New Laptop: Thinkpad P14s | Hacker News Reader

New Laptop: Thinkpad P14s

domenkozar.com

88 pointsdomenkozar96 comments

I want to love thinkpads, but the fact that in 2021 you still have a display lottery frustrates me to no end. You buy a MacBook Pro you get an A+ display. Thinkpad? You might get one with the good display, you might not.

Yes, display lottery is still true.

It's very easy to replace the displays on these business line thinkpads.

I shouldn’t have to replace the display on a new computer. Especially when the part numbers are all the same. I’ve swapped the display in my x230 to get away from a ghosting panel just to get another panel that is supposedly ghost free, but still ghosts.

Yes, Thinkpad's FHD is horrible. So I put a QHD display on my T480s, and my eyes love 'em. The last Mac I used was Mac Air Retina 2012, switched just because of the matte screen.

How's the glossiness on that machine? And how are they compared to the Macbooks?

Depends on which panel the user bought.

Oh how I love the 4k thing they put on my p17...

For this reason I just ended buying an HP, the display is exactly what the description said it would be. 300 nits, brigthview.

No surprises, no a thousand bucks lottery ticket sold with "but it has a good keyboard".

300 nits is terrible though.

> You buy a MacBook Pro you get an A+ display.

And play another lottery with potential faults in the keyboard or display cable or some other random component, with Apple refusing to do anything for years until after a class action lawsuit they decide to fix a specific batch of laptops from the year 2016. Or maybe it actually does work, but then the cooling is insufficient to actually get the computing power suggested by the spec sheet.

Apple makes good devices, but the combination of those prices with this attitude towards the customer is a dealbreaker for me.

I'm glad the Framework laptop is a thing, it's the only good example in an industry going towards unfixable devices, broken by design.

If you read this blog post and think "Nice! I will buy the same Thinkpad and use Linux", then be aware that the previous generation P14s has serious issues with power drain in standby[0]. These issues have been not been resolved since September 2020.

In large parts of Europe, the second generation P14s is not yet available. So buyer beware!

[0] https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Other-Linux-Discussions/T14-AMD...

I had the same issue with the ThinkPad T14 AMD. Left it in my backpack for two days and the battery was completely drained.

What made it worse: Lenovo's own USB-C Gen 2 Dock would refuse to charge the battery when it was drained. I had to borrow a friend's MacBook Pro USB-C charger to get the battery up to a reasonable charge.

(Yes, the dock does provide enough power for charging the laptop.)

TBH my Macbook Pro does the same, really annoying when going on holidays and not using a laptop for few days.

That seems like an issue with your MacBook Pro? I have used MacBooks since 2007 and I never noticed such issues (unless there is a process blocking sleep). With the T14 I immediately noticed it, with the same usage patterns as I had with the MacBook.

Sounds like the issues from X1 Carbon 6th gen where the only available standby was always-on-standby (Windows-only thing): some patching of ACPI tables has helped with that, though Lenovo has since updated the BIOS and restored the usual S3 standby. 7th gen worked out of the box, but I am not sure if that matches t490 or t14 generation (or maybe even t480).

The biggest worry for me is putting it in a backpack and the battery causing a fire.

> though Lenovo has since updated the BIOS and restored the usual S3 standby

This drain with the T14 was with regular S3 sleep (sleep mode option changed from Windows to Linux in the firmware setup).

I was in the mood to get a "mobile workstation", and ended up buying an HP Omen gaming laptop, which had an i7, 16GB of RAM, and discrete GPU. The idea was to be able to run one or more VMs and do hardcore development. And maybe play a few strategy games.

In the intervening years, I have hardly used the laptop for the purposes I had initially intended, though I do occasionally play strategy games on it.

I've mostly been using an inexpensive Chromebook as a remote Linux terminal, and then logging into remote machines to do development. With a little GNU screen startup script, it is easy to resume where I left off, regardless of my location.

That setup sounds really appealing!

How does the startup script work? Does it install software, and does it require root access on the dev machine?

Do you have multiple remote machines, or just one you use often?

It doesn't do any of that stuff, it is just for starting screen without having to type some options:

https://gist.github.com/jamesgraves/c5a09ba209729a491600372f...

