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I bought this in September. It's a very good deal for what it is -- a Thinkpad with good (not great) build quality, a 1-year Lenovo and 2-year Allstate warranty, and decent CPU, RAM, and SSD (though the 2242 size is another thing to keep in mind) for less than $300. Battery had 3 cycles; I get about 5-6 hours (I prefer the lighter weight with the smaller battery). Screen is crisp for text; color gamut doesn't come close to my MacBook Air M1, which I expected. Keyboard is good; backlight has to be enabled after every reboot (a very minor annoyance). I have a very specific, and limited, use for this computer: as a way to access my old Windows Eudora email archive and related files (I loathe Finder). Would I have purchased this for my primary computer? No, I would want a better screen for web browsing, graphics, and movies. But for less than $300, an essentially new Thinkpad with factory warranty, good build quality, crisp screen for text, and 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD is a very good deal. I'm satisfied with it for my limited use, and also because if I thought of spending another $100, that's another money level, and for another $50 or $100 after that, you get something better. At $282 after cash back and before tax, I don't think about those money ladders. Thanks OP for the great laptop deals you post, I've purchased several of your deals this year. Cheers and happy holidays to all.
Thanks for sharing your thought. I wonder if you think it is worth buying a T14 G3 by paying an extra $120, or just sticking to this L14 model would be enough if you use your laptop in general . https://www.ebay.com/itm/156401167397
I also purchased one in September. It checks a lot of boxes for me, USB-C charging, 16gb RAM, touchscreen, adequate keyboard and build quality. Also like Win 11 Pro operating system. I use it with a cheap (<$10) docking station I got off of eBay and hooked it up to 27" monitor, good keyboard, good mouse and my printer and everything works great. Couldn't be happier for under $300. Don't do any gaming so the processor isn't a factor. Only trouble I experienced was coming out of sleep mode a couple times it was slow/I restarted but may be related to the docking station.
Thanks for sharing your thought. I wonder if you think it is worth buying a T14 G3 by paying an extra $120, or just sticking to this L14 model would be enough if you use your laptop in general . https://www.ebay.com/itm/156401167397
I think that depends on what your use is going to be, personal preferences, if you want upgradability (RAM yes, a larger SSD would likely cost more than a more common 2280 size), etc. I think it's a good deal for a basic Thinkpad that is more or less new with a warranty, and don't think you'll find something similar for less than $300. How much you want to spend on a laptop depends on you. Hope this helps. Cheers
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Good catch on the battery size. I'll add a link to a less detailed review of the specific laptop model in this deal.
From the original review: "Our review unit is equipped with a 57 Wh battery and managed to last more than 13 hours in our Wi-Fi test.
H.264 - 759 minutes (12.65 Hrs)
WiFi v1.3 - 795 minutes (13.25 Hrs)
Load - 101 minutes (1.68 Hrs)"
The laptop linked in this deal lists a 42 Wh battery so about 73% of the 13 hour capacity of the review unit. Is it reasonable to expect 8.5-9.5 hours of basic web surfing in your experience?
Any other Pros/Cons you can add since you have hands on experience with this laptop?
I'll try my best.
The screen isn't great, but that's expected at this price point and the fact it's not a 100% sRGB screen. I will say that even though my old laptop was 200 nits (vs 300 for this) and they're both 45% NTSC screens, I found my old HP looked brighter and "better". It has a light-yellow hue to it which I haven't been able to fix even with calibration. It's fine if you are coming for another low-end PC or monitor. At least it is IPS, so text looks clear and no issues if you are viewing off angle like with a bad TN panel.
Performance is good. It's huge improvement over what I was using but I was coming from an i3 8th gen. There are ~$300 laptops nowadays with similar CPUs or slightly better if you look. The nice thing is this has USB C PD and display. It was annoying have to use an adapter for USB charging with my HP and having to use two cables for my portable monitor. That's another feature sometimes missing at this price point. For example, the new version of my HP 14 at Costco still doesn't have USB C PD and it's ~$350 on sale.
