Second hand ThinkPad T series gets a lot of bang for the buck (maybe not as good as they used to be, but still good, repairable, generally upgradable and very available as ex-enterprise machines). Good matte displays, good hinges and great keyboards.
Don't sweat the battery, they're removable, upgradeable to larger ones if you have to go a longer time on a charge and easy to replace. For the change left over from $2000, you can buy lots of them!
I've been using these old T series thinkpads for awhile. What I get is dim 16:9 screens, whisper quiet tinny speakers, battery life reliant on the extended batteries that ended with T480, these old units are half as fast at least as a contemporary laptop. The antiglare is mostly necessary because the stock screen can't handle more than 250nit in an HDR world. I can't advise a better machine for around 500, but on a 2 grand budget I think it's worth getting more.
Yet I almost see a fetishism around these machines I don't truly understand. 1080p, 60hz, 250nit, 16:9, 54% sRGB is the most common config you'll see and I really think on a 2 grand budget you shouldn't put up with it when purchasing new. This is also just a Lenovo thing, the Elitebook from the same year was 630nit 88% sRGB and the funny thing is that Lenovo probably only saved 10 or 20 bucks stocking this crap based on the price of replacement parts. On a 2 grand budget I'd spoil yourself with something better.
Absolutely. IMO the best current ThinkPad in terms of performance per dollar is the T480 (Quad Core Intel 8th gen). You can find them shockingly cheap if you're patient. Like only 50% more than the T420, which has an ancient Dual Core.
I've stopped buying new laptops and now I use refurbished Thinkpad P50 with i7, 64GB RAM, 512 SSD for ~1100 USD.
If I need to do something really computing intensive, I rent a cloud VM ;-) Actually, I've one for each project I'm working on, and I scale them as/if needed.
Thirded. Even switching to a 2 years old used T every other year is still cheaper than spending 2k just to get what's currently high end and hope it lasts you 6+ years.
You get them decently refurbished on ebay as they are popular leasing models for companies which switch them out more or less on a fixed schedule. If you're lucky you get one that was sitting in a docking station for two years and is almost pristine, just the battery destroyed because it was on AC power uninterrupted.
I agree. I've tried the X1 Carbon and the T series. The T14s in particular is much cheaper than the X1, more powerful, more reliable, has more USB ports and deeper keybed, at the cost of being slightly thicker and heavier. In addition my X1 Carbon broke after two years of use (trackpad failed, left arrow key stopped working, trackpoint started moving by itself, etc.) which I think is due to how thin and flimsy the whole setup is. But I'm very happy with the Ryzen T14s.
Agree. I have refurbished T series as a back up and a then-new X1 Extreme as a daily driver. For everything work related the T series was more then enough, and it cost a fraction of the X1 Extreme. I did go with the X1 so as it also replaced an obsolete gaming desktop, so it was still reasonably priced overall.
Hi. OP here. The Thinkpad T series seems to come highly recommended. Though it wasn't quite clear which ones to consider and those to avoid. Will review the thread to see which ones to pick :)
Don't sweat the battery, they're removable, upgradeable to larger ones if you have to go a longer time on a charge and easy to replace. For the change left over from $2000, you can buy lots of them!