Lenovo Thinkpad E485

[Mario Chavez]

Hey guys,

I was looking to upgrade my laptop, because the one I have really sucks :c

Looking for an affordable laptop (I'm a student) the Lenovo Thinkpad E485 seemed like a good choice for me. I've heard that Ryzen mobile processors are good and I'm really looking for a Thinkpad.

Do you think it's a good choice? 

Ryzen 5 2500U

8GB RAM Single Channel

256GB SSD 

[genexis_x]

2 hours ago, Mario Chavez said:

I've heard that Ryzen mobile processors are good and I'm really looking for a Thinkpad.

Ryzen mobile APUs have their own issues. Also, Thinkpad E series isn't really a business laptop, it's just a consumer laptop rebrand

 

Where are you from? Budget? Usage? Preference on weight, display size, display quality and battery life?

[ehurleyrobert]

didn't linus make a video on thinkpads not too long ago?

[zhubaohi]

1 hour ago, ehurleyrobert said:

didn't linus make a video on thinkpads not too long ago?

The new x1 carbon, yes. 

[NeuesTestament]

8 hours ago, GeneXiS_X said:

Ryzen mobile APUs have their own issues. Also, Thinkpad E series isn't really a business laptop, it's just a consumer laptop rebrand

 

Where are you from? Budget? Usage? Preference on weight, display size, display quality and battery life?

Keyboard is better than most consumer grade laptops and you can also upgrade it easier than most consumer laptops nowadays. But yes, it is not as rugged and high quality as the more expensive ThinkPads.

 

Apart from that I would strongly advise against buying the E485. According to several test it has a lot of problems with thermals and batter life only achieving about 60% of the battery life of the Intel version (the E480). So if you are in the market for a cheap ThinkPad, I would buy the Intel version instead.

[AdeptusDracones]

It depends on what you're looking for. Thermals-wise it does very well with no discernible thermal throttling. Lenovo hampered the performance quite a lot by limiting the TDP the way that they did but the Vega still easily outperforms the iGPU in the Intel option. Price wise I think it's a steal. The E-series build quality has only improved every generation and the keyboard is the same as any other ThinkPad model which is to say that it's great.

 

Battery life is not amazing due to limits the Lenovo set for minimum processor state though you can still expect about 3hrs with heavier loads and maybe 4-5 with lighter loads.

 

A friend of mine owns this model with the 2700U and 16GB of RAM and I was so impressed with the overall value for the performance that I ordered one earlier this week to replace my aging Surface (also a college student here, CS major). Just make sure that you opt for dual channel RAM (so if you want 8GB go for the 2 x 4GB option) as Ryzen performance is almost halved running in single channel mode.

 

One last thing to note is that Raven Ridge drivers on Windows are a mess right now (Linux so far has been great). The Lenovo ones are out of date and buggy so be prepared to force load your own from AMD (google how to do this if you need to). To me that would be the biggest hang up with any mobile Ryzen platform.

 

Oh ya, if you do choose to buy it the promo code THINKBLCKFRI is still active until 12/02 and will net you about 30% off of your order total.

[genexis_x]

10 hours ago, AdeptusDracones said:

Lenovo hampered the performance quite a lot by limiting the TDP the way that they did

Many models from other brands did this too

10 hours ago, AdeptusDracones said:

limits the Lenovo set for minimum processor state

Same explanation as above