I like the keyboard. It's like your usual ThinkPad. Some flexing if you push hard on it but not when you're using it normally.
The laptop is pure plastic. However, one thing I'm not worried about with this laptop is that the LCD isn't going to flex because the plastic for the lid is thick and solid. Like I said earlier, my HP was made of the thinnest, seemingly lowest quality plastic you could find and at least this doesn't fall into that category. This is one of the reasons I had my eyes on business-oriented laptops, even the low end ones (ThinkPad, Latitude).
As crazy as this sounds, one of the reasons why my super old mid 2000s Toshiba lasted so long was because the plastic on old laptops wasn't made to be paper thin. Yes, that laptop was bulky as hell and manufacturers are using thinner materials for weight saving reasons, but I think they go overboard with it and cross into cheap, low-quality territory which is why we see people complaining about hinges "breaking", screens getting damaged, etc.
I'll be honest, do not expect 8-9 hours of battery life. I'm not getting anywhere close to that. I'm shocked that even though this battery is supposedly 73% capacity it is somehow much worse than the 57 Wh battery that the review was testing. I have no clue what the heck is the reason. I'm worried what the battery life will be like in 3-4 years if it's only giving me around 5 hours right now. I came from a laptop that was pushing 6-7 hours when new, so this is a bit worrying.
This looks like a great price on an older business laptop with a good keyboard/trackpad and excellent battery life. Just don't expect any real 3D graphics performance or AI enabled app performance and you will not be disappointed.
Screen: Reasonable touch screen for business applications.
Good cooling and temperatures.
Cons:
GPU: Older Vega 7 iGPU is not very 3D capable. Older games on low settings.
RAM: DDR4 3200 RAM is older and slower.
SSD: 512GB but upgradeable. shorter M.2 2242 form factor.
Some stability issues listed in review requiring an occasional reboot.
If you're looking for a low price, well made basic business laptop and you're comfortable with a refurbished machine with a 2 year warrantee from Allstate, this will fit the bill at a great price.
If you regularly use AI enabled Apps or have any 3D graphics use cases, then you will notice the age of the components in this machine and should probably look for a laptop with a newer CPU/iGPU from the AMD Zen4 family or the Intel Meteor Lake family, but probably costing closer to $400-$500.
Is this good for programming? Also, do you know if it has second ssd slots or not, thank you
I think that depends on what your use is going to be, personal preferences, if you want upgradability (RAM yes, a larger SSD would likely cost more than a more common 2280 size), etc. I think it's a good deal for a basic Thinkpad that is more or less new with a warranty, and don't think you'll find something similar for less than $300. How much you want to spend on a laptop depends on you. Hope this helps. Cheers
Got it. Thank you for that!
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Is this good for programming? Also, do you know if it has second ssd slots or not, thank you
It looks like a single SSD slot, but easy to access and upgrade.
From the review at notebookcheck:
"L14 G3 uses an SSD with the shorter M.2 2242 form factor"
I would hesitate to recommend this laptop for programming since it doesn't have an NPU for AI workloads like github copilot coding assistant to run locally. You won't be running any local LLMs on this machine.
If you're ok using cloud based AI coding assistants (bad for privacy) then you could get away with this machine for compiling and running code, especially with a RAM upgrade.
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https://www.ebay.com/itm/37568706...medi
The RAM was used and had no problems.
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Yeah that will cost at least $20-30 with insurance. I messaged them and they did say it was a 720p screen FWIW.
From the original review: "Our review unit is equipped with a 57 Wh battery and managed to last more than 13 hours in our Wi-Fi test.
H.264 - 759 minutes (12.65 Hrs)
WiFi v1.3 - 795 minutes (13.25 Hrs)
Load - 101 minutes (1.68 Hrs)"
The laptop linked in this deal lists a 42 Wh battery so about 73% of the 13 hour capacity of the review unit. Is it reasonable to expect 8.5-9.5 hours of basic web surfing in your experience?
