posts/why-i-chose-the-thinkpad-z13-as-my-linux-laptop/ #195
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Replies: 14 comments 28 replies
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A big thank you for this. I listened to the podcast also. I found that your criteria were exactly right and really helped me to be more confident about which parameters to consider. It lead me to think about one aspect that is missing when people review laptops. What does a desktop with essentially the same specs cost? I guess it would come out a bit odd sometimes, but it strikes me that the "same spec desktop device" would be an interesting way of showing the reader what is so good about laptops and what is best to do if working on the go is not required. All the best. |
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Glad you found the write up useful and thanks for listening to Linux Matters 😀 |
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A lot of GPU reported bugs for AMD Ryzen. Did you found any of those? |
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I've not experienced anything like what is described in that page. |
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Hello, How is the Z13 doing in this regard? Does the fan go off most of the time? |
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Hello, I do not feel that the fans are noisy in this laptop (unfortunately I do not have measurements). What I could say is it could be pretty hot in some cases like playing games, however, the performance keeps pretty well even on that situation. About performance, battery and fans I have no regrets with this laptop. |
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Hey @orrot do the fans run all the time or do they completely stop on light tasks like browsing web and writing email? |
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Hi @jhit, I have been checking the fans using lm-sensors, it looks like they stop and do not need to work if we are doing light task and the laptop is in a good place (in a table or in the support when I usually work). However, If I am on the bed, with the laptop on the mattress, the fans start to work at high RPMs according to lm-sensors. At this moment, writing this post, with 10 tabs opened and a youtube video in the background, lm-sensors is printing 0 RPM. |
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I don't think I've ever heard the fans spin up on the Z13. I know the fans are active sometimes, but I've not heard them and not been distracted by them. |
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Very nice text! I have pretty similar requirements (except that I was not able to import a 32 Ram model to my country). I have been using for several months the laptop, with KDE Neon and now with Ubuntu, and both experiences were great!. Fingerprint worked for me in all the cases, I just had issues to disable it for login in Ubuntu (I enjoy fingerprint and IR for facial recognition for all the other things that require password, but not for login because of the keyring). Sound is great, battery is great, performance is great and even, some light gaming is great for a laptop without eGPU. I had to use newer Kernels to get the laptop working well, and to be honest I had several issues, until I get Kernel 6.2 where all finally was solved (I am using amd pstate drivers to keep a good battery life with amd). The only thing I am not happy about this laptop is that sometimes a pop sound is happening. The issue is reported by in the lenovo page, but no solution has been provided. There is also another reported issue for power profiles, but it looks it will be released a solution for that in the next months. |
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Hey Martin, I am really interested in this laptop. I gave my current one away and now typing from that Dell XPS13 you once gave to me 🙏, and it is sloooow, which I was personally surprised about. I am urgently looking for a new laptop, I have fallen to think I want this z13 or one of those newer Dell XPS 13 Pluses (the Dell looks are just too nice and I am a sucker for it). I do have a a question about this z13, I have not seen many people with success stories when using opencl with AMD graphics, have you had a play with that and does it work ok? (I am thinking Darktable here) |
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Hey Sergio 👋 I haven't don't anything with OpenCL in the Z13 so sadly have helpful to add on that topic. I would say the current generations of AMD CPUs (6000 and 7000 series) are performance competitive with Intel's offerings, but the AMD CPUs are way more energy efficient, and therefore have better battery endurance and output less heat. The iGPs in the current AMD CPUs are also significantly better than anything Intel offer. I expect the the Z13 will perform very well with Darktable. |
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Thank you for the thorough and helpful review! Your criteria are my criteria. One thing, though... I'm a TrackPoint user, and the last time I tried to work without a row of physical buttons below the pointing stick, I ended up sad. (1st gen Thinkpad Helix maybe?) I typically disable the touchpad entirely because palm rejection was less than perfect last time I tested it under Linux. And/or I'm a sloppy typist. Even with the touchpad enabled, though, I found the drivers insufficient to meet the following requirements when using a device that simulates TrackPoint buttons using the upper portion of the touchpad:
Any chance you're a TrackPoint user? Or tested these things just because you were super bored? :) |
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Sadly not. I've never used the Trackpoint on the Z13. But @popey is a Z13 owner and traditionally a trackpoint advocate 🙂 Perhaps he has some insight? |
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I am indeed a TrackPoint™ user. However, my Z13 is mostly a desktop-replacement, connected to a USB C hub with an external keyboard and mouse. It does indeed have a functional set of 3 'buttons' to use with the TrackPoint™ but because (unlike the classic X220) the buttons aren't separate, but one bar with three regions, it is easy to hit the wrong button. HTH YMMV |
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Thank you! |
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Have you already posted about your after-market solution to upgrade to 2TB? |
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Not yet. Coming soon ™️ |
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After some digging I finally discovered why I can't buy the same laptop you describe: Lenovo in USA only offers a Linux option on one laptop. The Z13 available for the USA market has a different CPU, different screen, etc. Thanks for the podcast and writeup though! |
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I did a similar SSD upgrade that Martin did, but hasn't got around to writing up yet :) https://popey.com/blog/2023/09/thinkpad-z13-ssd-replacement/ |
