Thinkpad T14 Gen5 AMD Review

I had this planned for some time now,

General info

First, my specs

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 8840U
• RAM: Ordered with 16 GB, upgraded manually to 96 GB Crucial
• SSD: Ordered with 256 GB, upgraded to 2 TB Samsung 990 Pro
• Display: 2.8k 120Hz OLED DCI-P3 Display
• Wifi: Qualcomm® Wi-Fi® 7 NCM825
• No WWAN module
• OS: Ordered without OS, Fedora and Windows 11 Dual Boot
  • I get a free Win 11 license from my university, therefore I ordered it without

Use case

• Programming

Quick FAQ

At least that what it feels like to me after following the r/thinkpad subreddit for a while.

1. Battery life: Yes, it’s really that bad. More on that later.
2. Screen: Great, really high resolution, scaling works great on Gnome honestly, 120 Hz is also really nice, colors are also great. Brightness? Honestly, couldn’t want more, I usually have it on ~35%.
3. Build quality: Meh.
4. Keyboard: Not bad, but also not great. I already thought about using my dad’s retired x230 for typing intensive tasks (I was just too lazy to set up everything there).
5. Performance: Good for what it is (a laptop).

Use case and decision

Requirements

I want to use this laptop as a (mostly) replacement for my desktop.

RAM

I want to talk about the Memory, since 96 GB probably seems like overkill, which it is. The thing is, buying the RAM upgrade from Lenovo is insanely expensive, but buying it from 3rd party (which works just as well and the upgrade done quickly) is relatively affordable.

Experience

Build Quality

Performance

Display

Speakers

Noise

Battery

Issues

I had quite a few issues with this device, some of which I could fix, some are still open. Coming from a MacBook, which besides having its own problems in some generations (especially those of the time when I bought mine - around 2018) worked quite well and people praising ThinkPads for their quality and reliability, I am pretty disappointed with my experience.

While some of the issues I had are definitely related to Linux (or Fedora in my case), I didn’t really expect such problems on a machine where Lenovo states that it supports Fedora and even sells it preinstalled. Not sure what they “certify” but it seems to be not a lot (although I expected otherwise, since they only have a few models that are certified).

Fan noise

The noise I already described in the Noise section. Still no fix yet, my dad has the same issue with the same device in a different configuration. I read that other people had the same experience (that they sent their device in for a repair and it wasn’t fixed), others sent it in the problem was fixed. In my case, I sent the device in for repair, but the issue wasn’t fixed, although they claim to have fixed the fan. For me, this is another example of pretty bad quality control.

Rattling noise

I ordered my T14 without the smartcard reader since this is for private use, and besides some large enterprises I have never heard of Smartcards actually being used. You still get the same chassis, but they will put in a small plastic cover, which can move - I don’t know, but my guess would be 0.5-1 mm. Depending on where you lay you palm on the palm rest, the devices makes a slight rattling noise, which you can reproduce when tapping on the chassis in that region.

Honestly, this makes the laptop feel cheap and I am sure this could be fixed with a small screw or even simpler a small piece of foam. That’s something I expect from a 300€ laptop, but saving those few cents on a 1.500€ laptop is insane.

Wi-Fi driver not working on Linux

I had multiple issues with my device. Besides the fan making noise when it starts, when I initially got this device, WiFi didn’t work on Fedora, although Fedora was listed as fully supported operation system. This was quite annoying, since I couldn’t really use my laptop without being attached to a network cable (or using bluetooth tethering from my phone, but that only provides about 1.6 Mbit/s, so is pretty much unusable), especially since it was new and basically everything I wanted to do required me to download something. Also, I wouldn’t expect this since I was not among the first people to get this device, but it was already released for a few month, so I recommend you to not give too much about the “compatible” operating systems.

This issue was fixed by a driver update after about 2-3 weeks.

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Hier das steht auf der “Probleme” Seite:

I had this problem after I got mine. This was fixed after about two weeks by a driver update, I didn’t contribute anything to this.

My workaround in the meantime was to use LAN or Bluetooth tethering using my phone, although the later only provided 1.6 Mbit/s, which is pretty much unusable nowadays (especially when the device is new and you need to install new software for pretty much anything you want to do).

Display/GPU issue on Linux

Another issue was with the GPU: I often had issues

This is one point, since there is one solution that fixes both both: Add amdgpu.dcdebugmask=0x10 (those are zeros, not the letter o) to your kernel parameters. This can be done either temporary or permanently.

• Temporary fix: During startup, assuming you use grub, you can press “e” when your boot option is selected, then you add “amdgpu.dcdebugmask=0x10” to the end of the long line and

I found this solution on the Freedesktop.org issue tracker.

Power Button doesn’t react after shutdown

I wasn’t able to power my laptop back on after shutting it down. Not sure why this happened, it only happened once in the 2-3 months I had mine now.

The solution was to open the Laptop, remove the battery for a short time and reassemble it (although I recommend testing if everything works as it should before closing it).

According to some information I found somewhere, the reset button can also be used, but I didn’t try that since I wasn’t sure what this button exactly does, whether it acts similar to a normal reset button on a PC or resets the BIOS (which can cause further trouble).

Lenovo Support

That was quite a journey. First of all, I am from Germany, if you are from another country, your experience may vary.

If I order a 1.500€ (give or take) computer using their german online shop, I expect Lenovo to provide support that speaks at least basic german or english. I hate that it seems to be a standard today (also for many other shops), that there are people working in support who are already at their limits (knowledge and language wise) if the problem goes deeper than “have you tried rebooting”. For that I don’t need to call a manufacturer, since I do that on my own before calling someone, going through a phone menu and waiting some (many) minutes in a queue.

All in all, my experience was pretty bad.

Conclusion