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ThinkPad E495 / 14" FHD / AMD Ryzen 5 3500U / 256GB SSD / 8GB RAM / $749 Shipped @ Lenovo

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TA-OZB495
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Can't tell you how many request I've had to get this back, so here it is and a few dollars cheaper than last time. Apply eCoupon TA-OZB495 at checkout for the discount. Call Lenovo's telesales number on 1300 557 073 (until 5:30pm weekdays) with any questions. Ends 11:59pm June 30, unless sold out or withdrawn prior. Working on a number of TA codes with Lenovo this week so should hopefully have a few great deals. Enjoy :)

  • AMD Ryzen 5 3500U CPU
  • 14" FHD IPS (1920 x 1080)
  • 256GB SSD M.2 PCIe
  • 8.0GB DDR4 SODIMM 2400MHz
  • 329mm x 242mm x 19.9mm (1.75kg)

Click here for 10% cashback via Cashrewards. Ensure last click before purchase is from this link.

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  • +7

    my usual downsides for this model: 250nit is not terribly bright. I have 300nit screen and I often want it to go a notch brighter in certain circumstances.

    also 45wh is not a terribly large battery, so don't expect stellar battery life.

    but for the price it can be overlooked.

    • +5

      For the weight the battery should be bigger.

    • The batteries arent switchable in these are they?

    • The battery is tiny!

      I recall my first netbook having at least a 6cell battery. S:

      • Cell count does not directly equate to battery life.
        My 2 cell i7 notebook smashes my 6 cell netbook for battery life.

        Just for those not aware, 99% of cars have a 6 cell battery.
        Cell is just a unit of quantity, not capacity.

    • Not the size that counts, it's how you use it.

      Still a larger one that is used well is always better.

      Battery that is.
      With an economical CPU and SSD based systems and good optimizations you can make good use of a smaller battery.
      That said…

      "I wish my battery was smaller"
      - No one ever

      • yes I know, but AMD CPU based system doesn't strike me as economical or optimised. then again I have a 45W TDP CPU from Intel in mine, and 92Wh battery to go with it, so probably that's right I may be a bit biased. then again, my previous laptop was 40Wh battery and i7-7500U 15 incher, and it didn't deliver long battery life at all.

        • I can't be sure yet, but have heard Ryzen 3 to be very efficient.
          Have steered well clear of previous AMD lappys for being inefficient.
          Time and benchmarks will tell if they finally have a worthwhile offering.

          A 45W TDP is pretty hefty for a notebook, well and truly justifies the 92Wh battery.

          The i7-7500U is configurable from 7.5 to 25W so close enough to half the power, possible even 1/3rd of your previous machine, hence why the reduced battery.

          Kinda sucks though, why not stick with a larger battery?
          Weight is a consideration, but adding another 10 or 20 Wh isn't going to be that big of a deal.

          On to optimizations, something as trivial as wiping the machine and putting a clean bloat free version of Windows on it can have wonderful benefits. It's really a shame manufacturers have to stick to this rotten practice.
          Even the cleaner machines still have bloated fancy drivers with superfluous UI's (track-pad drivers etc…).
          Other optimizations come in the form of being smart at the hardware/component level. For example good quality well designed voltage/current regulation for the internal power supply and LCD backlight.

          Smart choices like going with 1080p on a 14" display (more pixels is better except windows scaling sucks) will reduce power needed by GPU depending on application.

          Good thermal interface and thermal management hardware might allow higher performance with lower fan speeds, or fan off.
          Fans don't use a lot of power, but still having a physically compact machine run hard uses power, then you need to use a little more power on top to cool it down… not really efficient.

          This has become a bit long winded.. lol

          If you are familiar with overclocking you could try Intel XTU and see how low you can get your CPU volts to conserve a little power.
          Same as overclocking but in reverse, you drop voltage instead of increasing voltage and clock.

  • backlit keyboard?

  • wait for zen 2, 2000 series will drop ;)

    • was joke :(

  • pretty standard price if you ask me, only plus is a FullHD screen…but so heavy!

  • +2

    OP, could you ask them about a deal on E595 again, please? I'm doing a PhD and mainly need it for word processing, stats analysis, internet and occasional movie watching. I don't care about it's clunkiness or lack of backlit keyboard. I'm after something reliable and fairly fast. Unless anyone can recommend another good 15.6" laptop <$1 K? Thanks.

    • +21

      These are the units I'm trying to get down in price, with 10% cashback over and above:

      Would love to get some feedback in the comments on pricing and whether the above is aggressive. Cheers!

      • +5

        What about the i7 X1 Extreme? I expect that should be ready for a discount since v2 is due to drop very soon.

      • Alternatively, a great deal on an E490s i7 would be welcomed too.

        • +4

          Will definitely try for you! Is the 490s i5 at the $1050 mark crap/ok/awesome? And what sort of price would you expect the 490s i7 to be?

