@@GewelReal on a new laptop? If your talking about a desktop CPU alone, well yeah but kinda irrelevant in the laptop discussion, if your talking used, cool and yeah likely a great option but I was just saying not all cheap (new) laptops are trash
I got a t480 with the i7 8650U, 512GB M.2 and 16GB of Ram at a good deal. I upgraded the ram to 64GB, Upgraded the trackpad to the glass version, Swapped out the display to the Innolux panel, Replaced the internal, 72Wh, CMOS batteries with new ones, and last but not least cleaned out the heat pipes, fans, and repasted the CPU with Kyronaut. The T480 is the last hoorah to the Lenovo's powerbridge era and it was only fitting to go all out with these upgrades to make it imo "The Endgame Thinkpad". The only downside to thinkpads is the mysticism of always feeling obligated and compelled to upgrade them.
How much did you pay for it? I sell them atm with one year of warranty, i7, 8gb and 256gb SSD m.2 for 320€ But i would like to know what they go for in other countries.
I have a dell latitude 7480 at a rather large discount compared to the local used market (typical price is 270-300ish usd) because I got from a friend. For the price that I bought it and compared to my latitude e5430 that I bought as an emergency purchase last year since I didn't have a laptop, and in comparison to that its real damn nice. And as a bonus I didn't pay the thinkpad tax which will go to a 16gb RAM upgrade and an IPS upgrade.
Where did you buy the batteries and how good are they, i have the same T480 but with an i5 7200u and i need batteries since i only have a 72wh external which is a half capacity which means in reality i have a 35wh battery which has a dead cell at around 40% which will go to 5% in seconds.
I got all of mine from Ebay and they have been pretty good so far. No premature draining issues and they are holding on to charges well. You just really need to search hard and look at the positive feedback from the seller.
@@marterpfahl1081 Over here in Malaysia an i5, 16/256 GB can be had for US$250. Most sellers here don't bother cleaning the devices so it'll arrive all smudged and dusty.
Definitely agree used laptops are better. Also, what do you think of the Framework laptops? Would love to hear your thoughts since they have great upgradability like the old Thinkpads used to have.
They're still too new and are fairly niche to have a solid opinion on. Once they've been more well established and the long term support of the product is guaranteed, then it'll be easier to make a good judgement about their laptops. From what I've heard the keyboards aren't nearly as good as ThinkPads, and the lack of a pointing stick similar to the TrackPoint is a dealbreaker for me. With how modular their product is, surely they could make a keyboard with a pointing stick for those of us who live by it! 😎
@@Mr.Vertex I'm concerned about that because like, any wise framework owner would just replace the mainboard or the rest of the used parts so I doubt we'll ever see a used market for the devices.
@@glazedbelmont the cases are definitely going to be hard to get, but a lot of people will have old logic boards they don't need anymore, so you could definitely find them, but maybe not for a very good price.
Louis Rossman bought a Framework and was very happy with it up until someone swiped his backpack with the Framework inside. Linus of LTT bought one and $250K worth of Framework stock. That would appear to be an endorsement. These guys are pretty influential on RU-vid and seem to know their stuff. The Framework logic boards too may be hard to get because a niche use has arisen to repurpose the motherboard. People have designed 3d printed cases for the old board suitable for new purposes.
I'm actually surprised by this. I did not expect them to perform this bad. My entire family have always bought refurbished thinkpads, so I never really think of these budget laptops as an option at all, but this performance is just a joke. People's needs have changed too much for a 10 year old thinkpad beating completely new laptops to be appropriate. I'm even gladder, that I always turn to used laptops when looking for something new.
When i was younger my mom used to buy me these trash laptops and even watching videos on youtube was a big struggle its like why even product something this bad, so instead when i had an iphone id use it instead of the laptop to watch videos. And they dont last very long usually a year or two in you start having big issues
Great video as always, watched it on my T430 I bought for $50. This laptop has just aged like fine wine, and the option of an external graphics card through the express card slot just makes it edge out the T440p for me. I suppose when the day comes where 16 gigs of RAM doesn't suffice I'll have to switch to a W530 or maybe a T480. If Framework adds a trackpoint and trackpoint buttons and it's reasonably priced maybe I'll try that one day. Until then, the T430, always and forever.
