Are Thinkpads really all that great?

[kyrax12]

If I want a laptop to last and be sturdy, would thinkpads be the way to go?

Besides Macs, are Thinkpads the most durable and reliable out of every other brand out there?

 

[wasabiman123]

Yes, I can vouch for them. Even the absolute lowest end Edge series is solidly built for the money. Screen quality is a weakness unless you get one of them with an IPS panel however.

 

[holden j caufield]

yes and yes, They are built very sturdy, they were made to military spec. I used to work IT for a construction company so they were taken out in the field and those guys weren't easy on them. Only the toughbooks and thinkpads gave us few problems. From then on that's what I've bought. All are still working, some I gave to families and some I sold. We got them with the 3 year warranty and when that ended if something went wrong the modular parts on them made them easy to work on. There were guys out there that never even wanted the newer laptops we offered they kept on trucking along on these old black brick 7+ year old laptops.

 

[Matt1970]

Unless you get a Panasonic Toughbook.

 

[corkyg]

Unless you get a Panasonic Toughbook.

Agree. Mr. Caulfield cited them in his testimonial. "...Only the toughbooks and thinkpads gave us few problems..."

 

[hacker1]

Yes i love the military grade quality on thinkpads in general, they are very well build sturdy, and most importantly reliable.

 

[raildogg]

I have a Thinkpad and I like it.

However, I have to say that other laptops are good as well. I know a guy who has a 6 year old Dell Latitude that he takes everywhere and uses it heavily and it still works. Another one has a Dell Vostro, same thing. Another one a HP Elitebook, same thing. So there are other choices. Many other people take a basic $300-$500 laptop with them and it lasts a while.

Additionally, if you will only take the laptop out once a week, then there is no need to get a higher end laptop. A consumer laptop will be just fine. Basically, decide what you want in a laptop, what features, etc. Choosing a particular brand should come after that.

As for which last longer, it all depends on many factors. Primarily, it depends on the user and how he treats it. This is not to say that a $1500 laptop will have the same ruggedness as a $300 laptop but how a laptop is used should not be underestimated. Of course, you're paying $1500 so one could expect it to be a bit sturdier. But then again, how many $300 laptops could you buy with that $1500? So economically speaking, a cheaper laptop can usually work for a lot of people.

 

[raildogg]

Yes i love the military grade quality on thinkpads in general, they are very well build sturdy, and most importantly reliable.

How many people really need such a sturdily built laptop? I know that aids in them lasting longer but if it's going to be used gently anyway, then it doesn't really matter much.

 

[wholesalestunna]

I use a Panasonic Tough Book at work and they are rock solid. We have issues with them but they're mostly software related. I haven't heard of many of them dying and we put them through their paces.

 

[paul878]

The best things about the Thinkpad are that they have a great keyboard and are very well build. It is a business laptop with great support and far fewer problems than you typical consumer laptop. Yes, the screen sucks, make sure you get the ips when you order.

Panasonic Tough Book are rock solid but they are not very comfortable to use, it is not a everyday laptop for an average user.

 

[boomhower]

I've got a 7 year old tough book in my car that's been road around for 7 years and is still going strong. Had to add some ram to it but other than that it's been rock solid. I can't believe the bumps and beating hasn't killed the HD yet.

 

[CoolRunnings]

I echo what's already been said here with regards to the build quality being awesome. The screens suck badly if you don't get an IPS model but that seems true across most business-class laptops in my experience. Many people say that you can buy lots of cheap laptops for what a Thinkpad costs but do you really want the aggravation of sucky build quality, broken parts, poor service, keyboards from hell, and the slowness of an AMD APU system? Not me! I buy used Thinkpads all over the place that are still under warranty. I'm currently using 3x of them personally and they totally rock. Also their support is done out of Atlanta instead of India which is a huge plus for me. If I have a bad hard drive or other mechanical failure, it's a rare day that it takes more than 13 minutes on the phone to get the parts on their way or the box to ship it in for repair. After working on literally hundreds of Thinkpads, I buy nothing else...

 

[crashtech]

I say get the best of both worlds and buy a used Thinkpad. My T510 costs $200 shipped, added a $100 SSD and it is the best damn $300 laptop one could ever imagine.

By the time I am done with it I will still be able to get at least $100 for it...

I think the T420/520 is the last of the "old style" keyboard with the blue Enter key...

 

[rsutoratosu]

I have tons of dell and Lenovo thinkpads. both are rock solid, the only time we had issues is when the user decides to drop the thing or spill crap all over it. Other than that, both system does not fail regularly. Only thing is dell's using these cheap liteon ssd drives and they fail like crazy.. at least Lenovo uses Samsung for better .

I just order a x240 and a thinkpad yoga. These just came out.. will check the build quality on these when it shows up

 

[pcgeek11]

Yes they are, Thinkpads by far.

 

[vbuggy]

I have tons of dell and Lenovo thinkpads. both are rock solid, the only time we had issues is when the user decides to drop the thing or spill crap all over it. Other than that, both system does not fail regularly. Only thing is dell's using these cheap liteon ssd drives and they fail like crazy.. at least Lenovo uses Samsung for better .

I just order a x240 and a thinkpad yoga. These just came out.. will check the build quality on these when it shows up

It's funny you should say that - I've had a disturbing number of Samsung OEM drives fail on my (mostly desktop) Dells. They've been replaced by Liteons and I was thinking "WTF is this totally OEM shit" and actually, they've been fine. I was thinking perhaps it's an OEM QA issue, since none of my retail 830/840's have missed a beat so far (though admittedly I am using far fewer of those).