          • +1

            @tightarse: Thanks, I appreciate it. I personally wouldn't buy an i5 but I think that price is just ok. Better than the current education store price but still more than a budget E series laptop should cost in my opinion.

      • +1

        I don't think it's too aggressive. Last week the E595 was $777. OzBargainers are known to buy up big if there's a good deal going. ;-)

      • +7

        Will buy one of the E595 deals if it comes in at that price :)

      • +4

        Also just as a reference point, I posted this deal a few months ago. I actually missed out on the deal myself due to financial reasons but if Lenovo could offer a great deal on an i7 X1 Extreme with just 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and a decent warranty (the deal I posted included 3 year depot) I'm sure it would be a hit.

        • +3

          Thank you. Will do my best :)

      • are they come default as a black color? how can i get a silver? Any option to choose?

      • If it helps Metabox current price's for them to price match something similar.

        $1250 gets you i7-9750h, GTX 1050, 512 SSD, 8GB Ram

      • -1

        please nobody buy the intel models unless you really know what you're doing (e.g. heavily using one of the ~4 workstation programs that pretty much only work on intel cpus).

        • Why? Could you elaborate please?

          • -1

            @Duckman: intel hasn't been very competitive the past 2 years, and while the ryzen platform has matured, intel just received more and more security vulnerabilities which further killed performance. hyperthreading is recommended to be disabled on all intel "Core" cpus now to be safe.

            also, just walk into any jbhifi with display models and touch the palm rest area, intel laptops tend to be quite warm just idling, while the ryzen models aren't heated at all. very crude test, but speaks volumes about power management.

            and finally the cost, they haven't really dropped at all. even at the same price, ryzen apus offer much better performance.

            • -1

              @xrailgun: Wut. da. Feck.

              intel hasn't been very competitive the past 2 years,

              All the fastest notebook processors are Intel.

              intel laptops tend to be quite warm just idling, while the ryzen models aren't heated at all

              Ryzen 2000 series have terrible temperatures and thermal throttling.

              ryzen apus offer much better performance

              An Intel 8250u has near identical performance but with low to minimal thermal throttling. The more recent 8265u is far superior. Read any Ryzen review. Thermal throttling within 10 odd seconds. Ryzen on Linux is also a massive headache.

              hyperthreading is recommended to be disabled

              No it isn't. Even then that storm in a teacup is referring to 7th gen Intel or older.

      • +2

        If at all possible, I would love to see a great deal on the T580. It wouldn't surprise me if others were keen for that too. The T580 is one of those rare models now that still has a replaceable battery!

      • +3

        Hello tightarse, great deals

        Ordered one last week for me .

        Wifey wants something more consumer like yoga c930 or 730 or 520. Preferably at least 14 inch.maybe even a ThinkPad yoga. Any chance you can see if they can do some super-Yoga-deals. She mainly wants a yoga 360 fold over type laptop.

        Thanks mate

        • I was in Good Guys Caringbah today and they had two Yogas on sale. Onewas an outgoing model, and the other was the store demo (looking WAY better than usual store demos). I don’t recall the models but the reductions were good. My memory is very hazy because I was only half looking. Maybe worth a call?

      • +1

        I'm literally waiting to see if those prices are possible so I can grab one straight away. If you're able to organise this it would be incredible!

      • Any luck with these?

      • Great deals on Lenovo TA, shame that Lenovo could not come to the party with the E490 i7 @ sub $1250 above, I was hopeful that it would come up and we were ready to grab that little beauty.

      • E490 i7 Seems a bit expensive to begin with, the E490 posted today seems pretty much equivalent minus the discreet GPU.
        Wouldn't be to keen to spend an additional $250+ on a 2GB GPU in 2019.

        E490 i5 looks the biz, i suspect that is the one posted today?

        E490s not sure what i'm missing, looks worse than the E490 (smaller M.2 SATA3 SSD vs larger M.2 NVME SSD)

        E480 isn't terribly exciting, but at that price point it might be nice. Only minor drawback is the Realtek WiFi.

        E595 - probably not great for someone frequently on the go, but not bad. Not looked into performance on the new AMD stuff, but hear good things. Battery is a little small to drive a back light with a significantly larger area than a 14"
        Realteck WiFi is another minor bummer.
        The SSD does cause a litterl concer for potential upgrade sake…
        "256GB SSD M.2 2242 PCIe NVMe"
        My 2017 Lenovo has a slot for a M.2 SSD that is limited to 2242, which is a pain in the ass size as far as SSD's go.
        Weather this supports other sizes in addition to 2242 is unknown, but i'd hope it does.

        As for performance, sustained loads on the CPUs usualy cause them to throttle rendering their performance similar.
        I't always nice to have an i7, but this in my opinion is only a minor part of the equation.

        For those willing to get hands dirty you can try different thermal interface material and undervolting in intel XTU to reduce heat output and increase performance on sustained loads.
        Also has a minor benefit to battery life.
        Has same risks as overclocking with the exception of heat.

