thoughts: - The build quality is very sturdy and the laptop is very rigid. Good keyboard and trackpad. - The display is very ugly in my opinion, despite being 1080p it is very whitewashed with poor contrast. It is really the biggest weakness of the laptop in my opinion, makes everything unpleasing to look at. Every other laptop i've used in the last 7 years has had a more pleasing display with better colors, even if it had lower resolution. - Stock performance is ok. I am a linux user and after using the laptop with ubuntu i would often cap out the RAM doing web development work. (running mongodb, nodejs backend server and react server as well as a few chrome tabs would put me at 8 gigs). Using the laptop with ubuntu for about half a year it became very slow, but after making a fresh install with a new linux distro it became relatively fast again. Overall it's passable. - It would be nice if lenovo supported drivers or at least open sourced their windows ones for the fingerprint sensor, because on linux it is basically a place holder. But thats a lot to ask for. Overall its a decent little machine, very reliable and discrete.

I initially didn't fully understand why many people praised the Thinkpad so much, but after watching your videos on them, I finally decided to take the plunge. Last month, after some research and money savings, I decided to purchase a T480 to replace my 2011 Toshiba Satellite with a broken keyboard connector(repaired with a note card piece by yours truly). After some searching I landed on one with an i5-8250U, 1080p IPS display model with no SSD or RAM for about $150. Put 16GB of ram in, a 256GB SSD, updated the firmware to fix the weird thunderbolt bug, and I love it. Getting it open was scary, but after opening it swapping parts was incredibly easy. It's quiet, fast, surprisingly thin, rugged, has great IO, good battery life even if the external battery is dead, and while I didn't really like the keyboard initially, it's really grown on me. Thank you Sebi, and the Thinkpad & Linux community for showing me the light :)

Although there is many people complaint the design of current Thinkpad model. But every time I have a chance to touch these Thinkpad, I still fall in love with them.

I used to have one of these for work. Great keyboard and very dependable!

Watched this on my T460 and I love this thing especially after I installed a 1080p panel, installed a ssd and linux. All thanks to you Sebi

If you upgrade the heatsink on your t480 with the dual heat pipe unit you'll have a better time with thermals (and light loads won't even have the fan kick in). You do need to protect the pins for the GPU as it's meant to cool it down.

I got a new T480 in Jan, superb all around daily use workhorse, you can Netflix end of a long day, and with the bridge battery system I'm getting 18 to 22 hours on a single charge with a hot swappable backup 24Whr battery to boot!

Nice job covering everything, and thanks for sharing🙂👍

Always wanted one, now I am receiving a T450 as a hand-me-down for free, super looking forward to it. Seems like it's a decent step in-between T430 and T480. The replaceable power connector is a huge deal for me especially that I can simply get a USB-C adapter that should work with any 65-100w charging brick anyway.

I had considered this model, since the T470 and T480 replaced the T440s/T450s. I like having the option for an m.2 SSD + 2.5" HDD. Also nice is that the touch function is now "baked" into the panel, so there's no glass overlay to affect the image. But what killed it for me is the terrible IPS panel, with ~60% sRGB gamut. The T440/T450 series had a ~95% gamut AUO panel. The 2016 X1 models even used a newer revision of the same AUO panel. Shame that Lenovo cheaped out for the T470/T480. I wonder if it was intentional, to create (more of) a gap between the T480s and the X1 Carbon, since the Txxxs models have gotten slimmer. However, I picked up an X1 Yoga with QHD screen, which isn't as bad as I thought at 100% scaling, so maybe I will consider a T480 QHD in the future. BTW, I lucked out in getting one with an OLED screen, and whatever drawbacks you've heard about OLED, you don't care when you're actually looking at the awesome quality. PS. I never cared for the older non-S variants. You might as well go back and get the last real ThinkPad, the 600X, designed and made by IBM. Everything after was made in China.

I've used a T480 as my daily driver for over two years and I'm still pleased with it.

I would love to get a T480 to tinker on and enjoyed the video. Although old and outdated I am enjoying my refurbished Edge E545 I bought from a recycling plant. It books up pretty quick and is very functional even though it's from 2013/2014. As much as I would love to get a newer laptop, I am not a fan of the soldiered on parts as I like to upgrade and swap things out.

I still have a T430, as well as a T500, both still working very well. The newer things tend to break easier.

Great and thorough video explanation the evolution of the T series in the 2010's. I'm about to get a refurbed T480 for about 260 bucks. My last ThinkPad was a T61.

Please do a review of the TRS-80 Model II (or even the Model IV). BTW - Thanks so much for creating so many awesome ThinkPad videos!!!