This is what I'm currently wanting, personally, ThinkPad E14 Gen 2, It's definitely a Modern laptop with the curves but it's got a good apu and build quality to simply match it.
Got this same laptop, put Linux Lite on it. Required a little tinkering, but now can do a fair bit on it. I can even play a low settings, performance modded Minecraft with RU-vid in a mini player in the corner and experience mostly light stutters in game. That’s pushing the limits. When just using chrome I can open several tabs and browse comfortably. Initially got it just to tinker, the size and weight make me use this more than my more powerful 15” laptop. I would not buy this as your only laptop, but as a secondary laptop to tinker with or do stuff on the couch.
I find your channel useful. Your approach is utilitarian, specific and detailed. I came across your channel 4 years back when i was searching for the pros and cons of a used thinkpad. I got a t440p back then and every time I window shop for a new laptop these days or try to suggest one for a friend, I feel a 2014 laptop is far better than the new ones being offered now. Whether it be the detached power plug from mother board or other usually accepted upgrades of the past, they are a rarity now. I always have and had a pleasant feeling every time you clearly talked about the value of the thinkpads prior to 2017 and you are absolutely right about it. The new laptops are just a repackaged version with power efficiency like 5nm technology with the same performance for a daily user device and additional non-upgradeability. Cheers and have a great time.
Fantastic to see you back Sebi, Yes, since I got the Thinkpad bug almost 25 years ago these have become de-facto in my eyes. I have become a hoarder, sorry collector of various models😂😂spanning the years. Just won a batch of 480's from a UK government auction and the smiles per £ cannot be described at the moment. Thinkpads are business grade computing and their robustness and upgradeability as well as the floods of spares and forums out there; it's amazing 😊😊
I remembered when using Laptop like that. It was my Mom borrowed from school. You know it was make me kinda mad, as it was kinda sluggish for pretty much basic tasks Although I was happy with how compact it is and lightweight as it use flash based storage (unlike Asus X441M that use HDD by default)
I loaded ZorinOS on the 11' version of that system to resell and was able to get better performance, but as you mentioned, even with Linux it just wasn't up to much of tasks I'd use it for. It ended up being a light media consumption device for a not so tech-savvy user.
Those HP 15 laptops with the core i3's that are priced around 300-400 dollars you were walking past are actually pretty good. I got a similar model of laptop that was 5 years old for only 7 dollars and it was still surprisingly responsive, and it was really tough, since it had been dropped before I got it and still worked, although I later needed to buy a new hard drive, and the battery isn't as good as it was new.
Based on the information in your videos I went looking for a used T430. For $140 (Canadian) I picked up one with an i7 processor (2.9MHz), 8GB of ram anďthe 1600x900 display. It was in mint condition. I love the keyboard feel. I could not be happier with the value of this purchase - thank you for your videos.
Sebi, thank you. Took your advice and bought the last great Thinkpad the T-480. It was a refurb with a i7 8th gen processor, 16 Gbyte of memory and 256 Gbyte of storage and OF COURSE FHD IPS display. I made that mistake on my last Dell and did not want another god awful TN display. It works fine and I'll be looking to upgrade storage when I see a bargain. When opening the packing I was sort of surprised to see what looked like a brand new machine. What? No indications of use? Closer examination indicated the machine was wrapped with a die cut sticker for the top, bottom, palm rest and track pad. It really looks brand new at first and second glance. Feel? Not bad but not new Thinkpad, you can feel the edges of the sticker. I doubt the adhesive will keep it adhered for the long term but that won't effect its function. @ $300 from Newegg it was on par with typical Ebay offerings with little or no guarantee. FYI just read the warranty Information, 18 mo. on the machine. Battery covered for 12 mo.- void if opened or tampered with oops! already opened the laptop but denying warranty is illegal according to federal law, they have to prove I broke it. The Thinkpad is better than my last Dell e6410 bought about five years ago for $200 as a brand new refurb, I assume a return. Sebi, thanks for helping me spend less on a nice laptop.
These ultra-budget laptops worry me a bit in all honesty, they're just landfill waiting to happen. With such low specifications it's hard to know who they're even targeted to - they're not suitable for kids because they can't play games, they have too little RAM to comfortably run Windows + Office for productivity, the CPU is too slow to run Netflix or RU-vid in any kind of high definition, and the tiny amount of slow storage means they can't even have many applications installed.
