I was annoyed when they dropped the swappable external battery on the T490, especially since the previous few models had both a connectorized internal and an external battery, meaning that the external one was hot-swappable without a power outlet, which I thought was pretty neat.
So I ended up buying a used T480 on eBay and then completely gutting/refurbishing it. I'm talking display swap to get the 1440p panel, keyboard swap to get the backlit keyboard, trackpad swap because the one it came with was grungy, new SSD, maxed out RAM, clean out the inside, new thermal paste, new internal battery, new external battery, etc. I didn't replace the motherboard, RTC battery, fan/heat spreader assembly, webcam(s), hinges, or the external shell, because they were in pretty good shape, but it wouldn't have been difficult to do so.
I've upgraded laptops before, but it always seemed a little more perilous than upgrading a desktop, because I was always afraid of braking something, or not getting it back together properly. I'm really glad I took this route, because I no longer feel like I'm walking on eggshells. I can take this thing apart and put it back together blindfolded now, and if I accidentally break something like a snap, I know I can either work around it or get a replacement.
Construction on the T480 is still very good. Lots of magnesium on the core structure, captive screws, connectors everywhere, clever layout to make (dis)assembly easy. Unique parts are easier to get than I expected. You can pay full price and get them from Lenovo, but you can also usually find them new for a little (sometimes a lot) less on eBay.
The T480 is probably the best Linux laptop I've had so far (Previously I've had a T520 and a T60). Somewhat ironically, the only complaint I have about the hardware has to do with that battery hot swap feature that I wanted. The charge controller decides which battery to discharge when they're both charged. It prefers to draw power from the newer / less worn out cell first, and on my machine that seems to be the internal cell, and probably only because it came with a few hundred mAh more capacity than nominal, while the external battery was right around nominal. What this means is that it draws the internal battery down to 5%, then it discharges the external battery, and by the time you'd want to hot swap the external, the internal is somewhere between 0 and 5%, making the hot swap seem precarious at best. You can individually tweak the full charge thresholds to keep the batteries from wearing out prematurely, but you can't change that 5% threshold, and you can't change the discharge order. Maybe someone will write better firmware for this thing at some point. But still, I get like 15 hours of battery, and coach on long haul flights usually has an outlet now, so it's not a big issue in practice.
So I ended up buying a used T480 on eBay and then completely gutting/refurbishing it. I'm talking display swap to get the 1440p panel, keyboard swap to get the backlit keyboard, trackpad swap because the one it came with was grungy, new SSD, maxed out RAM, clean out the inside, new thermal paste, new internal battery, new external battery, etc. I didn't replace the motherboard, RTC battery, fan/heat spreader assembly, webcam(s), hinges, or the external shell, because they were in pretty good shape, but it wouldn't have been difficult to do so.
I've upgraded laptops before, but it always seemed a little more perilous than upgrading a desktop, because I was always afraid of braking something, or not getting it back together properly. I'm really glad I took this route, because I no longer feel like I'm walking on eggshells. I can take this thing apart and put it back together blindfolded now, and if I accidentally break something like a snap, I know I can either work around it or get a replacement.
Construction on the T480 is still very good. Lots of magnesium on the core structure, captive screws, connectors everywhere, clever layout to make (dis)assembly easy. Unique parts are easier to get than I expected. You can pay full price and get them from Lenovo, but you can also usually find them new for a little (sometimes a lot) less on eBay.
The T480 is probably the best Linux laptop I've had so far (Previously I've had a T520 and a T60). Somewhat ironically, the only complaint I have about the hardware has to do with that battery hot swap feature that I wanted. The charge controller decides which battery to discharge when they're both charged. It prefers to draw power from the newer / less worn out cell first, and on my machine that seems to be the internal cell, and probably only because it came with a few hundred mAh more capacity than nominal, while the external battery was right around nominal. What this means is that it draws the internal battery down to 5%, then it discharges the external battery, and by the time you'd want to hot swap the external, the internal is somewhere between 0 and 5%, making the hot swap seem precarious at best. You can individually tweak the full charge thresholds to keep the batteries from wearing out prematurely, but you can't change that 5% threshold, and you can't change the discharge order. Maybe someone will write better firmware for this thing at some point. But still, I get like 15 hours of battery, and coach on long haul flights usually has an outlet now, so it's not a big issue in practice.