A Love Letter to my Thinkpad
As a college student who is away from home, the devices I choose to have with me play a crucial role.
Everything from keeping in touch with people back home, to looking at emails, playing a game occasionally, and watching movies, my laptop and phone are super important to me.
But this story starts right before the pandemic eased, and I was still at home during the lockdown.
I had been daily driving an Acer Aspire 5 since my freshman year. It was very evidently a very average laptop. The only thing it had going for it was that it had an Nvidia MX 130 GPU and a 7th gen i5. Beyond that everything was either average or below average.
The worst part of it all was the god-awfully slow HDD. It did have room for an SSD upgrade, but I didn’t want to put any more money into it. The screen was also horrendous, to say the least. The build quality was also not very confidence-inspiring.
But I somehow held on because I would game occasionally. Stuff like Just Cause 3, Witcher, Middle Earth: Shadow of War, and so on. It’s not like the GPU let me ramp up the settings also mind you; I would have to play at medium to low settings for most games to be nice and smooth.
Even though I was at home, I would often carry the laptop around. I do not know if I am a rough user to that much of a degree, or if the laptop has just terrible build quality.
As a result of either of the two or both, one of the hinges on the laptop soon began to give out.
At first, I lived with it. Because conditions were not conducive for me to get a new laptop. And I was also of the mind that if I was going to get a new laptop, it would be a good laptop where I spent a decent bit of cash.
But the situation soon escalated to the point where the hinge broke out of the plastic casing (thankfully not damaging the screen), and I was unable to close the laptop.
This was bad.
The display also began to act weird and would not respond at times, despite the laptop being turned on. I was soon forced to shift to my dad’s personal Macbook Air for my college work
Attempts to fix the Acer proved foolhardy because the price quote was quite high, and I wasn’t sure how long the laptop would survive even if I did fix it.
I soon began to look up options I had for a new laptop.
I only had two companies in mind, Lenovo and Dell. I did think about getting the older generation Macbook Air, but the screen was just terrible. The updated version was also way out of my budget. So that ruled out Macbooks for me.
It wasn’t a great loss because I liked Windows better for my personal computer.
There was a huge temptation to go for a Legion from Lenovo because I had heard mostly positive reviews about it from my circles and I had used them on many occasions. I loved Lenovo’s keyboards, displays, and overall build quality. But for the Legion, two things were holding me back. The bulky build and the very poor battery life.
I was looking for something that had both power and portability. But the issue here is that thin and light laptops with a GPU are not inexpensive. Moreover, I was not entirely on board with the thermal performance of such a laptop.
To be quite honest, I do not remember the Dell models I looked at. Mainly because most of them had something or the other that made me dislike it. And most importantly, there was a lack of proper service centers around my locality, both near college, and home.
I was initially then looking at Ideapads, but the build quality on that lineup was also not super reliable.
Then came the idea of getting a ThinkPad.
I had always heard of them but never bothered to read up about them. I had watched a review for the X1 Carbon, which was a very popular laptop when it had come out.
It was a laptop I often saw in offices or with people who seemed like they had some purpose in life. The lineup also had a sizeable reputation for bomb-proof reliability.
If you go check out the r/thinkpad subreddit, the amount of older ThinkPads that people are still holding onto in proper condition will astound you.
I was not going for the super costly Thinkpads that content creators often used and reviewed a lot. Because my workload did not require a beefy computer.
What I needed were good battery life, excellent build quality, and a good screen.
I found that the E15 was perfectly suited for my usage. The only place where it would fall short is with gaming.
But I was willing to compromise on that because I never really played games all the time anyway. And it was kind of stupid to justify a heavy and bulky laptop, just so I could game occasionally.
There was a temptation to go for the E14, as it was a lot cheaper. But the laptop possessed a huge chin on the screen which really bothered me.
The E15 came with a 10th gen i5, 8 GB RAM, 1TB HDD, and most importantly a 128 GB SSD.
The specs were not particularly eye-opening, but what appealed to me was the overall package.
I did manage to check one out in person at the nearest shop. And I was genuinely impressed with how sturdy and premium the laptop felt.
Without further delay, I ordered mine on Amazon and eagerly waited.
The package arrived soon enough, and I became a proud Thinkpad owner.
As far as first impressions go, the thing that stood out to me about the laptop from the beginning was that sturdy feeling. The laptop felt solid.
The screen was another major improvement over my Acer.
To put it shortly, what followed were blissful months of typing and consuming content.
Never having to worry about the battery or snappiness, I was and still am genuinely happy with this laptop. For me, Lenovo has put the hours into this laptop and made it worth every penny I have paid for it.
If any of you are looking for a very solid laptop and you are not a gamer, the entry-level Thinkpads will blow you away.