7:50 THAT is how keyboard should look like: multimedia keys for volume, mute, microphone, rows above Fs.... oh man

Excellent video as always.

I love my T430s, one of the best purchases I've ever made. Never let me down when I need it. I use it as a portable uni/work computer and its excellent for my use which has a lot of engineering software and simulation programs.. Just wish the battery wasnt awful

I'm still using my X220 for a laptop dedicated to my hobby research/education (Fish keeping)

I have a T430 in really good condition. Bought it more than five years ago to use while studying. The only thing that needed a replacement was the original six cell battery that I switched out for a nine cell grippable one. Aside from being a heavier piece of kit, I'll still swear by it. Great laptop for everyday use as far as what I need out of it.

Bought my W520 in 2012, still using it today (upgraded hdd in 2014, left speaker cable were having contact prob, but it was a easy fix). I think 20/30 era were really the greatest.

I got a T480s just a couple months ago. I’m really loving it! Currently running Linux mint and running my web design business on it. I’ll have 50+ tabs open on firefox and it just keeps truckin. I even edited a few (simple) videos on it and it handled better then my old dell. 16gb of ram and 156gb SSD currently.

Once again you've done a pretty good video on this. For years I've said unless your in to upgrading an older Thinkpad, stay away from them. Not because of course I don't like Thinkpads, but because I know not everyone can or will want to upgrade older hardware. That's not me of course. I sport an XPS 13 De as my daily driver, and have a Latitude 5491 with a 6 core intel CPU and Nvidia mx 130 graphics.. Neither are bad laptops, but compared to my e6540 with an i7 quad core and radeon graphics, the only thing lacking is portability. I would still rather type on my e6440, or have my T420 back long before doing anything tedious on my 5491 and that has a great keyboard too, but it's nothing next to my older stuff. But if I was thinking about buying a modern Thinkpad, certainly the T480 would be on my list. I am only bothered by the same Thunderbolt issues that seem to plague my 5491. Even with a beefed up cooler my 5491 still is a portable heater in every sense once plugged in to my TB16 dock. But I am glad that it's not like that on my lap!

Hi Sebi. I like your channel, lots of cool videos. I always loved the more robust and powerful business class laptops. I had like 20 Dell Latitudes, and 10 Elitebooks. When it comes to ThinkPad, i belive there is a fine line between the pre 2010 laptops (lets call them Vintage), the ones up to T440 (I will call them Classic) and the ones after that (The new ones). I have one of each period. My X200 Tablet is running Win 10 on a SSD, it works awesome, but the BGA CPU is a big bottleneck, otherwise the system is running smooth. It always draws attention when i take it to the university and use it, next to the new Macs. I have a T430, its used in a car shop for diagnostic, it faces some extreme conditions, and it is flawless. And my "new one" is ThinkPad X13 Gen2 with Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U, i was sceptical at first, but let me tell you, this machine is a beast. Small and super powerfull, the design is nice and the materials are nice to the touch, especially the touchpad. My point is, i like all of them, but in a complete different way. If i compare them, there is always something that one is missing and the other one has. That's my opinion. Thanks for the nice video. Cheers and sorry for my English.

I've had a T430 - T440 - T480 and the T440 is fine as long as you never ever used the trackpad or internal screen. The T480 is pretty great as well. The T430 was used so long ago but after I got work to give me an SSD and 16 gigs of ram it was much better. I got lucky all of mine have had pretty good i7 chips with dual batteries.

I just picked up 2x thinkpad t480's for $237.50 ea. After repasting the cpu with Arctic MX-6 and cleaning out the fans the machines are working wonderfully for the use cases I have them for. Only thing I wish I could've done was done a dual heat pipe cooler mod but the stock cooler works good enough.

Very nicely done. I like the "classic" keyboard of the 520/420 and earlier :)

Nice video. I've also noticed thermal issues with my T480. The cpu clock speed will drop as low as 0.4ghz and basically crawls until I restart.

id be happier with a thicker laptop as long as the keyboard/repairability/ports are good

"censored to prevent how much thermal paste apply" hahaahahahahahaahab that was hilarious, very appreciated

Great video, and I just wanna mention that you saved my ass at 17:34. I was so close to picking up a T490 and just assumed that an SSD in the WWAN slot would work and thanks to the note, I actually bothered to check online and lo and behold, it doesn't work. So thanks a lot lol.

