Interesting. I was recently looking to upgrade my personal T480s which I use for development, but didn't see anything in Lenovo lineup that were reasonably light/powerful/quiet/cool enough to make put in the order. I've grown so sick of laptops constantly hissing at me when I do something more complicated than browsing the web. My work issued Dell is basically unusable in a quiet room without headphones. So as an impulse buy I sidegraded to M1 Air instead just to see what the fuss is all about.
Well, I'm not really wanting to go back to regular intel/amd laptops now, I have been spoiled.
My Thinkpad E14 Gen3 is quiet most of the time. My T470p is boiling my hands and the fan is constantly whirring (I still like it :)).
But I agree, Apples MacBook is of a different kind. The only time I heard the fan was when playing Metro Exodus and when I ran cinebench :). My MacBook Pro outperforms every other computer in my possession.
But I'm still interested in this Thinkpad, because I'm not too happy with macOS anymore. But I assume there are too many limitations with Windows for ARM as well :). And considering the price of this Thinkpad, I'm probably just buying another MacBook, which has better battery life and better performance (and probably a better screen, Thinkpads often have terrible screens imho).
I've got a 6th gen X1 carbon and under windows the thing has the fan on high all the time. Switched to Linux (mint) and I went a couple months before I heard the fan, doing all the same things. I don't know what windows is doing these days but it isn't doing it for me, the end user.
T460s user here, on Windows (and Hackintosh, for the sake of bad comparison), my system idled ~40-45c and the fans also ran constantly. Put Linux on it, add auto-cpufreq, and then it idles ~27c (30c with external display). No fans unless I launch games, have heavy network usage for >5 minutes, or compile something.
I'd probably give the Macbooks (or this new Thinkpad) a closer look if I didn't work with Docker constantly. As it stands though, ARM and x86 are still not like comparisons, and still not even remotely capable of the same workloads. I have high hopes for the future of RISC arches, but we're undeniably trapped in an age of x86 dominance.
On Windows, did you use the Lenovo provided software to manage cooling? If you did a fresh install of Windows and didn't install the OEM fan and CPU tooling, but then did install CPU tooling on Linux, its not quite a fair comparison.
I've got a 460s and it will run pretty warm if you let it. If you tell it to not run so hot it'll keep the CPU throttled down a bit more aggressively and keep it cooler. That generation of Intel CPU was always a bit on the warm side when it wanted to actually do anything. Especially anything related to video encoding/decoding, using stuff like Zoom or Meet or Teams really makes the machine get warm.
I did a fresh install, but Lenovo's management software has been notoriously bloatware-ish, so I was apprehensive to keep it on my system. I was never really claiming for it to be a fair comparison either, even if this thing somehow ran hotter on Linux I'd probably wouldn't use Windows anyways.
The machine can definitely run pretty hot if you crank the performance profiles though, that's for sure. I've managed to hit 70c while playing music/running CPU intensive games on an external monitor, and I definitely think you could push it further with more CPU twiddling. For regular use though, a hearty underclock still renders the device usable with low temps and a good amount of battery life extension.
Well, for starters, virtualizing anything on MacOS is a pain in the butt. It's an open secret that Docker on Mac has performance issues, kernel interface problems and general compatibility hiccups that don't exist when the host is running Linux. Then there's the fact that quite a number of Docker containers aren't ARM-ready, and even the ones that are won't be an accurate portrayal of how they'll behave on other arches (most systems I deploy to are still x86).
Like I said, ARM may well have it's day, but right now it's just full of compromises that I simply can't make. So long as x86 benefits from the same big.LITTLE architecture that ARM has been transitioning to, I don't think I'll really have much use for another arch until RISC-V hits the mainstream.
On the other hand, I use a Windows on a Intel m3-6y30 machine and the fan hardly ever runs despite it being a fairly anemic system by today's standards.
One has to think that all these users who can't seem to configure and operate Windows properly are probably not configuring and operating Linux (which exposes much deeper control and complexity to the user) properly either. "It's a poor craftsman that blames their tools", after all.
True. I was not interested in Intel Macbooks because the pluses even with that great screen didn't win me over from of thinkpads but M1 has changed the game for me. The battery and performance improvements are just too good to ignore.
I have an M1 but never use it at home, the battery is only really useful if I need to spend a few days on the road away from power.
My daily driver is an Intel 1185g7 based Laptop which I can work a whole day without charging if needed (tops out at about 10 hours), and anymore than that doesn't really add any value. If Linux support gets better on the M1 I think I would consider switching but honestly when I put them side by side I don't notice a big performance difference. The M1 just uses a lot less power to get that performance.
