You can code on anything if you like the screen and the keyboard, I really wouldn't use it to decide my next computer.

AMD on T14s Gen 3 or 4

T480 - i5 8350U - 16GB RAM- 1TB SATA SSD Works like charm!

For coding what? What are the requirements?

Screen, keyboard, RAM, disk drive are relevant.

If you want to work with ML, you need a desktop.

All of the above.

How's the R61i? I don't know much about the R series, but the R61 seems to be a more affordable and smaller T from my knowledge. Would love to learn more

If you get a thinkpad its gonna be more expensive, you can get them around the spec youre looking for but theyre rare and they cost alot.

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Equally youre paying for that quality, and that quality you will get

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Leigon are gaming laptops, it will have all of the shortcomings of a gaming laptop. It will also have all the benefits of a gaming laptop of course (better cooling, designed to use GPU under load, ect)

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If I had unlimited budget I would get the thinkpad every time. But equally I recognise most people dont

If you can offload most of the computationally intensive work to a VM on some sever, then all that you need is a laptop with good portability and display. Many prefer a FHD matte IPS display.

If you're going to do most of your work on your laptop itself, then there are a few other considerations:

• RAM is going to be your biggest bottleneck. You'll want at least 16GB with the option to upgrade to 32GB
• Fast storage access also helps, but most modern Thinkpads have decent SSDs I believe.
• Programming isn't generally a CPU-bound activity, but it will make compile times faster, and having more cores will help with running VMs and certain IDE operations.
• One thing you won't need (unless you're doing ML, games, or Bitcoin mining) is a GPU

Without knowing much about your situation, I'm sure the T480 is a solid choice. As are any of the P-series. If you're on a budget, I might recommend the E495 or the E595. I just ordered the E495 for personal use, but from all the benchmarks I've seen it's actually a more powerful computer computer than the P50s issued to me by my work.

EDIT: The reason why I avoid explicitly recommending the more recent T-series and X-series is because their RAM isn't fully upgradeable. If you can get one of those with 32GB of RAM then that's fine, but just make sure you don't artificially limit yourself too much. I have coworkers with MacBook Pros that are stuck at 16GB and suffering because they can't run all of our services and Slack at the same time.

I have an X220 and an X280 used also for programming. Ok, both are out of manufacturing but they will show you my direction.

one with a keyboard to code with

Any.

You're asking the wrong question. The best thinkpad for programming is the one that you are going to like the most. You might get a P series but it's not going to be as close as easy to carry around as the X series, and you might dislike it. Additionally, what programming will you be doing? Generic university assignments? Windows ASP.NET dev? Each has their own requirements. First, determine the size you're going to like the most, or if size is a factor at all, and then determine how much power you need, how much storage, battery, etc.

Any of them. Seriously. Even the cheaper E series comes with a fantastic keyboard, better than most build quality, and 6+ hour battery life. Now if you want something that will take a hell of a beating and last you 10 years, then go for a T or X series machine.

Any, as long as it's not a Chromebook.

The question is too generic. Which type of programming?

In my company we have several models depending from the role and the specialization of programmers.

I use a t450 for most stuff, quite sure a t420 would work too but it was basically the same price if not more with the upgrades.

A t480 is another popular choice.

X250 and x280 T550 and t580 If you need different screen size

X1 carbon gen wathever if you want something looking fancy

P50/p51/p52/p53 if you need a gpu

But the right approach should be to understand what hardware you need and then choose the model according from your budget.

Deadass a Chromebook will work at this point

T14 and T16 (not the T14s) should have 1 slot of upgradeable RAM and SSD (2280 M.2)

My P14s Gen 5 AMD is my favorite of all my laptops. Can upgrade RAM and storage, great performance and iGPU. I got a Ryzen 7, 32Gb 1 TB, low power display, version brand new form Lenovo for $709 a couple months ago.

what's your budget? Do you require absolute thinkpad qualities like easily repairable parts like kb etc? You can get e14 gen 6 with dual nvme and dual ram, but didn't have easy kb replacements, and the apu actually from 6800u/h without usb4. in that case, you go a bit higher and only have t14 with dual ram but only 1 nvme

T14 Gen 5 onwards

If you need a 2nd hand, T14 gen 1/2

Ddr5 ram technology has yet to mature given that we are now at 96gb ddr5 5600 instead of 256gb 12800 speed

T14 gen 5 AMD is very upgradeable. iFixit approved kind of, as far as I understand. https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_T14_Gen_5_AMD/ThinkPad_T14_Gen_5_AMD_Spec.pdf

In terms of CPU performance, there is absolutely nothing beating apple silicon at this time, especially in laptops. There is room for competition with the M3 in the mid/upper mid range, but the M4 pro blows everything else out of the water (for now). Even the Lunar Lake chips in the X1/X9 etc, which are also 3nm, perform worse than the M4.