I bought a brand new 200$ laptop and I'm like90% sure it came preistalled with a virus it took like 30 min to startup on every start up and just didn't work it was just so so slow it was slower then my 100$ phone big scam
Watching this on Linux on an i7-2620m T420s that I bought used in 2014. I had some issues with overheating and thermal throttling, but now after cleaning out the fan and replacing the thermal grease it works much better.
Amazing how such a small fix can make a huge difference! The very first ThinkPad I had, an R51, had a "fan error" that I was able to solve just by dislodging the fan. That's what started it all for me.
Getting at the fan and heatsink in this -s model was a mess though. Every screw had to be removed, the screen taken off and the motherboard taken out. I also took this chance to replace the cable to the webcam/microphone/LEDs that had gone intermittent. I really like the keyboard and magnesium chassis. The T470p I use at work is nice too though... Now after a couple of years it also needed a cleaning and thermal paste replacement to solve thermal throttling issues.
My 2019 Lenovo Ideapad 8th Gen i3 might as well tell that new laptop to hold its beer! Seriously, even though it's an i3, it still handles 3D Animation in Blender (I only do 90s-style graphics which isn't all that demanding), video editing in Davinci Resolve is fine as long as I don't do 4K (which I don't anyways), and classic games in SCUMMVM or a Virtual Machine run fine! On top of that, it has an option to add a secondary 2.5 inch hard drive, which I did have a 500GB HDD on standby so I'm using that. So I think I convinced you enough why I love mine and will never get something like this! Awesome video btw!😁👌
8gb should be the minimum for budget laptops right now, even here in the Philippines I could easily get a 16gb 3200mhz ddr4 sodimm brand new for around 20$😵
These low-budget laptop will work best with a light Linux distro, like AntiX or Lubuntu. For the adventurous types, the unauthorized version of Windows 10 called "Tiny 10" will run smooth as silk on a Celeron-based laptop...for educational and demonstrational purposes, of course.
Ultimately the answer to the question is whether or not you are still controlled by your Microsoft abuser and locked into Windows - if you are locked into Windows, then you are also locked into buying the hardware that Microsoft needs you to buy because, especially with Windows 11, older hardware that doesn't support TPM 2.0 is essentially unsupported by Windows 11. Yes, I am aware that more skilled Windows users can get around a lot of these Windows 11 restrictions but most normal users won't have any idea how to install Windows 11, let alone how to carry out additional configuration changes to make it work on such hardware. If you're a Linux user, as I am, then "the world is your oyster", especially when it comes to older Thinkpad (and some Dell and HP) laptops because Linux will run very well, at least as a daily driver machine, on anything with a Core 2 Duo (or better) CPU running at 2GHz, 4GB RAM and an SSD. In the case of Thinkpads, that's anything from around 2007 like a T61 or better. For me, the best "all-round" PC I have ever owned in a Thinkpad X220 laptop that I've owned for 11 years now and is small enough to go absolutely everywhere with me and running Gentoo Linux. The problem with old hardware is that, in a lot of cases, you need to know how to take it apart, clean it, repair it and then put it back together again - although for old business laptops there are a number of refurbishers who can supply you with a business-level laptop that is maybe 3-4 years old and comes with a 90 day warranty for the price of one of these budget machines. In summary, getting old hardware to work well is a case of "effort in = reward out" but computing has been both a hobby and job for me for a few decades now and there is an amazing amount of used and cheap hardware out there on the likes of eBay that runs Linux absolutely fine, as long as you know how to put this stuff together. Ultimately, there is a RU-vid video now for just about any PC or laptop fix or repair you want to do so ultimately it's about taking the time to do research and work out for yourself how this stuff all goes together - but speaking from experience, I'd rather have a 10 year old broken Thinkpad to repair where I can change out just about any component, rather than a modern and cheap laptop where everything, including the CPU and RAM, is soldered to the motherboard.
ThinkPad after 4th gen not worth getting as the CPU is soldered to the motherboard. Recently acquired the ThinkPad 13 Gen 2 and found nothing much to upgrade except the RAM and primary storage. Cannot add secondary storage like my X230 or L440. Since the CPU is a Celeron, I'm only using it for media playback. Not bad since it outlasted my L440 with an extended battery.
