Lenovo ThinkPad T14 & T14s Owners Thread

Here's the respective cooling solutions from the T490 & T490s, T490 on top, T490s on bottom:

https://imgur.com/a/ulNTSka

You'll note that the area over the exhaust fins (far left), the dual heatpipes on the T490 appear to cover almost all of it, while the single heatpipe on the T490s seems to barely cover half the heatsink fans. It appears to me that the dual heatpipes on the T490 likely cover at least 25-30% more area (volume), The fans aren't the same either (CG30 vs CG50), I wouldn't be surprised if the fan on the T490s is also smaller/thinner, thereby cannot push out quite as much air.

 

Yeah, so far I'm really leaning towards a T14 with R5. If the Ideapad 5's would have slightly better (i.e. brighter) screen, I'd also enjoy them. I'll give it another 1 or 2 days and then I'll probably return it in favor of a T14. It just feels weird not being able to run the hardware to it's potential. Also it's strange, that thing with the allocated graphics RAM, that it throws cooling off the rails so badly.

 

Here's a review of the T14s with Intel, and here's one for the Intel-based T14.

Assuming the cooling solution is the same, thermals and noise appear to be perfectly acceptable on the T14s.

 

I was also looking at the Ideapads, but they are only available with 8 GB of RAM, which simply isn't enough. Otherwise, if I could get my hands on a 16GB Ideapad 5, that would likely have been my top choice. I've been using the Dell Inspiron 5505 for a few days now (300 nits screen) and that display is just fine - I don't personally need a 400 nits display.

 

On another note - have you thought of gaming laptops? Machines such as the Lenovo Legion 5 or Asus G14 are running H and HS versions of the Ryzen without too much difficulty. Quite a bit more powerful than the ThinkPads. The Legion laptops looke a bit more "gamer-y", but the ASUS G14 looks professional enough.

 

I also am looking for the illusive cool running AMD laptop but the G14 lack of Home and End keys bothers me and I have doubts about the Legion 5's build quality for traveling especially the top cover. Legion 7i seems to have better build and runs cool although Intel. I do like the features of Legion 5.

Sent from my moto g power using Tapatalk

 

Is this thread for the Red Camp Minions or the Blue Camp Minions?
Or... is this thread opened to all T14 Minions from both sides to mingle?

The thread title hv to be very clear, as most of the replies here so far till now, tilts towards the RED side... you noticed?

 

To be fair, i won't include the Legion 5 to this thread as it's larger by size, both on battery and screen, with the addition of dedicated GPU. Hence, efficiency could be affected if we're just touching on office works and perhaps light gaming.

Although ASUS Zephyrus G14 is comparatively "same size" as the T14 of both variants, both camps of CPUs, the HS CPU still guzzles 20w more of power to work "efficiently" in average to deliver performance. Okie... Since the G14 have a fatter battery, compares to the ThinkPad which do not have battery upgrade option. I guess the extra Whr can feed the thirst for extra power... Let the comparison begin!

 

The Ideapad 5 is available with 16 GB soldered dual channel ram here (Austria) and the only thing that's holding me back from buying it is a glossy 300 nits screen VS the 400 nits low power matte screen on the Thinkpad. Yes I have been looking at gaming Laptops as well, performance wise it would be a good choice and Legion Laptops of this year have so far been very well reviewed. But their screens are not the best for creative work, keyboards are good though and I really need a good keyboard as I type a frickin' lot (that's why I ended up with Thinkpads in the first place) and that's why the G14 is out of the question.

Also, call me nitpicky, but if I go Team Red, I rather go FULLY Team Red, so the Dell G5 SE with all AMD looks nice (specwise) but the chassis, screen and keyboard are all shoddy as hell.

And why this thread is leaning to the red side is simple: Intel at this point just isn't a good buy at the moment.

I was watching reviews of the new Dell XPS 15 too, it's still Intel bound and praised by almost everyone, but it too, despite some competent cooling, throttles a lot. I guess I have to get to terms with wasted power when using any sort of laptop. Why manufacturers just don't simply put less powerful hardware in there that can actually run up to snuff is beyond me. Yeah, marketing and numbers, sure, but it's a kick into the face of enthusiasts who actually inform themselves!

I can still bring up my Ideapad 530s from 3 years ago, quadcore Kabylake i5, runs competent enoough and when connected to an outlet I have it running on turbo all the time. 3,4 GHz on all four cores, never hotter than 72°. In Idle it sits at about 40°. Phenomenal - as the power of the processor can be fully used.

I understand that there is a tradeoff when using a powerful CPU in a small mobile chassis, but I always thought that tradeoff ALREADY IS the 15W TDP. At least within this envelope the processor should be able to flex it's muscle no?

 

Here's a look inside the Ideapad 5, the cooling solution looks much more capable than in the Thinkpads, also the exhaust is on the back, which makes much more sense (frying your mousehand). I wonder why this hasn't made it yet into the premium ThinkPads...



Also a very FINE review of the Ideapad 5, while a budget option, personally I think the Thinkpads don't hold their ground for being about 900 bucks more expensive than this on specs and performance alone...