Any other Pros/Cons you can add since you have hands on experience with this laptop?
The screen isn't great, but that's expected at this price point and the fact it's not a 100% sRGB screen. I will say that even though my old laptop was 200 nits (vs 300 for this) and they're both 45% NTSC screens, I found my old HP looked brighter and "better". It has a light-yellow hue to it which I haven't been able to fix even with calibration. It's fine if you are coming for another low-end PC or monitor. At least it is IPS, so text looks clear and no issues if you are viewing off angle like with a bad TN panel.
Performance is good. It's huge improvement over what I was using but I was coming from an i3 8th gen. There are ~$300 laptops nowadays with similar CPUs or slightly better if you look. The nice thing is this has USB C PD and display. It was annoying have to use an adapter for USB charging with my HP and having to use two cables for my portable monitor. That's another feature sometimes missing at this price point. For example, the new version of my HP 14 at Costco still doesn't have USB C PD and it's ~$350 on sale.
I like the keyboard. It's like your usual ThinkPad. Some flexing if you push hard on it but not when you're using it normally.
The laptop is pure plastic. However, one thing I'm not worried about with this laptop is that the LCD isn't going to flex because the plastic for the lid is thick and solid. Like I said earlier, my HP was made of the thinnest, seemingly lowest quality plastic you could find and at least this doesn't fall into that category. This is one of the reasons I had my eyes on business-oriented laptops, even the low end ones (ThinkPad, Latitude).
As crazy as this sounds, one of the reasons why my super old mid 2000s Toshiba lasted so long was because the plastic on old laptops wasn't made to be paper thin. Yes, that laptop was bulky as hell and manufacturers are using thinner materials for weight saving reasons, but I think they go overboard with it and cross into cheap, low-quality territory which is why we see people complaining about hinges "breaking", screens getting damaged, etc.
I'll be honest, do not expect 8-9 hours of battery life. I'm not getting anywhere close to that. I'm shocked that even though this battery is supposedly 73% capacity it is somehow much worse than the 57 Wh battery that the review was testing. I have no clue what the heck is the reason. I'm worried what the battery life will be like in 3-4 years if it's only giving me around 5 hours right now. I came from a laptop that was pushing 6-7 hours when new, so this is a bit worrying.
Review: https://www.notebookche
Pros:
- CPU: Older, but capable CPU.
- RAM: 16GB on an older machine, upgradeable to 64GB.
- Ports: HDMI 2.0, 2x USB-C 3.2 (PD & DP), 2x USB-A, Ethernet & MicroSd.
- Screen: Reasonable touch screen for business applications.
- Good cooling and temperatures.
Cons:- GPU: Older Vega 7 iGPU is not very 3D capable. Older games on low settings.
- RAM: DDR4 3200 RAM is older and slower.
- SSD: 512GB but upgradeable. shorter M.2 2242 form factor.
- Some stability issues listed in review requiring an occasional reboot.
If you're looking for a low price, well made basic business laptop and you're comfortable with a refurbished machine with a 2 year warrantee from Allstate, this will fit the bill at a great price.If you regularly use AI enabled Apps or have any 3D graphics use cases, then you will notice the age of the components in this machine and should probably look for a laptop with a newer CPU/iGPU from the AMD Zen4 family or the Intel Meteor Lake family, but probably costing closer to $400-$500.
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From the review at notebookcheck:
"L14 G3 uses an SSD with the shorter M.2 2242 form factor"
I would hesitate to recommend this laptop for programming since it doesn't have an NPU for AI workloads like github copilot coding assistant to run locally. You won't be running any local LLMs on this machine.
If you're ok using cloud based AI coding assistants (bad for privacy) then you could get away with this machine for compiling and running code, especially with a RAM upgrade.
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