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ThinkPad E480 $1085 Delivered (14" FHD, i7-8550U, 8GB DDR4, 256GB SSD, RX550 Gfx) from Lenovo

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ThinkPad E480 $1085 Delivered (14" FHD, i7-8550U, 8GB DDR4, 256GB SSD, RX550 Gfx) from LenovoAffiliate
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scotty on 04/05/2018 - 15:37 www3.lenovo.com (3715 clicks)
Last edited 04/05/2018 - 16:09
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Got a new deal from Lenovo — ThinkPad E480 for $1085 delivered. Same spec as previous deal in March:

  • Intel Core i7-8550U Processor
  • 14.0" FHD IPS
  • 8GB DDR4 SODIMM
  • 256GB SSD
  • AMD Radeon RX 550 2GB

Lots of discussions on this product from previous deals. Lenovo just won best laptop brand from Laptop Magazine, although it's probably due to X1 Carbon and T-series than budget E-series.

As of customisation option, unfortunately you cannot downgrade to i5-8250U (which is fast enough + generates less heat). Backlit keyboard is $50 extra, Fingerprint reader another $22 and 3 years on-site + premier support has been discounted to $189 extra (from $284.90). Don't bother upgrading memory or SSD as you can find them cheaper elsewhere, and ThinkPads are relatively easy to service (teardown video — actually looks more troublesome than a T-series). It has 2x SODIMM slots and has both M.2 and 2.5" drive bay.

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closed Comments

  • Skramit on 04/05/2018 - 15:45
    +2

    I think you mean 2.5" drive bay?

    Do they offer anything like this with a 1060 or 1050 gpu?

    • scotty on 04/05/2018 - 16:12
      +2

      You are right. 2.5" bay.

      ThinkPads aren't really gaming laptops so I doubt they'll have one with 1060. E570p from last year has 1050ti but it's a different class of laptops.

    • Arcticviper on 04/05/2018 - 16:28
      +3

      If you're looking for something with a 1060, Dell currently has a laptop for about ~$1400

  • kev98 on 04/05/2018 - 15:48

    Any deals for T series planned?

  • HumbleCat on 04/05/2018 - 16:07
    +1

    Scotty I noticed you are always on top of these Lenovo deals. Your preferred brand?

    • scotty on 04/05/2018 - 16:12
      +12

      Yes, they are what I use and what I bought for OzBargain staffs.

      • Scab on 04/05/2018 - 16:21
        +4

        You bought staff laptops, where may I sign up?

        • Pricebeat on 04/05/2018 - 16:32
          +2

          Ozbargain.com.au

        • Meulsie on 04/05/2018 - 17:50
          +4

          @Jimmy007:

          "username already taken" - guess I must be staff already :D

      • HumbleCat on 04/05/2018 - 16:25

        One more question, is the battery life really as good as they claim for 13 hours? So far the only laptop that barely delivered 9 hours is that 13" macbook pro without touchbar.

        • dosada on 04/05/2018 - 16:33
          +1

          I have the e470 from last year and 10 hours are easy doable

        • scotty on 04/05/2018 - 16:35
          +4

          It really depends on the workload. I personally do not think 13 hours is achievable when you use laptops the way they are intended to be used (multi-tasking — lots of browser tabs, connected to Internet and maybe running a VM or 2 for development).

        • chitchat123 on 05/05/2018 - 16:37

          @dosada: Just bought the e480 and it looks like it stops charging at 80%…

          Any idea why? It is brand new and literally arrived 2 days ago..

          I've plugged it in and left it for over 24 hours but won't charge over 80% - it keeps saying "Plugged but not charging".

        • RockmanRock on 05/05/2018 - 19:32
          +1

          @chitchat123:

          Check under Lenovo Vantage app - Hardware Settings - Power - Battery Charge Threshold. It can be set there for the charging to stop at a certain percentage, to prolong battery life.

        • Pox on 06/05/2018 - 00:46

          It might be able to idle for 13 hours, but there's no way you'll get that much real use out of it. From my experience with the E480 you can expect 4-8 hours.

      • Wystri Warrick on 04/05/2018 - 22:35
        +3

        You know Scotty I've always loved you…

  • itsfree on 04/05/2018 - 16:34

    Isn’t it a better deal waiting for the typical E580 sale price?

    • scrimshaw on 04/05/2018 - 16:39
      +2

      The E580's are larger, heavier 15.6 laptops, they also generally pack the same combination of CPU / GPU's. They went for $1095 the last time it was posted

    • scotty on 04/05/2018 - 16:39
      +3

      E480 and E580 has almost identical internal (lazy Lenovo engineers), and you can find E580 at around the same price in the past as well (example). So if you want a heavier & bigger 15.6inch — wait for the E580 sale. Get this if you want the lighter & smaller 14".

  • railspider on 04/05/2018 - 16:39
    -1

    Ideal customisation for me would be removing that graphics card to save weight/price. RX550 is basically useless, rather use onboard.

