Bikeshedding, or why I want to build a laptop

I wonder why ThinkPads are not mentioned. It's not like I recommend them (I mean, I use one, but it's not like I've tried most laptops out there, so who I am to judge), but I was under the impression it's still a de-facto Linux laptop standard.

How’s the battery life?

Cannot properly evaluate now. I never really use it without a cable for too long, and by now the battery must have slightly degraded too. Anyway, it never was Macbook-level, I guess, and it's an oldish model, so you should check actual reviews for current models that you are interested in, there always was plenty of them for ThinkPads (at least, the last time when I looked for a new laptop).

The old ones had hot-swappable batteries (a second internal battery - of decent size - kept the device going while you replaced the external one). I used to keep a couple of extra 50 Wh batteries in my backpack and therefore had excellent battery life. The power efficiency wasn't great though.

I now have a Z13 Gen 1 (AMD 6850U) running Fedora and the battery life is passable. It draws 7-8W at idle from a 51 Wh battery.

Thinkpads are probably fine if that's the price point you're shopping at, but the modern ones are not good value. HP has the best mobile workstation available currently.

So the battery life wasn't excellent.

My laptop can go on for days as well as long as I plug it in to a power bank. I just need to lug them around, defeating the purpose.

The author of the article recently had a “laptop olympics” stream where he compared his laptops. He owns an X1 carbon but doesn’t like it at all, mainly because of the CPU iirc.

I get near infinite battery life on mine if I plug it into a wall outlet.

On his video channel he shows 4 laptops, including a ThinkPad Carbon, about which he said "it costed way too much considering what it delivered"

They used to be genuinely great, now they coasting on brand name and simply not being as bad as most laptops. DIY hardware upgrades are no longer possible, the keyboard is no longer a differentiator, and linux battery life is about 1/4 windows running on the same machine.

From what I remember the last time I bought a laptop, they also have a really annoying pricing model where everything is 30% overpriced but are running constant discounts

I'll actually answer your question, it's horrible. I have a X1 Carbon and get maybe 3-4 hours on Linux.

I have an X1 extreme. I’ve never gotten it to last over 2h on Windows. On Linux it can last an hour or so more if I turn off the NVIDIA GPU, but otherwise it’s still abysmal.

Then there’s the stupid BIOS warning that requires you to press ESC for the computer to boot if it’s not plugged in to the official charger, which means that if it ever reboots at night it’ll just keep you awake (because the power management hasn’t been initialized yet so it’s stuck at 100% CPU) until you go press ESC.

Oh and it thermal throttles all the time so the CPU performance is good for a few minutes and then it’s just awful.