I have a couple different machines I use on a regular basis.

The main thing is that I don't care if an existing GNU screen session named 'database' exists or not. If I was doing database work, that's the session name I will use. So I want to connect to that if it exists. Or if the machine has been rebooted, create a new session.

I really like having the terminal windows also reflect what I'm working on in a particular session.

I like the idea of using a web terminal to work on a remote, much more capable host. I found however Chromebooks (only tried the old Samsung ARM abased one and the original Pixel) lacking for this purpose. The Samsung ARM was clearly made for a price-point and while a good value at the the time, not worth further discussion today. But even on the (then) flagship Chromebook, the keyboard is just so-so (and lacks page up/down keys!), doesn't offer Ethernet and the screen is terribly reflective and a wee bit small (nice aspect ratio though). Not sure how current Chromebooks fare, but colour me skeptical.

I depends on what you want.

For the "full desktop experience" I sit in front of a 42in 4K TV, which isn't too portable.

At other times, I am content with something small and handy (1.25kg). The keyboard on my Acer Chromebook R11 is decent for its size. I really like the standardized keyboard functions for brightness, volume, etc., and use them a lot more than on a regular laptop. After installing Linux, and having ssh-agent loaded with keys, I'm ready to remote into my systems. Long battery life, due to its puny Intel Celeron processor.

I have the same laptop with the 4K IPS display and the AMD 5850U, and I am pretty happy with it. On Ubuntu I had to install the Wi-Fi driver manually [0], tweak the grub config to make the screen brightness control work [1], and install gnome-screensaver to make suspend/resume work properly. Maybe things would work better out of the box on Pop!_OS? Otherwise, it's pretty good. It does not heat up much compared to the previous Intel laptop I had, and it is plenty fast. I was not able to make Howdy [2] work properly, and the fingerprint reader was not reliable compared to my MacBook, however.

[0]: https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89

[1]: Add this to the grub file : GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="amdgpu.backlight=0"

[2]: https://github.com/boltgolt/howdy

The wifi issue was pretty much what made me give up on the Thinkpad and go back to the Macbook, where I can set up my work environment pretty quickly and not have to deal with other random issues…

Magnificent ThinkPad model. Too bad the soldered-on RAM precludes the possibility of using ECC modules. The Pro version of the Ryzen CPU means ECC compatibility.

afik not a single ryzen laptop uses ECC from the factory and documentation on compatibility is pretty horrible; this is the only thing stopping me from making the leap.

Supposedly someday we're meant to have DDR5 with ECC built in. I've been waiting for that day as well.

Good laptop, but with a few small drawbacks:

- No vapor chamber cooling, just regular heat pipes

- Monitor has thick borders

- Not 16:10

- Fn/Ctrl are swapped (all thinkpad laptops)

- Thinkpad's fingerprint readers never worked reliably to me

- I personally prefer USB-C network adapter instead of the bulky RJ45

- 720p camera, but most of laptops have a bad web cam...

- I assume it will have very average speakers. Usually Lenovo puts a "DOLBY SOUND" label on laptops with improved sound quality.

Fn/Ctrl can be swapped in BIOS

Yes, I do this with all work issued laptops.

But if someone need to type on your keyboard, then they will have problems and this workaround only works with Laptops. You cannot swap keys on a standalone Lenovo keyboard.

Ah, I don't think I've ever used a standalone Lenovo keyboard. At least that could be swapped out.

Yes the laptop keyboard swap is a little confusing for the first 10 seconds until you explain.

Stickers is what I ordered and put on all those keyboards. Why lenovo, why?

Actually you can swap fn/ctrl keys on the trackpoint 1 USB keyboard. I wrote it down here: https://github.com/lentinj/tp-compact-keyboard/issues/32#iss...

Large bezels to easily adjust the screen position without touching it, and RJ45? Exactly like I like them. Sorry! %)

Unfortunately, putting a good camera into a laptop is a challenge. With the screens / lids being so thin, nothing really good, like a phone camera, can fit in.

And I also don't trust biometry auth anywhere. Biometry should be a login, not a password, because you can't revoke or replace it.

Wouldn't the dongle be even bulkier than a built in RJ45?