    • BradH13 on 04/05/2018 - 17:27
      +2

      Handy for graphic manipulation as it's dedicated VRAM.

      • xuqi on 05/05/2018 - 08:07

        All you'll get from the rx550 in this chassis is unwanted heat.

  • mily on 04/05/2018 - 16:48

    Want a T480 if there's any code to pull the price down.

  • sauron256 on 04/05/2018 - 16:50

    Which drive bay is used by the SSD that it ships with?

    • scotty on 04/05/2018 - 17:26

      256GB Solid State Drive PCIe OPAL2.0 M.2 2280 (16GT/s)

  • idonotknowwhy on 04/05/2018 - 17:32
    -1

    Wish I had this instead of the Nvidia model from last year (<profanity> nvidia)

    • FrozenFred on 04/05/2018 - 18:21
      +2

      Errr you mean 1050ti Nvidia? Because this card sucks balls compared to Nvidia. Nvidia is just better…..

      • idonotknowwhy on 04/05/2018 - 23:58

        Nope, it's a 950m.
        And nope, I'd much rather have the RX550 despite the lower specs as I run linux and hate having to rebuild the nvidia kernel module every time I update the kernel.

        In other words: https://youtu.be/_36yNWw_07g?t=8

        Edit: I'm legitimately thinking of ebaying the E470 with the GTX 950m and replacing it with this so I can run the opensource amd drivers.

  • whirlpool_guy on 04/05/2018 - 20:20

    Do they have coil whine? I tried XPS 13 and it was LOUD

    • sjf430 on 05/05/2018 - 13:27

      I have the e580, there is a slight coil whine when the fan kicks in

      • scrimshaw on 05/05/2018 - 16:05

        That's just fan noise isn't it? , coil whine on the other hand can sometimes be constant regardless of load and be very annoying

  • Wystri Warrick on 04/05/2018 - 20:37
    +1

    Awesome deal.

    I'm glad AMD has really improved the IPC of their CPU's, it's bringing some much needed competition.

    BTW I love you Scotty =).

    • virhlpool on 06/05/2018 - 10:18
      +1

      Nice deal but not a budget laptop for sure. It is pricy. Not everyone spends $1100 for their laptop.

  • sky blu on 04/05/2018 - 21:42
    +1

    Nice post Scotty. I've eventually decided to order the T580 after considering other brands.

    • Wystri Warrick on 06/05/2018 - 10:24
      +1

      I just had to see the specs of the T580, very nice, love the battery :).

  • Entropy Sky on 04/05/2018 - 21:47
    +1

    I bought one earlier this year,have to return it due to faulty touch pad.

    Also, during light games, RX550 don't automativally kick in, have to manually turn it on globally, very annoying.

  • rian354252 on 04/05/2018 - 22:44

    First time using Lenovo laptop, switched from Asus and HP.
    I managed to get the i7 ver with 16gb RAM for about 1200 few months ago.
    Personally, I'm really loving it
    Price to performance ratio is just perfect and it's just an overall great all-rounder.
    The only complaint I have is that sometimes it throttles and it gets really loud and I'm also not a huge fan of Lenovo's placement of ctrl key being switched in position with the Fn key.
    The battery also lasts for really long, but the laptop is still strong enough to be used for moderate gaming at home.
    I highly recommend this

    • decr on 05/05/2018 - 06:01
      +1

      You can usually swap the Fn/Ctrl keys in BIOS. But I agree, it looks silly.

    • isiyara on 05/05/2018 - 19:44

      I got used to the Fn key placement, problem is when I use another computer haha

      • rian354252 on 05/05/2018 - 19:55

        yea, this is exactly the problem haha

  • Hernandaz on 05/05/2018 - 05:29

    High performance but also the price.

  • donkeydoc on 05/05/2018 - 07:16

    Good resolution at 1920x1080!

    • virtual81 on 05/05/2018 - 14:58

      Agreed, just right, not to low, not too high for a 14" display.
      I'm running 1440p with 150% scaling on a 14" and given how problematic scaling is i'd swap for a 1080p display in a heartbeat.

  • TheDolphin on 05/05/2018 - 10:29
    +1

    I'm a after a laptop for traveling and this looks good to me. I basically just want web browsing etc and to be able to download photos and video from my camera and some basic editing (Full HD but 4k ) . Will this be ok?

    I also want to have a look at one before ordering online, does anyone know any retail stores that stock these? I looked at JB, HN, GG and OW but all they have is Ideapads. I guess the ideapads are consumer and Thinkpads business grade?

    • tanniesjunk on 05/05/2018 - 11:36

      can't help but pretty much describes what i'm looking for too so following

    • DrABCDEFG on 05/05/2018 - 13:36

      Is it a bit heavy for travel though at 1.75kg? I think it's otherwise sufficient for the uses you've described though.

