Laptop Review: ThinkPad X1 Extreme (Gen 2)

The RTX 3060 in my machine is working well under Windows and Linux. It's a bit tricky to set up, but it's been super stable for me, with no crashes in the past few months.

Talk to me when decent laptops with AMD dedicated and/or APU graphics and >1080p IPS displays exist.

Setting up Optimus is quite the miserable experience, and nouveau being pretty much useless is exasperating. I just gave up and "disabled" the discrete GPU on my thinkpad, as intel's iGPUs are good enough for all daily tasks and more.

> Nvidia GPUs are still the number one problem. Buying anything with Nvidia in it is a waste of money. Closed source binary drivers that only work sometimes is acceptable for gamers but not if you want a reliable, controlled machine.

No it's not a hardware problem, it's a pure software / platform problem. The experience is phantastic on Windows. The reason why I went with Windows 10 base and Linux VM & WSL2 (which is pretty seamless) instead of vv is that I did not want to spend time caring about Optimus, PRIME and having to consider the dGPU/iGPU mux topology in order to get my hardware to work correctly.

Honestly, I just spent about a year on MacOS because of the hardware. That time also includes an M1 Macbook.

Frankly, now that there are so many high quality, thermally-suitable ultrabooks,I'm done, I don't care if the M1 blows everything out of the water as long as some Evo-class ultrabook can do the same to the older laptops I had - because MacOS and homebrew fucking suck. The file system organization sucks too, and not all programs ported to unix/MacOS with as well as standard linux. (or install as cleanly as with apt-get and an isolated environment in file explorer on WSL2).

I understand buying a Macbook for the internal hardware prowess (there is no perfornance per watt competition for the M1), QC, screen resolution, but fuck, the important hardware shit is 80% as good [edit: not really but this is also use case dependent] if not better on Windows laptops by now, and arguably the most important variable - software - is miles ahead with WSL2/Ubuntu/bash/apt-get/GNU tools vs MacOS/zsh/brew etc.

I'd grant IO and some web development on MacOS is still going to be more productive, but from where I'm standing the platform choice is one without hesitation.

Totally do agree on hardware writ large though, still haven't figured out what Windows system i'm going to grab, for that exact reason.

I'm not really in the market for a laptop, but I do look a bit from time to time, and what I've found is that even though AMD starts showing up, sometimes even with current gen CPUs (I think? I've seen Ryzen 5500s), I haven't seen one yet with a 4k screen. The best I've seen was some gaming Lenovo at 2560x1440.

I really wish I could have Apple hardware without Apple software...

They basically have those. For example the NexDock. It's basically a laptop with no guts designed to be driven by USB C smartphone, probably could work with anything really.

I hate my MBP too.

I'm starting to dislike laptops as well. Once you get used to a nice mechanical keyboard, especially one with an ergonomic layout, laptop keyboards feel like a joke. I wonder why they won't try to innovate there. Only the MNT Reform comes to mind, and its keyboard is still not my ideal layout. Some way to keep a high end keyboard I acquired myself attached to a portable machine would be nice. Maybe just a custom case around a modern SBC with a portable screen slapped on. Like one of those cyberdeck builds, but in the clamshell form factor.

I also use a docked laptop as my main machine with peripherals attached, but then the thermal situation is pretty bad because laptops so often seem to run very hot. I think I'd be okay with an increase in size and weight to sort out some of these problems.

> Does anyone feel it makes more sense to buy an embedded system and lug it around instead from now on?

Not embedded, but I was actually toying with the idea of buying or building a smallish x86 computer that I'd lug around.

The idea came to me when we started getting EliteDesk minis at work, which are basically the size of a book.

Now, those are fairly nice on paper, and at the time were one of the limited options of PCs available with thunderbolt, so I got one for myself. The honeymoon didn't last long, as the components are custom designed and some are downright cheap, like the CPU fan, which emits a constant, unbearable whir, but I can't replace the heatsink with a custom one (it only uses three screws, none of which are in the standard locations). Also, the thunderbolt doesn't work reliably either, so all in all I wouldn't recommend.

But the idea of actually being able to grab a desktop in my bag stuck with me. As I wouldn't be doing that all dat every day, I figured I could get a bigger one, with the limit being "fit in a backpack".

However, for the time being, I only move between my apartment and my parents' house, and having a fixed desktop at each location works well enough.

Have you investigated whether you can replace the CMOS battery? It may be a worthwhile activity if it enables you to power off and power on the laptop as and when you need to.

In the last 18mths I've had work issued 2019 Macbook Pros and 2020 Macbook Pros and they both suck as developer machines for my workloads (docker and intellij).

Absurdly hot running under load, the frequent point releases for OSX, 3.4-3.7GB and 30-40 minutes of time unless I do it out of hours - the trainwreck that was Big Sur and virtualisation.

I'm fortunate in that while I have work issued machines I don't have to use them *for work and can instead use my nice desktop but damn if I had to work on those machines I'd lose the plot (as other members of my team frequently seem to at various times).

wow, it must be nice to belong to .0000001%.

You don't even need a "real workstation". A desktop with a 5 year old (heck, probably even 10 year old) CPU will beat the snot out of any mobile x86 CPU. Intel stagnated mobile performance for a long time, favoring terrible performance over battery life. Maybe the M1 can finally propel the laptop market back on track so we can actually get pro devices which rival desktops.

>Lenovo’s 3 week turnaround on hardware repairs

Usually I’ve had the repair guy show up within 72 hours of me creating a ticket. 3 weeks is really odd where are you located?

For Toronto, Canada, Lenovo offers a support option where it can assign a repair technician to fix your computer at your office or residence (avoiding the potentially weeks-long wait with shipping).

Unfortunately, when I tried to use the service, my appointment was cancelled due to restrictions in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. In the end, I replaced the laptop with an X1 Extreme Gen 2. That, too, unfortunately stopped working some months later as one of the fans no longer worked (I believe it was my error, for letting it spin too quickly when blowing the fans out, after usage in a dusty environment).

To avoid the downtime of shipping out the laptop, I repaired the fans myself, following instructions from iFixit, with replacement parts ordered from AliExpress. (In the meantime, I used Throttlestop to run the laptop with slow speeds, but operational.) I also took the opportunity to replace the display with a 144 Hz version (making it almost unique, as few workstation laptops now sell with high refresh-rate screens), also from AliExpress.

It worked, though I was lucky as the laptop could still function as I waited for the parts to arrive. I’m happy with the laptop now, though I only attempted the self-repair versus requesting a technician due to COVID-19 restrictions.

This seems to be a bit of a trend with Lenovo. My gen 1 T14s (Ryzen 7 4750u) has a similar issue with heat, I can offer one suggestion, replace the thermal paste. I did it a week after I got mine as well as smoothing the oddly rough surface of the heatsink. Got a 5c drop, still throttles but less quickly.

This continues. Try to run multiple monitors and you'll melt your DIMMs.

I have a gen1 and noticed a dramatic improvement in heat and fan noise after undervolting and repasting (may be unneeded) by about -150mv iirc. This is on Fedora but it may help in Windows too.

Yes, Intel had an OEM network few people in the West know about called something like "Intel preferred partner."