Lenovo's web site is especially frustrating. They expect customers to know the differences between ThinkPad, IdeaPad, Yoga, etc, and then between the subdivisions like ThinkPad E vs P vs X, etc.

It would be far more customer-friendly if Lenovo made it very easy to say, show me all 15 inch laptops with any dedicated graphics card, and let's go from there.

But all of them are great, people in this "thread" are aiming at P series and XPS laptops, but from a performance perspective these aren't that great.

Almost all laptop makers' websites are absolutely horrible. The worst I've seen is Dell's, where for some reason every ~10 seconds a distracting popup jumps into the screen. And the device comparison feature is useless, it just shows the same summary as usual but side by side. I had to look for minutes to see that a price difference between two models came from the 13" and 15" size difference...which was a single digit difference in a ~10-item list without any highlighting.

It's weird how manufacturers are imitating Apple at every step unless it's an improvement in UX.

I'm on my 3rd Thinkpad (P52, P1 Gen 2, P17) and had a Dell 17" XPS 9700 in the mix. The Dell was horrible. It's intake vents were on the bottom so if you put it on a soft surface like a couch or bed, it would immediately overheat to the point of turning off within 5 minutes. I tried everything. Never got the webcam or speakers to work in Linux. Keyboard sucked.

But every Lenovo I use is fantastic. I like the rugged look and bulkiness. I don't buy my laptop to look cool; I buy it to code, run vms, compile fast, and get work done. Lenovos have excellent Linux compatibility and the best keyboards anyways.

Duh, I didn't notice you can configure ThinkPads, might have gone that route if I knew. I ordered Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 Pro that is sadly limited to 16GB, but otherwise seems to be a huge success. High-res 90Hz 16:10 display, 5800H, good Linux support out of the box. I just hope the memory won't become a constraint. At least it was considerably cheaper than ThinkPads at 960€.

I considered this one but IMO not having dual-channel memory on such a super strong CPU is crippling it. :(

Plus yeah, 16GB is too small.

If it wasn't for that, it is IMO the perfect programmer laptop.

It is dual-channel according to specs. I'm not worried about performance at all, it's been very good in intial reviews.

16GB may be enough for me for the time being, just not very future proof. Maybe I'll get to update to the Framework laptop when the memory runs low.

Got my device. It's super. A warning if any Linux user considers this though: Lenovo specs said Intel WiFi, but it came with Realtek 8852AE, and drivers for this aren't included yet in current kernels. It was straightforward to get it working with https://github.com/lwfinger/rtw89 (latest KDE Neon), but for the time being that will then have to be done after all kernel udpates.

A few months ago, I bought a nicely packed and customized P14s Gen 1 in France (Qwerty !) with 16GB and 400 nits for under 1000 euro.

Wow that's a great deal. Via some discount coupons or was it second hand?

As it was for my daughter, there was a 10% student discount but there were other discounts, too.

When I got my T450s some years ago, I just put a call out on the thinkpad subreddit asking for coupons. A lenovo rep sent me a coupon that made the purchase worth it.

You can do the following:

TicketsatWork: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/ticketsatwork/pc (Passcode: TICKETSatWK)

Does such a thing exist for the EU?

Unfortunately not, maybe through student discounts.

Lenovo Discounts

Use the links below to get a good discount on Lenovo systems.

Germany (Students only, I never tested if it worked for other countries. but... it ships all over EU)

ok1: https://ok1.de/ThinkPads:::6.html?MODsid=ea0ejr7mhrhhmjc47kk... LapStars: https://www.lapstars.de/thinkpad-campus.html (offers multiple keyboard language choices) notebooksbilliger: https://www.notebooksbilliger.de/studentenprogramm/lenovo+ca...

Replying to my own. I don't affiliate or whatever. I just help people.

I have a P14s with a 4750U and it flies through Pop!_OS. Wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anybody.

I've been using the same (P14s w/4750U) with Ubuntu for 4 months with great results. I also have a mini-server with the 4750G, and I'm very happy with these Ryzen APUs so far!

