Looking for new T-series laptop

[tpribors]

My current machine is a T540p and I also have a W510 and W520. I'm looking to blend the features of both into one machine. It's very difficult to navigate the featues of the new machines on the web site so if someone can point me to the family that has the following:

Carryover features I want: The W510 and W520 have a photo screen calibration sensor and software. This is really helpful in getting the best screen for photoshop editing. (These were also the last generation of 1394/Firewire machines for my scanner but Silverfast doesn't support Firewire past Win7 so I use a mac for scanning raw images and a PC for post-processing.)

T60P has a early what I think is referred to as 3K resolution screen. For real estate purposes I want at least this or 4K on the new machine.

New machine must also have a SD card reader. Either regular size or micro SD is OK.

I've given up on drive bays for optical or second HDD. I'll have to make do with a 2TB+ SSD and use a large MicroSD card for my external storage needs...

So what machine has a 4K display, SD card and photo screen calibration???

Thanks!

[TPFanatic]

W series got renamed P series, of the current offerings with the color calibrator I only know about the P16 Gen 3. Maybe a Lenovo rep will be more familiar. P16 does offer “4K” I think it’s up to 3840x2400 now because the screen aspect ratios have gone back to normal.

I’ve got my oldie P71 (2017 or so model) with “4K” 3840x2160 and the calibrator, and DVD. This is the last one with DVD. It’s old tho you deserve better.

[tpribors]

Thanks. The T540p has been a real workhorse but it's starting to feel its age. I got it in 2014 when I was doing some contract work and have been using it every since. It eats wifi cards (I'm on #3) and the only one that works is the original style so the wifi is slow. OK for web browsing but not for accessing the NFS. It began life as a Windows 7 machine and I upgraded to Windows 10. After Win10 was EOL I experimented with a fresh recovery disk Win7 install then upgraded that to the free Win10 (which I kept from way back when) and finally hacked the Win11 installer to remove the security chip and UEFI requirement and am now running Win11 on it. By doing it in that order it managed to keep all of the original THinkpad features like the Fn key manager etc with some things getting modern versions. It pretty much retains its original feature set. The only problem is that the keyboard is worn through the black coating and the trackpad is also losing coating and sometimes doesn't click. I can get a bezel and keyboard off eBay but I think it's just time to modernize and upgrade and get the photo processing systems upgraded too.

[coolcat37]

I’ve got my oldie P71
It’s old tho you deserve better.

Care to elaborate, TPFanatic?
The P71 might be the last stout ThinkPad like we liked 'm, no? It might fit what OP is searching for, no?
Real dock, the stupid chiclet layout and feel (but still with at least somewhat travel), 4K option, no disgusting USB-c [censored], swappable battery, actual RJ45 in, hotbuttons for volume up and down, etc etc

It (ofcourse) sports a SD-reader, Pantone sensor is available and you can throw a FireWire ExpressCard in there and off you go

We're talking about 2× NVMe + 2× SATA here.

If I had the Quatloos I'd buy me a P71, throw some CompuRAM in there and I'd be settled for the next 10 years
Alas, the funds are lacking and I am stuck in Legacy Land

[TPFanatic]

P71 is great, I haven’t used mine in awhile (I’ve been off the grid with limited personal space) but if Haswell is feeling slow I’d have concerns recommending Kaby Lake which is only 3 generations newer.

I liked P71’s two TB3 ports, I hooked up an RTX EGPU and had my fun back in the day. Nowadays I rather rent a GPU farm, it’s cheaper for me than grid electricity. My P71 has become redundant. Also my iPhone is surprisingly good for video editing. Maybe I should pawn off the P.

[tpribors]

So I started going through all the T and P series models and am starting to zero in on a few select models that have according to their spec sheets:

Gen 7 or Gen 8 SD Card reader
4K resolution display (most are 3840 x 2400, Lenovo calls it WQUXGA)
32GB memory

NVMe storage: min 2TB. Since I partition anyway to 2x1TB partitions I would be OK with either a 1x2TB or 2x1TB config (1TB base, I would add 2nd).

Color calibration: All of those listed below say "X-Rite Factory Color Calibration". What does this mean? I don't see the color calibrator sensor on the palm rest so does this mean the color calibration is done by Lenovo "at the factory"? That means a one shot event, right or can it be done again since as time passes the display changes...

The following models meet these constraints

T Series
T1g
T16g

P series
P16v
P1 Gen 8
P16 Gen 3

Amazon has several T1g models that sseem to fit the bill but what is the difference between T1g and P1/P16?

[tpribors]

This one is right at the top of the shopping list

https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkPad- ... r=8-8&th=1

Several different memory/storage configs... I presume that the 2TB SSD is a single unit and not two 1TB taking up both slots.

[TPFanatic]

I think the difference is what graphics cards they get, the T gets Geforce brand GPU while the P gets RTX brand. I dont know if there is much meaningful practical difference between those GPUs, ive done CAD on Geforces and Radeons and played videogames on Quadros and FireGLs without issue either way.