Hi OzBargainers,
Been looking at buying a new laptop for work/university purposes and I have been a diehard Lenovo fan boy for the longest time. To that end, I was so bummed when I missed out on this deal: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/588250 and so was looking around to see if there were any good deals for a lenovo laptop going around.
TIA
Thanks mate - appreciate it. How's the laptop holding for you now after a couple months? Any highlights? Just wanted to hear your experience. TIA
Whether it's the "best value" or not is a subjective call, but I have just bought this T490. Got it a bit cheaper in the Black Friday sales ($1,249 with 12% cashback I think), so not quite as good a deal, but may still be worth your while considering.
I'm currently using a few-years-old T460s as my home PC, I've got a T490s as my work-issued PC, and this new one is for one of the kids to use.
That's true mate. My subjectivity would be toughness and resilience because I do tend to beat my tech around a bit. How's that particular model holding up for you since you got it recently?
The new one isn't even out of the box yet. Need to get it set up properly before I unleash my boy on it and hand it over for next year's schoolwork.
The older one though is now about four (?) years old I guess and no problems there. Even though it's a "home PC", I'm basically a business user in terms of what I do on it. I remember buying it on the basis that it was apparently the most sturdy of the ThinkPads. My memory is that it has a metal frame, whereas many others have a plastic frame.
Thanks for that mate. Would the T490 be appropriate for a University Student looking to do Thesis writing and research? (I usually have 10-12 tabs of PDF's on research papers open at the same time). I also work about 30 hours a week and need a laptop to do basic word processing and maybe even light Image editing. Would this be enough? Still kinda bummed that I lost out on the E14 deal since even though it's not as robust the specs were definitely better.
@tacos4brekkie: In my opinion the T490 would be absolutely fine with that. Keep in mind that I'm using the T490s (effectively identical) for business all day, every day … multiple Word, Excel, PPT, Chrome, Outlook, Zoom, Skype, etc. running simultaneously with no problem. Can't speak for the image editing part as I just don't do that.
Would there be others that are cheaper that could do the same job? Somewhere between maybe and probably, but it works for me and I've been happy over the last several years. Just knowing that something works represents good value in my book.
@Seraphin7: Any idea why the T490s is 20 dollars cheaper than the T490 on the lenovo website? Is the T490s worse than the T490 to your knowledge or is it better?
@tacos4brekkie: I suspect you are looking at this model?
Compared with one I linked to, this one only has 8GB RAM (vs. 16GB), but is does have the slightly higher spec CPU (i5-8365U vs. i5-8265U). In my opinion those CPUs are much of a muchness between them, but I would certainly go for more RAM.
Beyond that, I understand that the T490 has a spare RAM expansion slot if you ever wanted to use it, but the T490s does not (you get what you get with the latter). Beyond the base specs that you're buying straight out of the box, my understanding is this is key difference between the models.
I may have read somewhere that the T490s is slightly lighter and slightly better battery life (or I may be completely mistaken on those), but from memory it made no difference to my use cases. The RAM expansion slot is what got me over the line between the two.
@Seraphin7: Yeah mate thanks for the heads up. I own a Legion Y530 and got it a few years ago and what was amazing about it was the option for expandable RAM and an empty 2.5" SSD slot. I've decided to just use it as a home base PC replacement. I'm transient most of the time and always moving in between places so a gaming PC was never really an option for me.
There are so many other options to think about though. The T490s has an all-metal base and a carbon fibre lid while the T490 is glass fibre all-around. The 8GB RAM cap is a pretty limiting factor but if I am using it as a secondary machine (I probably won't ever game with it at all) then yeah the light weight and increased battery life might be positives that I'm willing to take.\
Sorry, just talking to myself and rationalising myself. But thank you for the help much appreciated mate.
Wait till an x1 carbon goes on sale, else scope out Ebay for refurbished ones which you can save a heap on.
Bought mine second hand and it's still going great. ridiculously light and an incredible keyboard
Just wait for the next deal - there's been loads on the E14/15. Am very happy with my 4700U/16GB RAM/512GB SSD that I got a couple months ago.