As for the OP, both Thinkpad and Apple - Apple especially - are overrated in terms of their market superiority for build quality. Apple makes their internals look as tidy as their externals - i.e. form over function in all respects - which for many credulous morons who have their brains in their eyes, including sadly the not-so-closet Applefanboi leader of this site, apparently translates to superior build quality regardless of the actually mediocre engineering (for it's relative class) that goes on inside.

Thinkpads are absolutely decent but I think in normal use any of the business class PC's are as well built as each other, and in all honesty I think they take anti-design a bit too far, a sort of opposite extreme to Apple.

Personally I would be happier with an Elitebook. However I can't say anything about the new ZBooks since I don't own any yet.

 

[DBissett]

Lenovos in general were not that reliable according to this study....http://www.squaretrade.com/laptop-reliability-1109/. Asus and Toshiba were 1 & 2. I was surprised.

 

[crashtech]

"Lenovo" is NOT the same as "Thinkpad." I'm certain as a subset, Thinkpads have a far lower failure rate than the Lenovo line combined.

 

[Connoisseur]

If I want a laptop to last and be sturdy, would thinkpads be the way to go?

Besides Macs, are Thinkpads the most durable and reliable out of every other brand out there?

I wouldn't consider Macs "sturdy". They're built precisely and are built with a high quality look and feel (i.e. very stiff metal chassis with very exacting measurement tolerances). But if you compare a Thinkpad and a MacBook Pro in pretty much any drop/spill/scratch test, I'm pretty sure the Thinkpads would run away with it. Thinkpads have a built in frame and the external body is polycarbonate (hard plastic) so it allows for some flex and give and it's also more resistant to scratching. TP's are more function over form although a lot of people like the industrial design as well.

But yes, I can personally attest that TP's are pretty damn sturdy. Get one with an SSD and an IPS screen nand it's a decent looking tank.

 

[Tsavo]

They are tanks. I have a few of em for work. Easy to add enough storage to choke an ISP via MSATA and CD caddy.

Only downside are the really crap screens unless you go IPS. My el-cheapo Toshiba laptop that I got has a screen that kills my Thinkpad screens.

Even the Edges are sturdy.

 

[Kroze]

I have 4 ThinkPad T series so far and i'll tell you that I'll never buy anything other than Enterprise grade laptops. Consumer grade laptops are junk.

 

[Cerb]

Only downside are the really crap screens unless you go IPS. My el-cheapo Toshiba laptop that I got has a screen that kills my Thinkpad screens.

Same deal with Lattitudes, though I dislike their screens more-so (it's the harsh blue backlight), and their trackpads and titmice cannot be configured to have as low acceleration as a Thinkpad's (I have a brand new one next to me right now, and that built-in acceleration is annoying enough I wouldn't be able to use it day to day). Build quality is roughly equivalent between them, IMO, but I think Lenovo at least gets opinions of humans, about the display and input . HP's build quality goes from so-so to good across their business line. The ProBook 400s, FI, are so-so, while the Bs are rather nice.

My R60 is starting to lock up once in awhile, now...after buying it, "as is," straightening parts out (the aluminum hinges are made to take some impact, and they do...but they don't stay straight in the process), replacing the DC jack (that and the battery were all that were busted), and then it taking several roughly 3 foot drops to hard surfaces, while open, including putting 2 dents into my floor, both of those from landing display-first, yet no damage to the display has been evident.

Like everything else, the new ones aren't quite built like the old ones, but they're still built better than most, and neither HP nor Dell seem to be able to consistently implement a good keyboard, trackpad, and trackpoint, all in the same unit, while Lenovo manages to. It's not just that they're designed and built well, but that they stay that way, generation over generation. Dell or HP may have a few series with good keyboards, then they go to pot. Same with trackpad and display. HP usually has a decent display (not for people picky about displays, but not bad), but seems to randomly choose a keyboard and trackpad per series, from what I've been able to tell.

 

[takeru]

our company is in the process of choosing and deploying new tablets/laptops within the company. i have the following on my desk:

X1 carbon touch
x240 with touchscreen
T440s with touchscreen
W540 with nontouchscreen (but our final version will have touchscreen)
thinkpad yoga
dell xps 12
panasonic cfc2
samsung 700T1C
surface pro 2

a fujitsu T904 is supposed to be arriving soon too to eval.

we've been a lenovo shop for years, but since the company is going full windows 8.1 company wide, we are trying to choose a windows 8.1 machine with touch capability. so many toys, so much work to choose.

 

[Kroze]

our company is in the process of choosing and deploying new tablets/laptops within the company. i have the following on my desk:

X1 carbon touch
x240 with touchscreen
T440s with touchscreen
W540 with nontouchscreen (but our final version will have touchscreen)
thinkpad yoga
dell xps 12
panasonic cfc2
samsung 700T1C
surface pro 2

a fujitsu T904 is supposed to be arriving soon too to eval.

we've been a lenovo shop for years, but since the company is going full windows 8.1 company wide, we are trying to choose a windows 8.1 machine with touch capability. so many toys, so much work to choose.

:'(

Pick the Surface Pro 2 and send the rest to me for....testing :sneaky:

 

[crashtestdummy]

our company is in the process of choosing and deploying new tablets/laptops within the company. i have the following on my desk:

X1 carbon touch
x240 with touchscreen
T440s with touchscreen
W540 with nontouchscreen (but our final version will have touchscreen)
thinkpad yoga
dell xps 12
panasonic cfc2
samsung 700T1C
surface pro 2

a fujitsu T904 is supposed to be arriving soon too to eval.

we've been a lenovo shop for years, but since the company is going full windows 8.1 company wide, we are trying to choose a windows 8.1 machine with touch capability. so many toys, so much work to choose.

I'm pretty happy with my Yoga 2. My ONLY complaint about it so far is that Adobe software in particular does not handle the resolution scaling very well. Other than that, it's quite the nice machine.