Btw, how is E-series doing for you? I've had X and T for last 20 years and I wouldn't've thought about getting E. I've thought of them as too fragile to lug around. Years ago I broke one early 14" Yoga plastic bottom just packing it too tightly so I've stayed with T's and X's.
My E14gen3 feels absolutely solid and sturdy. I mean, the E14s are not _that_ cheap :D. I wanted a Ryzen CPU, keyboard backlight and a fingerprint sensor. Also the keyboard is great. Battery life is great as well.
I think it's not only about arm vs x86. I have a work provided Thinkpad and work provided Macbook Pro (with Skylake CPU) and I prefer to work on the Macbook for the same reason. It's completely silent 99% of the time, whereas Thinkpad has fans blazing 99% of the time and getting very hot. When I look in task manager, it's the usual suspects - corporate bloatware disguised as data protection and antivirus software, taking 40-50% CPU time when idling. Add Chrome and few apps and you got 90-100% CPU usage most of the time.
The difference between laptop with mandatory corporate cruft and same hw without it is quite something. My personal laptop is weaker spec wise that work issued, but is so much snappier.
> hen I look in task manager, it's the usual suspects - corporate bloatware disguised as data protection and antivirus software
Similar experience here. If I only had experience with ThinkPads from work I certainly would hate them. Slow, loud and shitty screen.
My T14 Gen1 I run at home at balanced power mode runs quiet and fast. NVMe I could switch, ram upgraded to 32GB, fingerprint reader and windows hallow, all for ~1100 EUR
Apple also sets up very different fan curves from most of the PC industry. They won't turn on the fan until it hits 95 C. This keeps it quiet but it affects performance and maybe longevity.
Also worth noting that most vendors have a way to adjust the fan curves. Sometimes right in the bios, often times through an external utility.
I recall at one point there was someone doing some work getting the Legion Fan Control app working for non-Legion Lenovos, but I cannot for the life of me find the link now.
My personal T480 is silent most of the time. Though I now have an M1 Mac from work, and my next personal laptop will likely be an M1 as well based on my experience with it so far. Not just the chip: Apple finally created the perfect form factor IMHO, with just the right screen aspect ratio, port options (Magsafe plus USB-C charging!), and keyboard.
FWIW, I switched from X270 to X13 Gen2 AMD (5850U, 32GB) recently and the difference has been night-and-day - even just web browsing on X270 caused audible noise, while X13G2A is practically completely silent unless I do something very demanding.
So maybe look into T14s Gen2 AMD (which may be pretty similar to X13 Gen2 since they share the HW maintenance manual). But YMMV of course, and I have no experience of M1.
I got the T14 Gen1, basically the direct successor of the T480.
What I notice is when I put the power profile to balanced it's very quiet. But of course does not power up all the way. Fast enough for my needs, but of course might not be a solution for everyone.
I was looking at T14, but I'm used to having slim laptop, s variants have been slightly powerful but lighter and with slimmer profile. The thing with M1 is that the difference with 8th gen i5 in my T480s is for some workloads 2x, if not more. And difference in some Lightroom tools is easily even more. M1 is amazing. Plus, it's quiet. I didn't know I missed silence so much. It's hard to go back now.
It only takes maximum of 24GB RAM. Right now I'm ok with it but I'd like to have some future proofing at some point, everybody is going crazy with containers nowadays. I've been moving my work off the desktop and while I can upgrade NVMe as I please I'm stuck with memory limit.
I also have 64GB on my work T480 (non-s) despite "max" being 32GB.
The Lenovo-reported max RAM specs often do not take into account newer larger memory modules released after the laptop (or at least I believe this is the reason for the discrepancy).
Intel has been absolutely incorrect on this a few times. Quite often there is a conflict in ranges that the ACPI spec included in the system firmware can't deal with, but if an operating system is clever enough it can work around the problem.
It may require some ACPI trickery, but it absolutely is doable. If the firmware guys are super lazy it may just work without ACPI trickery.
I have 40GB ram in my T480s, but it is single-channel.
I have also put a NVMe in the WWAN-port, I found out that the Transcend MTE452T (TS512GMTE452T) has the right M.2-port (B+M), and it is a compatible NVMe-drive and not a SATA-drive which some of the disks of that form factor is.
Thanks for the info, I'll have a look. Transcend is weird in a good way, over the years I have bought some hard to find config drives from them, like 512gb msata 5 or so years ago.
Well, I'm not really wanting to go back to regular intel/amd laptops now, I have been spoiled.