I bought a Lenovo T-480 during my Fall 2023 semester in the hopes that I can convince myself to sell my MacBook M1 Pro 14".

This article is a good article that I was able to relate before I started shoping around.

What finalized my decision in buying a T-480 was winning a bid for it for a pretty sweet deal of only $149.5 + $18.95 shipping.

The laptop came in really good shape. There was no a single cosmetic flaw other than the Windows sticker 😁

Background information

The specs

Battery configuration

• 24Wh internal
• 24Wh external

Impressions

Battery Life

For an older x86 machine and with batteries close to around 80% of its maximum capacity, it holds up surprisingly well.

I didn’t really do anything extensive on the machine other than compiling Emacs in WSL.

Trackpad

The trackpad doesn’t feel good at all, especially scrolling.

The plastic was not pleasant to touch and I would’ve preferred a glass surface. I’m aware of the glass trackpad upgrade, but it was hard to find a source when I had did have it.

What I’ve found that works for me was using the track point to scroll since I didn’t have to rub my fingers all over the trackpad and it felt pretty ergonomic

Keyboard

Although the switch travel is higher than the Macbook, subjectively, it just didn’t have a similar tactile satisfaction that I’m used to with the MacBook.

Performance

I can see the sluggishness catching up to this laptop when I’d watch a YouTube video. I don’t mind it but it’s going to bother me when I’m locked in and frantically switching around windows and tabs.

Speakers

The speakers were an afterthought. Vocals are just hard to understand. Music shouldn’t be played out of these speakers.

Display

I can’t determine whether it’s the size of the screen or the colors but the screen was headache inducing.

I’m not a fan of matte screens. It doesn’t look like glass, it just looks like plastic to me. I find that it didn’t help with glares, it just smears it.

I know that I can always swap the display, but I couldn’t justify spending a screen that costs as much as the laptop.

Operating System of Choice

Linux

Arch

I did it for the memes and the setup process is always fun. Having a minimal config and picking packages from scratch makes me feel like a kid in candy store. Arch was my daily driver years ago.

I had tlp installed. With the following changes:

• CPU energy performance policy on battery = balance_performance
• CPU turbo disabled

Fedora

I eventually settled with Fedora-39. Customizing Linux has been a blast but it’s not a good use of my time. The lack of native OneDrive integration was bothersome.

Windows 11

I caved in, due to WSL2 being good enough.

Upgrades

I bought a 16GB 2400mhz stick for the 2nd RAM slot. I doubt I’ll ever use all 24GB unless I’m running multiple docker containers. The 8GB sticks were about $12 cheaper, but I don’t mind paying that extra amount for another 8GB

Selling it

I ended up selling this T480 to a co-worker who was looking for a laptop.

Although this laptop was perfectly capable for my needs, I just couldn’t deal with the display. The MacBook Pro display just had to ruin every other laptop display for me.

I’ll miss the red track point though.