      • TheDolphin on 05/05/2018 - 21:15

        Yeah I agree but think it may be worth it for a bit more grunt.

        • Save Medicare on 06/05/2018 - 06:30

          Get a dell 7000 series from dell outlet (as new)

  • DealMeIn on 05/05/2018 - 12:15
    +1

    Great deal! Extra 8GB DDR4 (total 16gb) is only $105. That's only a few dollars more than retail and you don't need to open the case.

    • virtual81 on 05/05/2018 - 14:32

      Yeah, for those that want 16GB this is a rare case of it being very reasonably priced.
      Get it optioned in.
      That said very few will see a benefit from 16GB.

      • virhlpool on 06/05/2018 - 10:14

        That said very few will see a benefit from 16GB

        Why do you say that?

  • sjf430 on 05/05/2018 - 13:25
    +2

    I bought the e580 (similar internals to this e480) a week ago with the rx 550 and i7 8550u for some gaming, the cooling on this laptop is really bad, about 5-10 minutes into any game it starts to throttle really bad, if I could go back i would just get the one with igpu, the battery lasts me about 8 hours

    • bgainhunter1 on 05/05/2018 - 21:02

      Do you think E580 would be going for streaming and study? I want a bigger screen compared to E480

  • Tech and cars on 05/05/2018 - 14:17
    -1

    I really think this is great value!

    960m performance on the graphics card - which is really quite decent! 8th gen i7… wow! If I needed a laptop, I would be all over this.

    I'm still running an old i7 2600 cpu from my pc years ago, with 16gb ram, and a 1060gb graphics card - old hard ware still is performing very well in 2018 :)

    • virtual81 on 05/05/2018 - 15:06
      +1

      Upgraded from 3rd gen i5 to 6th gen i5 a couple of years ago, the difference was minimal.
      The biggest performance increase I've gotten in the last 5 years was making the move from mechanical drives to SSD's

      • scrimshaw on 05/05/2018 - 16:07

        That's because the lack of innovations from AMD meant Intel had little competition. They could make tiny little upgrades and people would still buy Intel CPUs.

        It wasn't until AMD Ryzen came about that Intel started to get their butts in gear and introduced more cores into their CPUs.

        The IPC increase however has only been slight with each generation. Last big jump was from Core 2 to Nehalem or Sandy Bridge.

  • monkeyboy666 on 05/05/2018 - 14:54

    I'm after a new laptop. Have a budget of $1.5k(max). 13-14", SSD, all the usual suspects(dedicated gfx nice, but not a deal breaker).

    Mainly to be used for work/study so portability & battery life important.

    Am I best to save my extra $500 by buying the E480 Lenovo @ $1K? Am I going to get more bang for my buck spending the extra $500 on a higher spec laptop? Or is the E480 @ $1k great bang for buck and hard to beat at this price?

    Thanks

    • virtual81 on 05/05/2018 - 15:06
      +1

      If buying for gaming a more gaming specific machine (not as slim, better gfx and better cooling system) will be the go.
      Otherwise this thing is pretty awesome.
      With the recommended upgrades (that i agree with) you're at just under $1300
      If you think you can use it add the additional 8GB ram (8+8GB) for a total of ~ $1400
      Avoid the other RAM options, as usual they're a ripoff.

      • monkeyboy666 on 05/05/2018 - 23:24

        Thanks

        $100 for an extra 8GB of ram seems reasonable.

        Will probably get the fingerprint & backlit keyboard as extras.

        3 Year warranty for $180 is worth piece of mind(How does the Lenovo warranty stack up to say Dell?)
        I've currently got a 17" Metabox and used their warranty service once for a replacement keyboard which was pretty good.

    • Pox on 06/05/2018 - 00:54

      If portability and battery life are important then you might be better off with something pricier. For example the Asus UX430UN is a great deal at ~$1350 with the 20% off ebay voucher right now.

  • worldwidehappiness on 06/05/2018 - 14:24
    +2

    Warning: This laptop had extremely high temperatures before the bios update, and then fixed that by nearly deactivating the GPU. Here's a quote from notebookcheck:

    "Update BIOS 1.14: Lenovo reduced the performance of the Radeon RX 550 massively with the BIOS update. This improves the temperatures, but the resulting graphics performance is almost identical with the supposedly much slower iGPU version with the UHD Graphics 620. It is almost like Lenovo deactivated the dedicated GPU."

    • monkeyboy666 on 07/05/2018 - 12:24

      This heat issue is a bit of a worry.

      Can future bios updates fix it? Or is this an issue due to design/hardware?

      • worldwidehappiness on 07/05/2018 - 19:36

        It looks like they fixed the heat issue by virtually disabling the GPU. Maybe that was the best they could do? Heat is about fans and heat sinks and vents, so if that isn't sorted at the design stage, then it's hard to fix later. At the moment, maybe it's best to get the i5 without the GPU.

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