Early on I was using ubuntu LTS and had some issues resuming the P14s after suspend, but now everything works great using the 5.11 kernel (included w/ubuntu 21.04)

Given the 4k display, is a 16x9 aspect ratio acceptable for a premium laptop? There's no way in which I find the 16" 16x10 screen on a MacBook Pro to be too large. It even fits into a generic bag designed for 14" laptops due to being thin. A 15" 16x9 is only 1/2" narrower than a 16" 16x10, and a 15.4" is only 1/8" narrower. Physical vertical space for the screen is 'free' and glaring when seeing that blank space between the 16x9 screen and the keyboard.

I suppose if you always use twin vertical terminal windows all is well. Graphical apps (and web pages) often consume too much vertical space and isn't always feasible to get that back.

I bought this exact model the other day, two days later it was cancelled and a refund was issued as they no longer had the 4K panel in stock. Looks like I'm going to miss out on these AMD CPUs this generation and have to go with an XPS 13 instead.

I am trying to order one. If I unselect Windows, I loose the 4K panel. If I go from 24G to 16G, I loose the 4K panel. If I go from 24G to 32G, I lose the 4K panel. And of course, delays are always 6+ weeks (which is Lenovo lingo to say "forever").

Don't trust it if it says the 4k panel is available. I found the one combo which only had it as they had forgot to remove it as an option.

How did you buy it if the website shows a message that it is not available yet?

https://ok2.de/ThinkPad/P14s-14/ThinkPad-P14s-AMD-Gen-2-21A0...

OK, I saw this page

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/coming-soon/P14s-AMD-G2/p/22WSP...

and I thought, it is not possible to buy it yet.

I have one of the newer Dell XPS 15 laptops. Installing linux was a breeze, upgrading the storage and memory took less than half an hour, and the display is gorgeous. The downsides are that it's performance is certainly throttled quite a bit, and it's awkward sitting it on your lap due to its sharp edges and density (far less comfortable than my MBP). It's certainly been a good experience overall, but I think once thinkpad moves over fully to more reliable displays in the 16:10 ratio I'd probably choose those.

I've bought numerous Thinkpads and I still can't find myself using them daily because of the awful trackpads. It's not even the tracking, it's the amount of force you need to put on the trackpad to get it to register a click. Also the lack of media keys on Thinkpads is outdated and annoying. If Lenovo fixes these two things I'd gladly use a Thinkpad as my daily laptop.

Meanwhile Dell just removed the media keys and replaced them with more calc related keys on the most recent precision lineup. Also moved end and home into the F row. I mean WTF.

First thing I do on a lenovo thinkpad is disable the trackpad, trackpoint FTW.

That is because people who like Thinkpads tend to use the nipple instead.

I tried to order the P14s with the AMD 8 core for a new hire at work recently, but unfortunately had to cancel the order after they told me there would be 4+ months of shipping delays. It's too bad the supply chains are still struggling to keep up. We ended up getting an E15 instead, since it could arrive within 2 weeks, but it's about 1/2 the specs we wanted.

We waited about 2-3 months for delivery. Sadly there is no real alternative.

> There's only one company in Slovenia that does warranty repairs and takes the law-specified 40 working days to finish their job (replacing a battery, for example).

Is there a law that says that repairs must be done within 40 working days and so the repair shop takes the full 40 days? Is this because they have no competition or are supply/resource constrained?

That's the maximum and for some reason they always take that long.

For no competition I'm not sure, but that would help.

For a small and light laptop with 40 GB RAM and a 8+ hour battery life that's linux first, I have to say I'm happy with my System76 lemur pro 9 that I bought in March 2020. No 4K but I don't need it on this machine.

https://system76.com/laptops/lemur

No key replacement service, but lenovo will actually sell a replacement keyboard for you[0]. And they have videos on their website on how to replace the parts.

[0]: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/partsorder

Where did you buy it and for what price? For me it just says 'coming soon' on the official homepage.

Is the P14s exactly the same as the T490? I'm looking at the photos online and the ports and layout is identical to my T490 that I am typing this comment on. I wonder if I can swap the internal components / motherboard?

Having to build out-of-tree drivers to get that Realtek WLAN card to work sounds like a real pain, it's good that Lenovo ditched that stupid PCI ID whitelist. (I think? I haven't had a ThinkPad in quite a while.)

