Lenovo teams up with iFixit for its refreshed ThinkPads to boost repairability

[midian182]

In brief: While not everyone is celebrating tech giants' insistence on cramming AI into everything they produce, one trend that has been welcomed is increasing devices' repairability and upgradability. Lenovo's refreshed ThinkPads have gone down this route; not only do they feature a more upgradable design, but the company also worked with iFixit to improve the machines' repairability score.

At Barcelona's annual Mobile World Congress event (MWC), Lenovo announced the refreshed ThinkPad T14 Gen 5, ThinkPad T14s Gen 5, and ThinkPad T16 Gen 3. The laptops can be specced with the latest Intel Core Ultra processors, though Team Red fans can opt for an AMD Ryzen 8040 in the T14 Gen 5.

Lenovo highlights its push for sustainability and repairability in its refreshed ThinkPads. In addition to the recycled materials used in their manufacture, the laptops feature simpler repair and upgradability, which should extend their lifespan and reduce e-waste.

Those upgrade paths include a fully socketed DIMM design instead of soldering, allowing for easily upgradable RAM. Buyers will also be able to remove and add new solid-state drives and wireless adapters with ease. Even the battery uses a cable-free connector and fewer screws, making it simpler to remove and replace.

Furthermore, Lenovo has created new repair guides for the laptops with support from the iFixit team. These include video procedures for all CRU parts as well as making the parts easier to order. There are also visual indicators printed alongside the components to aid those making repairs or upgrades, including QR codes inside the body near each piece of hardware that lead to instructional videos for that specific part.

The changes aren't just bragging from Lenovo. iFixit has awarded the ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 and T16 Gen 3 a provisional repairability score of 9.3 out of 10 thanks to the improvements. For comparison, the T14 Gen 3 was awarded a score of 7 out of 10 a few years ago.

"This is a major step forward for Lenovo and the technology industry. Making laptops that stand the test of time is essential to building a sustainable electronics industry. It's not easy, and Lenovo is demonstrating that repairability and innovation go hand-in-hand," said Kyle Wiens, CEO at iFixit.

The Intel-powered ThinkPads will be available to buy this April with an expected starting price of $1,199. Those who want a ThinkPad T14 Gen 5 with an AMD processor will have to wait until May, though they do start at the cheaper price of $949.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/102021-lenovo-teams-up-ifixit-refreshed-thinkpads-boost-repairability.html

 

[JamesBlond]

Our company bought around 20 refurbed Lenovo's
3 had battery / charger issues
2 had issues with short life 2 months...

that is a quarter of them problematic I am not expecting them to last long... I would say if you going to buy refurb, buy Dell

 

[Watzupken]

I somewhat concur with the battery issue. I wonder if they cheap out on battery. One of my ThinkPad’s battery failed within a year. Unplug it from the mains and the battery will drop to 7 or 8%. A second IdeaPad’s battery drops so quickly even with light web browsing which I suspect is failing. You can fully charge it and within a short moment, it’s dropped to 80+ %.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Excellent to hear. More repairable is always better. Maybe if AMD gets around to launching strix halo I could get a new laptop.

Our company bought around 20 refurbed Lenovo's
3 had battery / charger issues
2 had issues with short life 2 months...

that is a quarter of them problematic I am not expecting them to last long... I would say if you going to buy refurb, buy Dell

We buy Dell, out 7410s were a 100% total loss, 20 bought, 20 completely useless thanks to bad radio design.

3390s have so far a roughly 75% failure rate, I've replaced hundreds of motherboards in our fleet. Bad charging circuit design. 219 of our 540 fleet have been replaced.

7390s, chew through batteries. Of 390 active machines, we have replaced over 200 batteries.

Dell's WD15 and WD19 docks refuse to play nice with latitude 7430s or 40s. Constant issues with video output. We switched to Thinkpad docks, all the problems went away.

And on a personal level: Dell REFUSES to release an AMD latitude.

 

[MakeMSGreatAgain]

It would be nice if Dell and others would make the USB-C/Thunderbolt ports a modular, replaceable component... I've had a few of these get damaged over the years. And I've also had loads of issues with the WD15 and 19 TB docks. In general it just seems like the thunderbolt docking solution is pretty unreliable. We never used to have these issues with the port replicators.

As for batteries, users are HARD on batteries. They don't know how to take care of them. Sitting at 100% a ton, getting drained to 0 or near 0 and left for days, left in hot cares, etc. We're lucky to get two years out of a battery here. I've been setting users who are over 90% work in office to have their battery only charge to 70% and hold. It's been about 3-4 years since doing that and most of them still have near 100% battery capacity from original. I just show them how to change it to charge fully if they want to use it all day, but none of them have had to do this that I'm aware of.

Dell's business line of laptops have always been pretty easy to repair, most if not all parts are available for order. I've been happy with them, in this aspect. So it is good to see other companies working to make their stuff easier to fix. This is better for the environment, rather than using and trashing stuff just 2-3 years after its manufacturing...

 

[mbrowne5061]

Nice! They're back to where they were ~10yrs ago.

Of course, back then, they did things like white list which WLAN adapters could be installed (only a few Lenovo-specific models were approved), and the only ways you could bypass this restriction is to installed a cracked BIOS (which, frankly, I didn't trust internet strangers enough to install) or to install cracked firmware onto the WLAN adapter (same issue as the crack BIOS). So, while the parts are replaceable, I will remain skeptical that they will be upgradeable until the community actually gets their hands on it and are able to swap out parts with whatever they want.