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@tstechy That blog post 👆️ from Alan is all the info you need on how to upgrade the Z13 SSD. The only additional information for me to add is the 2TB SSD I used is a Western Digital PC SN740 NVMe™ 2TB M.2 2230 SSD. I got mine on eBay. |
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Thanks for this post. I'm creating a similar spreadsheet with my requirements for a Linux laptop. :-) |
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Sorry, I don't 😞 |
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Hi! Thanks a lot for sharing this precious data on different laptops. I wanted to ask if after more than a year you had any issue with the Z13. In particular, looking at this wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Lenovo_ThinkPad_Z13, it looks like some of the hardware is partially working (audio and usb4 in particular). What's your experience? Thanks! |
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Hi @fraricci, I just make a basic usage of the USB4 ports. I have been using several adapters and ports without any issue. One of them is a dock with a couple of DisplayPort and HMI plus several other ports like USBC3.1, USBA 3.0, Ethernet and 3.5mm audio. The dock has worked very well for me. I have not tried eGPU or things like that, but at least related to docks, hubs and adapters, my experience have been pretty good, specially in Kernels 6.X. |
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Hi! Love your blog post :) I have the same laptop with 16GB/512GB and touch screen option and been loving it so far. I want to ask if you face any issues with Linux compatibility as well? I'm running Fedora 40, and sometimes the fingerprint just stops working after a while (more info here https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/libfprint/libfprint/-/issues/612) and the laptop would sometimes wake up during sleep and is stuck on a black screen requiring a hard reset. |
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Thanks, I think it's something to do with the media on the website that makes it consumes more battery. I also found out about how hardware decoding on AMD on Linux can actually consume more energy than software decoding (https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/3195#note_2295146) and was able to replicate it with Chrome on my system. This is quite a bummer and part of a reason why media consumption on this platform is noticeably worse than on Windows :( Media decoding aside, I do think that the amd_pstate driver is pretty good, I'm hovering 4W writing this on Firefox and averages 5W doing normal tasks (surfing the web, reading articles, etc.) and <3W on idle. I don't think it can go lower than that so for now I am satisfied with what this system offers :) Thank you everyone |
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I had noticed that about the hardware acceleration, and in fact, Firefox has not been always my main browser. However, I have to say that the real improvement of that AMD hardware acceleration comes with 4K or bigger videos. In those cases is when I've found that the consumption is a lot better with hardware acceleration enabled in Firefox. I think the same about the other tasks... the power consumption is really nice on this laptop and without having a big battery like other laptops. Maybe in the feature or in newer versions AMD or Linux itslelf improves the video streaming and that would be great for us. Luckily for me, not a big problem while on the other tasks are still working great (I am developer, so for my job, battery just works great). Thanks for the feedback! |
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Hey Daniel, me again, I have been curious since we talked about battery consumption, so I have been reading some stuff. I just checked what power-daemon does and the only thing is not clear for me is why the GPU performance level is still as 'auto' even in power mode. I have been doing some quick tests (no for long time) and it looks like setting the power_dpm_force_performance_level improves the battery consumption during video playback. I found this by reading but also in someone commented it in a forum. The person that commented said that it could makes sluttering in 4K60fps videos (I am testing it to see if that is right), however, for me looks like it works pretty well and in my case I see an noticeable improvement in videoplayback. Not sure if probably that's something you also would like to try. I will continue on this for the next days to see what problems could appear with that configuration. The change is something like this: echo 'low' | sudo tee -i /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_force_performance_level > /dev/null ("auto" is the default value, so same command could be used to get the default config back ) |
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@droussielle After some days using the configuration I put in the comment above, definitely the battery is even better, not only for youtube videos, but for applications like spotify. I placed the configuration of "low" graphics when laptop is not plugged. (I am the same person of the comment above, but I have to apply some changes in my account) |
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Hi Orlando, I tried your solution and indeed saw a significant drop in power use when setting GPU performance level to Edit: After switching back to Balanced it jumps up to ~14W, so maybe there's still something that needs optimizing? |
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Since this article was released Lenovo has provided a touchpad configuration tool for Linux users! You can get it here: https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/thinkpad-z-series-laptops/thinkpad-z13-type-21d2-21d3/downloads/ds561548-elan-haptic-pad-settings-tool-for-linux-thinkpad-z13-gen-1-z16-gen-1?category=Mouse,%20Touchpad,%20Keyboard%20and%20Pen
From my time using the laptop, I can say the haptic touchpad has worked really well and is the main reason I got this over a traditional X or T series Thinkpad. The clicking is quite different from that of a Macbook though, I would say the click on this one feels more like a sharp tactile click, than that of a Macbook, which has a mushy thump to it. With proper speed/acceleration profile this can feel right as home as a touchpad on a Macbook :) The Z13 Gen 2 may have a different click profile as it uses a Sensel touchpad instead of an Elan one, so I can't comment on that. I would really appreciate if anyone wants to share their experience! |
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I know this blog post is old at this point but I wanted to drop by and thank you for writing it anyways. I was considering picking up on of these second hand and I had some reservations about it that you covered. I have almost the exact same set of requirements you do so it was almost comedically perfect that I found your blog. I went ahead and ordered my new-to-me Z13 and can't wait for it to get here. Thanks again! |
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I'm glad this blog post was helpful 🙂 |
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