I bought a T14s at the beginning of the year after 5 year of XPS 13 9350. I'm happy with the T14s but from a design perspective (eg bezel wise), it's a step back- especially considering the 5 years in between.

I own one of these. Upgraded from my Surface Book 2. No complaints so far, except that the Fn key is where the Ctrl key should be and I keep pressing the Fn key :)

You can change it in the UEFI so that Fn acts as Ctrl and vice versa.

> You can change it in the UEFI so that Fn acts as Ctrl and vice versa.

First thing I do on every thinkpad. It would be very interesting to know what percentage of customers actually wants that Fn key in that location instead of Ctrl.

My T470 has the Fn on the edge, and Ctrl on the inside. I like it because it requires moving my pinky less to hit Ctrl.

My problem isn't Fn and Ctrl, but that Shift may or may not be the same shape.

If Ctrl is on the outside I am guaranteed to hit Shift when I push them both with my pinky straight up.

I have two Lenovo laptops in front of me right now.

The key straight up from Fn on the Ideapad 3 is a pipe. On the Thinkpad the shift key is the correct length (two keys wide).

The two have opposite Fn and Ctrl keys.

Consistency, am I right?

Muscle memory is a thing, and even the same manufacturer isn't doing things the same way between models.

I don't know the percentage, but some do prefer it, and I'm among them.

I'm surprised so many people express any preference, though. My take is that the Fn key is an abomination and it's not present on desktop keyboards so either choice of location is wrong. If I could, I'd remove both Fn and the 'Windows' key. Neither my Chromebook nor the T40-series Thinkpads I first used have these keys, and they are noticeably more comfortable due to the larger Control and Alt keys it permits.

I'm also surprised people complain about this but not about the layout of Apple laptop keyboards, where 'fn' is also in the corner.

It's a shame they aren't the same size so I can pop them off and switch them around

You can get around this by mapping Caps Lock to Ctrl, which is easier to press anyway. It's probably a good idea even if you don't use a certain modifier-key-heavy text editor.

The Sigma move is to assign Ctrl onto the Alt key (which is right next to the spacebard), and then Alt to the Capslock Key. Then you can activate Ctrl (alt key) with your thumb (far more frequently) instead of your pinky.

The position next to the spacebar seems more awkward than to the left of "a", especially if you use Emacs or otherwise a lot of Ctrl presses. I currently have the CAPS key mapped so that it's Esc on tap, and Ctrl on hold. Works great.

It's only awkward next to the spacebar if you use the wrong finger. What key are you currently hitting with your left thumb? That is a whole finger you could be using to hit LALT key, instead of letting it just sit there wasted., and it's very natural. You can use Emacs easily with this configuration for both modifiers.

On a thinkpad keyboard, my thumbs fall naturally on the space bar (well, rather between the space bar and the left trackpoint button), so hitting the alt next to it implies an uncomfortable bending motion of my left thumb. Also, the x is just over that key, so doing M-x in Emacs would be a weird pinch-like move. Maybe it's a matter of habit, but using CAPS as Ctrl/Esc is literally a 2mm move of the pinky to the left from my home position.

Are the trackpads anywhere close to macbooks yet? My XPS 13 is still awful and my previous thinkpad is worse than the XPS.

There will be haptic trackpads out this year. This one doesn't have it.

That's the thing which keeps me from buying a new notebook. :( Everything else I care about is on par with intel macbooks but the touchpad is too important.

Trackpoint works well! (it's the "fingertip joystick" in the middle of the keyboard)

My XPS 13's trackpad works quite well Fedora 34 Gnome. Firefox supports smooth scrolling and pinch-to-zoom like in Windows or Mac OS, and Gnome Shell has built-in trackpad gestures for switching workspaces and showing all open windows.

I want to give thinkpads a try, but I just don't trust Lenovo enough.

I'm not sure. I had to google your name (Making sure if it's the right country) but this may help:

You can do the following: TicketsatWork: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/ticketsatwork/pc (Passcode: TICKETSatWK)

I have used a Thinkpad as my laptop, and I would say that it is worth the buy. It is relatively better compared to other laptops in that similar price range.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com