# Thinkpad P14s
12-20-2025

About 5 years ago I needed a new laptop. I asked some people online what they would recommend since I am more used to building desktops, and laptop build quality can be iffy. Someone suggested to buy a used Thinkpad X220. This was a 8 year old laptop at the time, but for my use-case, that didn't really matter. So I bought one for about $50 shipped on ebay. When it arrived I realized immediately the build quality was great, and up until last week I used it almost every day for 5 years. Unfortunately it has started to hang recently in crunchbang++, so I installed Linux Mint and had the same problem. I was unable to figure out what was wrong with it.

I still plan to fix it some day, but I am too busy with other projects right now. I also decided that since I am happy using a 13 year old laptop, maybe I should buy something new and see if I can have it last hopefully 13 years. I ended up buying a Thinkpad p14s. To me this is the holy grail of laptops so I was excited to see that I could get one for around $1100, and my credit card company had a deal for a $500 rebate from lenovo! So it (hopefully) will end up costing about $600. This is a great deal for the build quality, repairability, and hardware. With RAM prices through the roof right now I was fine just getting 16GB ram, and a ryzen ai 7 350. These laptops are interesting because when you build them on the lenovo website some upgrade options are actually free. I was able to choose between a 52.5wh or 57wh battery for the same price. I think most people would choose the highest capacity, but I care a bit more about weight. I also mostly use the laptop plugged in, so I chose the smaller battery. Despite this, I did test the runtime and I got about 8 hours of runtime on a full charge.

One thing I really like about this Thinkpad is it has user replacable parts. The nvme, and the RAM are both upgradable. Most other parts of the build are replacable too, which is a nice feature and will allow me to repair it and keep it around for a long time. If my X220 was just a bit more powerful I would have chosen to repair it instead of buying new. I do expect to repair it eventually though, as I would like to keep it as a backup or for fun experiments.█