I really like the nod to the fact that a lot of us Thinkpad users find the Trackpoint more appealing than the touchpad. Personally, the first Trackpoint I used was the one found on the 2011 HP Elitebook, which was a decent laptop, but definitively not on the same mark as Thinkpads are, that thing had rather awful feeling left and right click buttons, while my T460 feels like a dream compared to that.

glad I'm still rolling with my fully modded T430 :)

I bought my T480 with MX150 about 6 month ago and I did notice it is somewhat challenging to cool this laptop. I used an utility to run the fan at max all the time, as the fan is quieter than my ambient noise level even at full speed. I also used much better thermal grease from Cooler Master, which did help a few degrees. What I finally did was to cut open the grills of the case around the fan blades to let the fan suck in more air. I did purchase a complete new bottom case (they call it D shell, same name convention as A, B, C pillars in cars), so in case I need to return it back to original condition, I can do that too. So far it's been working great for me, I can't really go back to the older ThinkPads for daily use anymore, due to the significantly better graphics performance of MX150. Which completely steamrolled W541's Quadro graphics card.

Great video! I think I'm sold on buying a T480 for my next machine.

had a t70 for work - so reliable and got shit done... Then i came across a t480 for a 7th gen for 100 bucks, jumped on it. Fell back in love with the T series. Handed that one to my GF for school work and got a quad core i7 version for 150 that needed major refurbishing. Working on it now, but plan to keep this one for a while.

Watching this on a Thinkpad A485, which is basically a T480 with an AMD chip instead. I managed to get it for almost half the price of the T480 during its launch because Lenovo was running some AMD discount on their website, which is really fortunate for me. I just wished that the cooling was better on this computer, but it has been awesome to use otherwise.

I wanted to buy ThinkPad P73, but I quickly switched to Zbook 17 G6. I was surprised how modular Zbook is and no screws to open it and swap some devices. It also uses daughter-board for graphic card so I'll be able to upgrade later. From what I heard next P-line devices will go back to modular philosophy, but some people don't have time to wait ;) Cheers.

Nice video man, i like im not the only one who loves to upgrade old equipment.

Almost 3 years with my T480 and still going strong. Think it can go for another 3 years.

17:16 as someone who lives in the UK where it's always winter that can be useful 😊

excellent review. the charging port should definitely be a separate, user replaceable part, and this almost caused me not to order my T480. However, a deal came up for mine, FHD IPS display, with 512 NVME for $600, new from lenovo site. So I went for it, and I don't regret it. Very nice machine imo, nice and snappy, performs much better than my T420 dual core. My "solution" to the USB-C charging port, is using a magnetic adapter, which should prevent any sort of mechanical stress or wear from damaging or wearing out the port. I applied the patched firmware / driver for the thunderbolt chipset as soon as I got mine, so I'm hoping it won't be an issue in the future. Time will tell! I do tend to think, that the T480 may indeed by the last true thinkpad, despite it's charging port. I was able to upgrade my RAM to 32 GB, there are multiple NVME options, and I still have replaceable external / internal battery options, so the T480 should have a long lifetime!

I love the B Roll of the thinkpad just sitting in the forest

I really looking forward to your T430 FHD display swap video! Loving my T430 but hating the display... Especially in front of my 4K XPS13 Display.

I have a t470s which does have the docking station, but it is dual core and doesn't have swappable battery option. It's ok. But I think i prefer the smaller x260 because of portability. :) At one point, I thought x260 was too small, but I've really warmed up to it.

I would say go for a T450s. It's a great balance between older ThinkPads and the more recent ones, especially if you can't upgrade the T430 yourself as others recommend (T450s can be upgraded to meet your needs as well). I got mine last year for a good price (260$ - i7, 8gb ram, 256gb ssd, full hd IPS display) and don't see the need to open the machine to change anything. I also still use the batteries that came with the laptop and they work great (at least 6hrs with WiFi and Bluetooth ON).

Very informative review. I'll definitely be buying ThinkPad soon. Thanks

The old HP Elite Books the metal cased ones last a very long time as well, strong unit. Only thing that went on mine was the battery, still boots up fine with WinNT no issues.

Actually, thermal throttling can occur long before a CPU reaches 100C. It just depends on the CPU, some won't thermal throttle only around 100, some will around 70-75. Mobile CPUs are more prone to thermal throttle at much lower temperatures, since laptoip cooling system in general is not that efficient compared to a desktop / gaming rig one (even though there is exceptions to the rule).

"For the first time we have laptops, tablets and smartphones, that are all using the same charging connector" *puts a tablet with micro-usb and an iPhone as an example* Literally three different charging ports. Somehow I find it rather funny.