For a while that was true, but more recent Intel and AMD offerings have surpassed the performance of the very best CPUs that can be fitted into a 4th generation socket. While it's unfortinate that upgradeable CPUs aren't really a thing on laptops anymore, once we've squeezed every last bit of performance out of the older machines that's the reality we'll have to deal with.
I got a Thinkpad L14 Gen2 recently with a Ryzen 3 Pro 5450u, for $230 certified refurbished. It's probably the best deal I've ever gotten on a computer. The 5450u is 4 cores 8 threads, and Zen 3 cores, so very good single core performance. Also, everthing on the L14 Gen2 is upgradable except the processor.
The L14, at least up to the Gen2, is a very solid modern ThinkPad, especially the AMD variant. They made a few changes to the most recent version that I'm not very happy about, but you definitely landed a solid deal with yours!
While you called out the NVME M.2 port, doesn't sound like you attempted to utilize it. An NVME drive for your OS plus some performance tuning of Windows (or another OS entirely) can deliver real tangible benefits for these devices. Just try to find a similar weight and size alternative. You're correct that the general population probably shouldn't buy these devices.
It just wouldn't be worthwhile. For the cost of this laptop plus a good SSD to add to it, one could have purchased a much better used model. That's one of the points I was trying to make with this video, even the small upgrades you can do won't do much to improve the experience compared to just buying something else. As you pointed out, these devices aren't good for most of the general population. Thanks for watching!
i have an older model of that asus laptop that my mom got for my birthday and it's the exact same just that it has the sd card slot and also has troubles with the N key as you showed in the video and also has a slightly different design on the top cover, if you guys are curious about the model number, it's the asus r214ma and as a user of this, don't buy it, it's cooling is so bad that i can fry an egg while typing a google doc
Fortunately, I didn't buy laptop like that. I purchased Ideapad Slim 14 that has i3 11th Gen and 8 Gigs RAM (fortunately there's slot for upgrade). It surprisingly run well. Only struggle when using DR and Pr video editing software Well, i3 1115G4 has similar specs with 8th Gen i5 8365U. Mine using M.2 SSD from Intel by default and 8 gigs RAM, 1 soldered, 1 slotted. For my tasks, it still quite well. Although it's pretty power hungry though 😅
I found your channel back in february and got interested in thinkpad, and bought a used T470 with i5 7300u, touch screen, fingerprint reader, IR camera, for like $113 (currency converted). I'm glad i found your channel and thank you for posting a video like this!
Got a T450 and 6 cell replacement battery several months ago for about $90 total. It works great with Opensuse Tumbleweed after swapping in some spare parts. I'm probably never buying a brand new laptop in the foreseeable future.
I've tried the CrystalDiskMark myself with my not brandnew but A grade Microsoft certified refurbished X390 and the result annihilates the cheap Asus laptop. Ten times faster in Read and unbelieveable 35 times faster in Write (SEQM1). And I paid a 280 Euro on a summer sale with 20% discount. I would say I made the much better deal with the X390! :D
new budget laptops are not that bad of a deal if you make some sensible decisions like 1. not buying chrome book 2, not buying laptop with anything less than Ryzen 3500 or intel i5 8th gen 3. buying laptop with upgradable storage and ram. more than 3 years ago i bought my first personal laptop a asus vivobook for equivalent of 450 -500 dollars as i was not comfortable opening electronics to try used. most people buying their first machine wants something that works out of the box. Since I have added a ssd . Replaced a busted fan. I have become quite comfortable opening and fixing basic stuff in laptops so i might very likely buy a used one next. But than again in india the used market for laptop is not that hot so will have to see.
Microsoft Certified Refurbished are also a good option. They generally show up looking like a brand new machine and usually have a warranty. Evening you're going to upgrade later on you know that you are starting out with something good. You might pay a bit more but not much more. Off-topic but refurbished smartphones are a good way to save money too. I'm sitting here waiting for a Galaxy Note 10+ to arrive. It still has a couple of years of security updates and the newer models are downgrades. The Note 10+ comes with 12 GB of ram, 256 GB storage and an SD card slot. The newer models only have 8 GB ram, 128 GB storage and no SD card slots. Cameras are excellent even on older devices and processor upgrades are really minimal at this point. They can't get much faster due heat restrictions. My ThinkPad T480 will be here tomorrow. A high end smartphone and a T480 both in excellent condition for under $700 Canadian. I couldn't be happier.
