Hot take: elitebooks > thinkpads
Anecdotes from an independent repair shop owner / operator.
I very rarely encounter reparability issues from Lenovo devices. I’ve worked on the full range down to Chromebooks and all the way up to high-end ThinkPad workstations. Parts are generally available, if not from Lenovo then on the aftermarket. They have repair documentation on their site. There are cases where the memory is soldered, but that is not something that is unique to Lenovo.
From my perspective, the least repairable devices end up being the LG and Samsung laptops. Parts are much harder to come by, which means that when they are available they’re usually quite expensive. Their designs are hostile to repair, documentation has not been readily available, they haven’t used modular memory for about 10 years now.
Microsoft’s Surface lineup has historically been real bad for repair, it’s not until recently that they’ve been turning a new leaf. Their logic board designs are so unusual that even component level repair becomes a huge pain compared to others.
I disagree about Lenovo. They sell a lor parts. I just replaced my Lenovo ThinkPad’s battery last year.
Not all Lenovo’s are thinkpads… They sell a lot of garbage at lower price points.
Considering that ThinkPads are as beloved as they are for their repairability, I would have assumed Lenovo to score higher
Maybe, their consumer-grade laptops aren’t as repairable as the ThinkPads. The article linked within the article also mentions, that they went from “F” last year to “C”.
Oh, I missed that one. That’s a huge bump
I replaced a fan on my Lenovo ThinkPad so yeah, it wasn’t difficult except for that moment of adding the right amount of thermal paste.
Was glad to see the new Macbook Neo was a small correction of this trend for Apple at least. No idea if it’ll stick, seems unlikely. But one of the largest consumer electronics companies in the world becoming more repairable is great for everyone whether you like their products or not.
iFixit says different about Lenovo.
https://www.ifixit.com/repairability/laptop-repairability-scores
One model verses the hundreds of other products they been selling. Also if not enough people purchase this model, they stop parts production and kill the model line. It will be like it never happened.
iFixit is honestly terrible with these rankings. They seem to be based completely on how easy they are to take apart and reassemble, and nothing to do with availability or cost of components, or whether the components themselves are serialized.
Their job is to sell tools to fix stuff, did you even read the ars article, it’s just clickbait. Lenovo failed because they didn’t provide repairability score for their laptop models. nothing to do with if it’s actual repairable or not.
I’ve repaired Lenovo before, aftermarket items all available, change screens, keyboard, battery, simple stuff only though, no issues, everything is designed so it’s easy to change.
I would not say the same about HP or DELL, shit enterprise laptops, and the consumer ones are worse.
Yeah. I can say the same about most HP laptops starting with pro.
Yet my oldest still on use laptop is HP EliteBook 2560p is quite the different. The bottom cover opens completely without screw driver and even the cpu fan in it’s entirety is out in the open to be able to clean every now and then.
Their job is to sell tools to fix stuff
And?
did you even read the ars article
The article was not relevant to my statement.
I’ve repaired Lenovo before, aftermarket items all available
I wasn’t talking about Lenovo.
So, we primarily award points for replacement parts priced at 25% of MSRP or less (exclusive of tax and shipping, because those vary regionally).
As a historical aside, although we’ve had our eye on this for a while, we only formally added replacement parts to the iFixit scorecard fairly recently—it’s factored in for many (but not all) of the devices we scored during the past year. We’re updating how repairability scores are displayed to help make that distinction clear.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/75533/how-ifixit-scores-repairability
Well it’s good to know that they added that. But don’t the OEMs decide what MSRP is?
Purely anecdotal but my IdeaPad has very decent repairability . Certainly better than any modern phone. Fan can be cleaned, memory and storage can be upgraded except I think there is some base memory soldered on. But overall I was relived at how easy it is given it was a gift and I didn’t get to meticulously investigate the model before buying
Yet the best performance and longevity
every non-apple macbook I ever bought always had some issue. broken hinges, screens that went bad, just go dead,etc. It’s not like apple ones are defect-free but I have 4 of them running at home, the oldest from 2012 running without zero issues beyond a wasted battery. repairability is not an issue if they dont break in the first place.
My oldest running laptops that have never had a single issue are a MacBook Pro (2011 model, the high-end 15”) and a Lenovo gaming laptop that’s like 14 years old and inexplicably has a second video card you can take out of the side.
I use them both to this day. They have 16GB RAM and SSDs now, and never had a problem.
Quick edit: the MacBook Pro has its original battery and lasts over two hours at full brightness still, but has fewer than 40 battery cycles since it was originally a gaming machine for LAN parties I went to. The Lenovo has its original battery and lasts about 45 minutes still.
