Which Thinkpad should i buy for my very first Thinkpad??

[NoobyThinkpad]

Hi, i want to buy a thinkpad laptop to daily drive and code into and I'm torn on which of these models is best for me: T410, T420i, T420, and T430. The keyboard of the T420 seems to be highly regarded as the best of the keyboard than T430, but at the same time the T430 is much powerful than T420 am i correct?? I could do the T430 keyboard mod but if so is there any major drawback from swapping the keyboard out to the t420 model??


Btw, I'm planning on using it as a linux OS and some light coding just practice laptop.

[Omineca]

One consideration that I don't see among the factors that you've mentioned is LCD quality.

Someone here might be able to tell you whether you can get an IPS display for the T410, T420, or T430 series. I ended up buying a 440-series laptop because there were much better displays available.

For context, the T430 that I had at work had one of the worst display panels I have ever seen. The viewing angles were atrocious. If you tilted the display so that you could see the top, the bottom was starting to shift out of plane (it fades into blue-ish obscurity). If you tilted it to see the bottom, the top went out of plane. There was a very involved mod that you could do to put a good IPS display into a T430, but it was a lot more work than I wanted to do, and I'm not sure whether the kits are still available.

[TPFanatic]

some general ideas i can share:



a project laptop will cost as a matter of course a few hundred dollars in parts, labor, and quality control. be prepared for that. I'll spitball between $200 - $500 and months of waiting for parts while you make it perfect. this goes for any X220, X230, T420, T430, T420s, T430s, T440p, T60, etc.. sure you can use it for stuff like coding. I did some python on my X230 before I got kicked out of school for suing them. The laptop worked fine otherwise.

for the same money $200 - $500 if you want a one-and-done ThinkPad with a nice keyboard, some legacy/classical excess, but otherwise compatibility with modern stuff (NVME, Thunderbolt), look for a P50, P51, P70, or P71. they're still really nice laptops and built quite well. same really goes for any of the big P-series.

for the same money if you just want something nice like P-series but smaller get X1 Carbon or X1 Yoga.


Conclusion
in conclusion, if you want a project, get anything.

if you want something that's just gonna work and is truly built to last, look for P50, P51, P52, P53, P70, P71, P72, P73, P15, P17, P16, P1, X1 Extreme, X1 Carbon, X1 Yoga.

[ZaZ]

You didn't mention what you're looking to spend, which makes it kind of hard to help. The T430 was released in 2012, the T420 even earlier, so they're both old and slow compared to a newer machines. The latest ThinkPad with the old school keyboard is the T25, but it was released right before the low watt quad core enlightenment. They are rare birds too, and are priced accordingly.

Personally, I think the AMD ThinkPads with the Zen2 cores offer amongst the best value. They come with significantly more oomh compared with the Intel CPU of the same era. With a little patience, they can be had inexpensively on eBay. Objectively, the seven row keyboard is better than the chiclet one on more recent models, I find it to be good too compared to other available options., but that's only my 2¢.

The AMD with the Zen2 cores are offered in the T, L, E, etc. ThinkPads. The more you spend, the thinner and lighter it'll likely be, but all are well built. The higher end ThinkPads will have better screen options as well, but as long as it's 1080 it'll be an IPS screen. Good luck my friend and welcome.

If you could place you location in your profile so it's visible, it would be appreciated.

[ogopogo]

My first one was a T440p, for same price range I think you can buy a more powerful T480 today. For your use case all thinkpads mentioned above can do good for you. But maybe is better to go for the latest one, unless keyboard and general upgradability (over the newer one) represent something to you.

[axur-delmeria]

1. Set your budget and requirements (screen size, RAM, etc.)

2. Find the fastest/most balanced Thinkpad that will fit in that budget

IMO mucking around with Thinkpads older than 10 years is fine if it's a hobby. But for a daily driver, you'll need something more recent and less likely to die due to component failure.

Personally I wouldn't buy anything older than a T480 for a daily driver.