Most of these budget laptops are technically not the successor to netbooks, they are tablets that are in laptop form factor, at least the budget laptops that are sold here in Southeast Asia. Tablets in a sense that the motherboard components are fully soldered (the RAM, WiFi+BT, and EMMC [you're lucky if it is an SSD]).
It's not just budget laptops. Consumer laptops in general seem to be more disposable when compared to business models. I'm currently using a Lenovo Legion 5 pro as my main PC and an old Dell Latitude E5430 as a secondary machine. And while the Latitude is nowhere near the Legion performance wise, I wouldn't be surprised if it outlived it, even though it was one of Dell's lower-end business laptops at the time.
Got a lenovo laptop for somewhere around 200 CAD. Its celeron was 80% at idle and ram was at 70%. Threw debian on it with lxqt and its cpu is now only a few percent and ram is at about 30%. Much snappier now and it doesn't struggle to open gsender anymore.
honestly it's borderline a scam that these come with windows preinstalled. This class of hardware works great under chrome os and linux. I can imagine regular people thinking it's broken or smt
It's a disgrace these big biz sell laptops like these. It's a big waste of resource and big sources of eWaste. I see lots of people are unloading them on local buy/sell site like Kijiji. In 2023, Intel should be ashamed to sell techs in the 90's. Seriously, Celeron and Pentinum. This ain't 1990s. The sad part I bet people see Win11, an Intel 11th Gen chip, and reliable companies like HP, Lenovo, Asus,... it can't be that bad. That's until they turn it on at home... My 2007 Duo-Core Classic white Macbook running latest Linux Mint will run at least 10x faster. Good to see your new videos. You get me started buying Thinkpads, they are really good value for the money.
Depends on what you plan on using it for. If you just need it for the basic stuff (web browsing, RU-vid, office work, etc) it should still be more than sufficient.
They are "Beginner" Laptops because only a beginner would be stupid enough to buy them. Anyone who asks me what they should get as a new Laptop I tell to get a used Enterprise-class Laptop (ThinkPad, Latitude or ProBook / EliteBook) over those cheap Laptops any day of the week. Even if they are 5-6 years old. It does not matter for the stuff a normal user does every day. Also, the performance jump between a ThinkPad from today (T14 Gen3) and an older one, even a T450 is hardly noticeable in the most common applications.
Got a t430 for 125 aud with no os and put linux mint on it, combine that with the 128gb ssd and the genuine lenovo 9 cell it came with from the refurbisher and it runs bloody quick and lasts for between 6 to 8.5 hrs on battery. Instead of an oversized netbook with none of the charm I'll put my money towards an i7 3770k and more ram plus an ips monitor
Linux Mint XFCE Works wonders on my E210MA, i've been using it as a smart journal for the past years and light youtube and music, 10/10 for this. got it for about 200usd
Even if battery life is the only concern and performance is completely unimportant, I still find buying these new craptops… questionable. Just get an old laptop and swap a new battery, and turn off turbo boost, it will also have long battery life (and possibly still run faster.)
These laptops do have a place (imo): portability. In addition to the ludicrously lengthy battery life, they have small footprints, are extremely lightweight, and don't need a hard surface for ventilation. So if you are going to be carrying your laptop around in a backpack or other bag throughout the day and/or are using it in unconventional places, plus you don't need to do anything performance-heavy, these are perfect for that. You don't have to lend a single thought to whether the battery will last and they barely take up any space and weight, making transport basically a non-issue. However, as an actual daily driver or for literally any other usecase, I agree that a used Thinkpad or similar is going to be the far better option. So these cheapie laptops do have a use, but it's clear that manufacturers aren't selling exclusively to this demographic and are disappointing a lot of people expecting a more typical experience.
Found a t450s on the side of the road in hard rubbish. Works great brand new battery too. The display is not perfect and has a dead pixel and a few white spots and some scratches mostly can't see any of it in use and I use an external display anyway. i5-3500u with 12gb of ram.
I still use an HP laptop, which I bought in 2018. It has an Intel Core i5-8250U (way better than the Celeron N4020 the budget laptop has), 1TB of storage (one downside is that it's hard drive storage) and 8GB of RAM (double the 4GB of RAM of the budget laptop), all for about $700 (although nowadays, it would go for closer to $450).