    • can connect you to a mobile workstation for $1300. that is more suitable for number crunching with i5H CPU. and can tackle some gaming too, while you're at it, without cheap gaming rig build.

  • Has anyones E595 shipped for the previous deal TA posted?

    • My E595 has shipped and due to be in the country tomorrow. ETA for delivery is the 3rd

      • Mine has same due date but has not shipped yet

        • Their tracking is a little confusing but i think i read it as it is in Brisbane this morning

  • Does this have 2x4 or 1x8 if it's 1x8 I don't know why if it performs better with both channels occupied.

    • 1 x 8

      just buy another 4 or 8 to max it out

    • I give you, the coolest story

      Edit: can you identify what you need a MacBook for that a windows laptop won't do?

        • I actually spent 2.5k on a Mac Mini which I returned because it was a horrific waste of money. I also own a 2016 MacBook Pro that I use for development… I bought it marked down at office works.

          If you have heat issues you should look into undervolting using something like throttle stop. If you can get your heat under control maybe you can postpone your upgrade and make your $ go a bit further 😀

          Just my 2c

    • +1

      I know where you can get one for a good price. But you need to pay for the charger as an extra, for a cool price of $499

      • -2

        So you seems have good contacts, can you please tell where ?

  • should we wait for the new Ryzen

    • +5

      New mobile ryzen not coming until next year

      • but should we wait for that?

        • +15

          Then once that is out you should wait for the one after that and then the one after that… Question is do you need a laptop now or not?

          • +7

            @nagel: Definitely this perpetual waiting will save you thousands….loll

    • -3

      I feel this is more a meme at this point.
      When does AMD ever actually deliver on their mysterious prelaunch benchmarks.
      The answer is never.

      • Intel releases CPUs with many security holes. The patches slow them down anyway,and don't fix all the issues. You have to disable features like Hyper-threading just to try and mitigate a security hole.

  • tightarse can you please try to get the E480 i5 @sub $800 thanks

  • Don't need it but bought one last time and bought another one just now! Thanks

  • +1

    E595(lenovo.com) @ sub $790

    Happy to get one also at that price.

  • I'm still using the Yoga 460 I got from one of your deals.

    Damn good laptop..

    WOuld like to upgrade when there's a decent deal

  • Thanks TA!
    Also need a laptop with Windows 10 Pro for work if you can make that happen!

  • Great deal, $680.91 after 10% Cashrewards cashback.

  • Would this be powerful enough to edit 4k video?

    • +1

      It will be "enough" in the sense that it will work, however it might not be too pleasant of an experience (as the performance may slow down a bit due to performance throttling after extended heavy use), and to do 4K I'm assuming you'll at least want 16GB RAM (if not preferably going up to 32GB; also depends on how long the video is).

      If you want a machine to very comfortably run and edit 4K video, this is a very good machine, https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/465646 , albeit at $1k more (and you'll need to upgrade the RAM to at least 16GB).

      If you don't game and on a tighter budget, look for a laptop with good thermal design (which means it'll be thicker than ultrabook, at >2cm thick) with 8th gen or above intel i7 processors. Dell often have them for ~$1.2-1.5k on eBay when on 20% sale.

    • With the current eBay Dell 20% off, this will come down to ~$1380 https://m.ebay.com.au/itm/333196760870 , and it'll provide comfortable 4K edit, after you upgrade RAM to at least 16GB.

  • +1

    how about 2 in 1?

    • Looking for 2 in 1 too…

  • -5

    Looks like Intel is the way to go as Trump blacklist AMD like Huawei
    https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/trump-black…

    • +1

      Please read the article again. It only talks about the AMD joint venture company from being blocked making customised CPU's in China. It is not as big as the Huawei ban.

  • +1

    Thanks TA, i've had a few people asking me for laptop recommendations this week so this will come in handy :D

    I'm trying to find excuses to replace our E570 at home too but it's still doing it's job wonderfully so i can't justify it :)

  • +4

    Would love it if a deal on the T480s @tightarse if possible please!

    • Am also waiting for T series or Yoga

  • From this post, I decided to cancel my order with 32GB ram for $1200~ (Thinkpad e495) and simply get the L340 Gaming for $1550 with 16GB ram and 512GB SSD.

    • Hey just wondering did you successfully cancelled your order?
      I called them on 24th to cancel my order and the guy submitted the request.
      However it still shows expected to be shipped by today while tracking the order on their website.
      Thanks.

      • I did cancel my order. The agent mentioned that cancellation wouldn't be an issue for my case as it still in the processing stage. I am guessing your one already went for shipping. You may have to ship it back if they sent it out.

        • Thanks for the info. I eventually called them again on Friday and the guy said there was an issue in your system. He sent me an email saying it will be cancelled and I will get full refund. The pos authorisation for that order was removed on Saturday but their website still says expected to be shipped 26th June.

          I placed a new order for a different model on Friday and haven't got any update from Lenovo since then. Website shows no expeted ship date or delivery date.

  • +1

    For those subscribed to this post, here's the E595 @ $769

    https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/466119

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