Got a T480 today from Amazon for 200 bucks ! Also ordered 64gb of RAM. I also have an X1 Extreme Gen 2 which in my view will be the next T480 some day when the price plummets like it did for the t480

We are using a lot of T480 from Circular Computing. they come looking as new and we only have minimal issues with them, mostly related to batteries which are easily replaced.

I got a T490 at work (the company standardized on Lenovo). It's a great laptop, but I do lament the lack of battery swappability and such.

This is a superb overview and you are very fair. What stands out for me is that your analysis confirms the fact that Lenovo has been "cheaping out" since the T420 and T430. With the T420 the lack of USB 3 has long been soluble by using an express card USB 3 slot in card but some inferior ones can get hot, often because the supplied software is still in the world of Windows 7. Lenovo Service used to be effective in assisting with this in detail but has since gone down the same slippery slope as the products. The full upgradeability of the T 420 is remarkable and with patience and care will still beat any business machine today. Using e-SATA slots never really caught on but for very fast and reliable transfer and cloning it has advantages over USB 3. Full size SD cards used by photographers are very different from micro in an adapter thus by dumping full size Lenovo showed that it had lost its way in assuring the highest quality. Similarly, a lid lock saves dirt getting into various places and maybe this is why Dell is using them again. Lenovo will have to listen to you and others like you if they are to retain the trust of professional customers. Many educational customers here in Europe have ceased their loyalty and no longer bulk purchase but try machines as they are released and if they show no change in the trend to poorer quality old Lenovo stocked machines are chosen and Dell's return to quality at the highest end direct from the company could come too late for Lenovo to remedy.

Very comprehensive, thanks 👍

Good to see you in 7th minute!!! Writting this in 2023-02-23 ;-) V. good seriers about ThinkPad... series ! 🙂

God thank you, the first source to confirm for me that the T480 processor is soldered in and non-upgradable. I think I still may go for a T480 given the RAM and storage room, though I wish it had a CD drive. Still may choose it over a T440p for the battery life. Also for the purposes of clarity and anyone who may want to reply, besides getting an upgradable, older thinkpad, I might just shill out and get a new X390 for the simplicity.

"For the first time we have laptop, tablets and smartphone all uses the same charger." **shows an iPhone**

The dual heatpipe heatsink intended for versions with the external GPU nearly doubles the cooling capacity for models without the GPU. It is a simple bolt-in replacement, just add a little foam to the gpu heat plate so it doesn't short out anything.

i just pick a T490s yesterday and really happy with it to replace my X230. looking for slimmer and powerfull quadcore cpu with a tight budget seems reasonable for me (i got it for around $277, heck it also packed with a faceID sensor, a fingerprint reader and a Wireless LTE). Farewell my friend, X230

T430 is the perfect machine. I am Using it since 2016, bought it used, it's the best notebook ever. Easy to repair, lots or parts available online.

Still have my T420 i5 4gb ddr3 working as a typing laptop, working along with my Precision 7510 Xeon 32gb ddr4. I will consider Precision 7540 and Lenovo P53 when I need a 64gb laptop.

I have an aftermarket t480 and the only issue is that the removable battery does no charge (tried with different battery too - it must be an issue with motherboard charging controller 🤷) but overall works great for day to day coders work (on cable or just with the working internal battery). I connect it to a Dell monitor which has an embedded TB dock for a really clean setup 😁

I picked up my first Thinkpad years ago. I bought a Yoga 14 with the i5-6200U / 940M GPU. No hot swappable battery, but I did double the RAM, and added a second SSD. That got me hooked on the ThinkPads. I've since collected a T440p, x240, x260 and x270. The Yoga 14 is my daily driver, but I wish it had an 8-core CPU. My T440p came with the 4710mq/730M and 16GB RAM, but the lousy TN display. I've upgraded the WiFi and reapplied thermal paste (no more throttling!). I'm on the fence between upgrading the display panel and trackpad on the T440p, or getting a new T14-G2.

Bravo. That was a nice review. You even bring up the problems like the Thunderbolt. I still prefer the T430/T530. The T480 is expensive in Canada even used.

I bought a T430 about 5 years ago from a very competent Microsoft Certified Refurbisher. It's still my favorite device. I added a second 8Gb memory stick myself, which required the removal of the keyboard. Thinkpads in this class are winners, and if you find one in good condition, I'd highly recommend one.

I've been running a T460S with an i7 6600U for years, currently running Windows 11. I usually use my i9 powered desktop, I use my Thinkpad when I'm on the road or vacation. I've upgraded it to 20gb of ram, a 1TB M.2 NVME hard drive, and replaced the fan/heatsink with a new OE unit using Artic Ice thermal paste. It runs Windows 11 beautifully and still has plenty of power for modern applications.