To ask you I bought t430 put new ram and 16gb of ssd in and turn it one it done it just fine.I had i7-3610qm 45tdp processor so i took out a battery and cleaned heatsink and fan (used pressure air spray to clean it of, I accidentally forgot to keep it in place with finger so it was spinning fast for few seconds I replaced processor with i7-3610qm but back heatsink and battery turned it on and nothing think light powers on power button on keyboard stays green fan spins for 5 seconds and stops and i have black screen no thinkpad logo or bios. I again tore it apart same as before put back original i5 again same happens. Now I wonder did I kill the fan or the motherboard. Theres no beep sound or nothing.
That laptop actually has plenty of ram if you turn on ram-saving options in other chromium based browsers or use the better firefox.... and if you put a lightweight distro of Linux onto it with a lightweight frontend it would be pretty zippy
been binging your videos and you really encouraged me to get a ThinkPad as I saw they had potential and were good. I'm getting one in a few weeks and I'm excited. keep up the good stuff. (I'm getting a t540p which you never talked about in your channel tho) (maybe coz it came out with the t440p which stole it's thunder but I believe it's a dope machine)
i have a very similar laptop and its comical how slow it is. its almost like hp was trying to make the most poorly designed computer they possibly could lmao
Hi there! I'm just wondering why you don't mention the t485 or similar AMD-CPU driven laptops. Isn't the t485 a AMD-clone of the t480? Is there a similar upgradeability? Would be nice if you can make a review on one of the AMD Thinpad-"oldies" :)
They're pretty much just AMD versions of the T-series equivilant. Lenovo didn't market them well and they didn't sell very well (at least the A485 and other similar older models) so they're harder to come by.
Hello. I couldn't have the chance to buy a thinkpad because I wanna focus more to the graphics side and had to get a gaming laptop etc. But I LOVE your channel. And I have a question, when you are buying damaged laptops what do you do if the problems are too much or can be fixed only by changing what's damaged? For example how do you deal with a damaged motherboard, not working charger port etc. And thank you so much for guiding people about buying used products!
I'm very selective about what sort of damaged laptops I buy. If it looks to be damaged enough that it can't easily be repaired I try to avoid buying it to begin with unless I am specifically getting it for a part it has. If a laptop I buy is too far gone to be fixed, I salvage whatever parts I can from it and try to find a way to safely dispose of the rest (passing it onto someone else, local electronics recyclers, etc). I'm glad you like my videos even if ThinkPads aren't the right machines for you! Thanks for watching!
Most budget offerings from the big box stores in this era are pathetic swindles for the unassuming consumer. It's pretty troubling to see brands push out these hobbling netbooks when a used Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus could run circles around them in every use case. It wasn't always like this. Having briefly worked at Best Buy, I've seen good and bad budget offerings surface at different phases of the market. Ten years ago I made a great buy of an Acer Aspire E1-572 for about $600 that's still competently kicking around today and I only had to make one repair to the charging port.
Whilst I agree that budget laptops are generally rubbish, at least you can usually stick a decent OS like Linux on them. I can't think of anything worse than having to do my computing on any locked-down Samsung mobile device that are becoming as "walled garden" as Apple are as time goes on. Sorry, nobody does SERIOUS computing on a phone or tablet - there's a reason why toddlers like their Disney movies on tablets in the back of their parents' car when on long trips!
I'd take a cheap Celeron laptop over a phone any day, phones suck for everything else than reading news or forums and instant messaging. I loved my netbook back in the day, that thing even had longer battery life than many of my older smartphones lol
@@Pasi123 which is a goddamn shame because like the original commenter said they run circles around cheaper (and even midrange) laptop CPUs if only Microsoft didn't fumble Windows on ARM
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Lmao, used laptops are much better... I got mine latitude 7390 for 265$ with new dell battery, upgraded ram from 8gb to 16gb,256gb nvme, i5 8350u is ofc much better than that celeron, also i repasted it with gd900-1 thermal paste so it runs quiet and temperatures aren't that bad
i had a laptop with rivited keyboard but with plastic it can be replaced here i did replace it 2 or 3 times melt the rivits and take it out and put the new one back in it was an acer aspire es1-512 so they keyboard was available dint have to replace the whole top case
