I'm a huge fan of Thinkpads. I can't overstate this. I've got several of them sitting in my office right now and at least one browser tab open right now to an Ebay listing for another or a modding guide. They're just fantastic for curious hacker types. They run Linux exceptionally well, they're modular, easy to upgrade, easy to mod, and insanely durable and resilient.

How it started for me

I don't have some story to tell in which I've been an avid Thinkpad devotee since the 90's or how I cut my teeth in Linux compiling everything that wasn't nailed down on my fresh Gentoo installation on a T40. My first Thinkpad was a Lenovo X1 Extreme Gen 3. This was by far the worst machine I've ever owned. It's had a litany of problems since I started using it. I bought it a few years ago during the pandemic, in about 2020 or so. Within the first year of using it, its battery degraded to a total life of about 90 minutes of use with the display set to 50% brightness and doing normal things like writing code in Neovim and browsing the web while listening to music. This wasn't a tough workload.

Aside from the battery, I'd read all about how Thinkpads are renowned for the quality of their keyboards and their typing experience. To my dismay, the keyboard on the X1 Extreme was a disaster and it left me wondering why in the world people had such good things to say about it. I didn't know about other Thinkpads' keyboards, but this one was mushy. It felt rubbery and nondescript. This didn't live up to the hype I'd heard about Thinkpad keyboards being the apex laptop typing experience. This sums up how I felt when I tried the keyboard for the first time:

Once the warranty expired, things only got worse. It was an expensive lesson, but I wasn't going to let this setback prevent me from discovering the secrets known seemingly only to the cult of the Thinkpad. I had to know. Onward!

Exploring old Thinkpads

I came to understand that most Thinkpad devotees were supremely fond of the "old" Thinkpads-- the ones produced under IBM and the ones produced shortly after Lenovo's acquisition of the Thinkpad brand before they went on to ruin it. Knowing this, I set about buying some really old Thinkpads from Ebay listings to try them out:

Thinkpad X220

Oooh this one has the blue IBM enter key!

Image credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/f33830/cleanest_x220_keyboard_out_there/

The differences between my X1 Extreme and this X220 are pretty obvious. The X220 has a slightly different shape, and the keys are a little larger. It has a much better keyboard experience, but something there was still lacking. One issue I always had with my X1 Extreme was display support in Linux. Given, it has an onboard GTX 1050ti, but even running integrated graphics in Linux was a pain.

I was able to install EndeavourOS on it in a snap with no issues at all. Obviously the X220 has battery life issues being that it's so old, and it definitely doesn't have modern performance figures, but it makes a great machine for toting around doing programming tasks, etc. Despite being a great start down the Thinkpad rabbit hole, it simply didn't have the right stuff to earn a permanent home in my daily go-bag.

Thinkpad T420

Image credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/9gt9o9/t420_w_1080_screen_upgrade/

This thing is chunky. Its performance numbers are a bit better than its little brother in my Thinkpad family, the X220. This, like the 220 also had a very weak battery, but that's easily replaced as they're plentiful on Ebay and other marketplace sites. The keyboard looks very similar to that of the X220, but is somehow a bit better. It's snappier, more responsive, and feels more planted and solid on the laptop's chassis.

The specific one I bought from an Ebay seller as a few quirks. Most of these old Thinkpads have a release latch for the lid to open. This one is no different in that respect, but it doesn't work. There are also a few spots on the plastic chassis which are broken or that were crunched inward. This laptop also came with a CD drive, which I very quickly replaced with a caddy for a solid state drive.

Despite all of these strengths and improvements I made to it, it wasn't enough, and it was shelved. Back to Ebay I go.

Thinkpad X230

Image credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/brzqa7/finally_got_an_x230/

The X230 looks much more like the modern Thinkpads I've seen in business and healthcare settings. My initial concern was that this little computer's keyboard would never stack up to the hype I'd seen about Thinkpad keyboards, but it delivered. It has a supremely good typing experience, and the performance numbers are better than those of the T420. The battery life is also much better, and it's a great machine for doing programming and other tasks. Like the other two old Thinkpads, it has the strange sparkly matte black lid housing which looks like some kind of extraterrestrial mineral. There's a lot to love with this machine, but like the other two, its drawbacks kept it from being a true daily driver.

I thought maybe I could get over the tiny display and 1366 x 768 resolution, and I was wrong. I believe that for the era in which this machine was released, the display would have been acceptable for an ultra portable laptop, but I don't think it's really acceptable today.

Back to ebay again, this time feeling a bit more hopeless that I'd never achieve Thinkpad nirvana.

Enter the Thinkpad T480

Image credit: Me. This one is mine. Also, welcome to my desk.

After diving all the way down the Thinkpad community research rabbit hole, I landed on the T480. It's got nearly everything I need and is as close to perfection as I believe I can possibly get.

• Removable battery
• Replaceable RAM
• 1080p matte display
• Easy to access hard drive
• Replaceable keyboard
• Replaceable trackpad
• Replaceable display
• Slot for SIM card
• USB-C fast charging
• Reasonably modern performance
• Can support 64 gb of RAM
• A chassis that doesn't collect fingerprints at all

These are all great features, and every one of them is a box ticked for me, but what about the keyboard? Did I reach mobile typing Nirvana?

Yes. Yes I did. It's staggeringly good.

I'm a huge keyboard nerd and I own a small mountain of weird and boutique keyboards. There are some I love and many I can't stand. What I can say is that the T480's keyboard is as good of an experience as any of the extremely expensive keyboards I own or have built over the years.

It even has a unique texture on the lid housing that I've never seen on any other laptop ever, which is nearly impossible to fingerprint. I love this. Fingerprints all over a device are a huge pet peeve of mine.

There's a lot to love here, but what's the best part? It was $190 before upgrades, and I probably could have gotten a slightly better deal had I been a bit more patient. This is an unbeatable value.

This is it. I've reached Thinkpad Nirvana. This is the best Thinkpad I've touched so far. There are certainly better models from a performance perspective, but this one ticks all of the boxes and is perfect for my use case which is a dedicated Linux laptop to carry around with me on trips for focused work on the go.

Thanks for reading. Go forth and find your own Thinkpad Nirvana.