Apple bought TSMC’s entire 3nm capacity in 2023, so they have had a year’s head start on implementation. Things will definitely even out but, for now, Apple has the advantage when it comes to performance.

That being said, the Thinkpad dedicated GPU options (except the rtx 500 ada) will outperform the M4 in rendering and most local AI. So, depending on your application, the Thinkpad could still be the right choice.

Edit: if you’re looking to get close, I would recommend a P1. The processors are not lunar lake so you will definitely suffer compared to the MBP but the GPU options help to make up for it. If you want to get close based on cpu performance alone, the x1/x9 both have Lunar Lake but no dedicated GPU options (WHY Lenovo???)

Programming means many things. Everything depends on what exactly you are doing with the laptop. I was initially issued a very pretty m3 mbp and sure battery life is great but I couldn’t do any real work ‘on’ it, only could be used as a terminal for coding on the big machines on the cloud. And I’m never away from an outlet. Mb might be ‘fast’ for a small laptop but nothing I wrote would compile or run on it and the gpu couldn’t run cuda anyway. I keep hearing they are fast but it didn’t feel fast and the 4k monitors were laggy and fans never stopped. Even used as a laptop I was unhappy I have large hands and thought the tiny keyboard was awful. We ended up complaining and swapping them for a variety of 16-17” laptops,I got a p16, some people got asus. Was nice to have a bigger screen and a great full sized keyboard. To this day I don’t understand why IT was pushing the MacBooks in that org because they frankly sucked for our purpose, we had no need for a small portable laptop with good battery life. I’m not sure what they are made for as we could not use their alleged speed. That said if your dev coworkers recommend them you should at least give the mbp a go, it’s not easy having to roll everything yourself, platform and toolchain compatibility should come first. In my case my coworkers hated them too and management was sympathetic. All depends on what you’re using it for.

Most useful advice I can give: if you’re asking the internet about this then you don’t understand your situation and should hold off buying anything until you know more.

"programming" is a very broad term. I'm a data engineer (although I do quite a lot of backend lately) and I'm still using t480. It is getting kinda slow (probably upgrading to 24.04 was a mistake), but it does the job, I don't feel any major limitations

I'm technically eligible for a macbook, but I need to be in the same country as my company to get it, so here I am, BYOD

The MacBook Pro M4 is a monster. I have three ThinkPads of varying age but just picked up an M4. It really is great.

In terms of battery, power and system stability the new Macbooks can not be beaten. This is the reason i use a MacBook for work, because it just works.

In private i use a thinkpad with a customized twm because the workflow I configured is just on another level, but I know that if something breaks, I may not be able to use that thing for a few days until i fixed it. And such shenanigans are just not acceptable in a professional context.

If I where you, id just get the Macbook. You also profit from your colleagues having figured all of the dev environment setup issues which may arise.

Does that mean a new P14s is coming as well?

t14 gen 6 intel lunar lake :Local video playback: up to 30 hr (max battery configure Intel® Core Ultra 5 228V)
t14s gen 6 intel lunar lake: Local video playback: up to 34.96 hr (max battery configure 228v)

MobileMark® 25: up to 18.76 hr with 821 performance score | MobileMark® 25: up to 23.46 hr with 677 performance score

I guess T14s g6 intel still battery champ.

2025 and still no decent displays in entry models. That is why I gave a chance to macbook air m3. So sad Lenovo so sad.

WTF is up with those display options for AMD's E14/16 models? What a mess! Intel always gets the best specs.

The Snapdragon T14s is still the battery champ among the T-series, compatibility issues on Windows on ARM aside.

These local video playback figures are useless because most of the CPU can be shut down during the test, leaving only the video decode blocks running.

i have an l13 yoga, it's really good, any distro will be fine. cost me $290 aud. i am never buying another non-lenovo laptop to run linux on.

probably just go with fedora, it's fine as a beginner dev

you really need to just think about how much memory and cpu you'll need for vms, a medioce laptop with 6 gig of memory is probably overkill for most linux distros for almost any task outside of virtualisation or ai