Thinkpad display quality

ProphetOfDoom

ProphetOfDoom

Hi there,
I have a Thinkpad x220 running FreeBSD 13 and I love it. However, the display is awful - it’s not bright enough, it generally looks “washed out” and there’s only about a 30 degree “sweet spot” both horizontally and vertically where the colours look reasonably okay.
So, I saw a really good deal for a Thinkpad p50 on Amazon, I think they came out around 2017. It’s a real beast of a workstation, i7 processor and 16GB RAM. I’m really tempted.
So my question is, did Thinkpad displays actually improve in the intervening seven years or so between those two models? I don’t really want to buy a p50 if the subjective experience is going to be the same.
I’d love to hear your experiences with Thinkpad screens over the years.
Thanks.
 
Okay so I assume my x220 is the TN version, simply because it’s awful. So the p50 would be an upgrade to IPS 300 nits. (It’s not the 4K version).
Thank you.
I’d still like to hear people’s subjective experiences, especially if someone actually has a p50.
 
Not sure what your budget is but I would be very cautious getting a 5y old laptop unless it's really cheap. Battery is most likely dead, if you plan to run VMs you'll have degraded performance due to vulnerability workarounds and i7-6820HQ is barely faster than a desktop i7-3770 (its one of the more powerful CPUs that Lenovo offered in this model. In comparison i5-1135G7 for instance is quite a bit faster than both (at full speed) and decent laptops aren't crazy expensive today.
 
AlexanderProphet said:
I’d love to hear your experiences with Thinkpad screens over the years.
Click to expand...

I have a 3 years old Thinkpad L480, which has a TN panel. I could find out that it was the same panel used on a previous Thinkpad model, for which I found a review online that provided an ICC color profile for this panel. The color profile did improve the colors to my liking.

I have used x11/xcalib to apply the color profile on login.
 
Hullo there.
Apologies if my posts seem a bit disjointed as I’m very socially awkward even for a Unix geek...
My budget is up to £500 (GBP).
I would like something that doesn’t need too much coaxing to work with FreeBSD, hence the focus on Thinkpads... I remember using Linux in like 2006 and having to compile my own sound and webcam drivers and it just made me frustrated.
Diizzy thanks for your response. I didn’t anticipate battery problems as the p50 is certified renewed (???) and I’ve been running my x220 since 2018 with no battery issues. But you have me a bit worried now as I may have just got lucky that time.
I was under the impression that most new hardware simply doesn’t work with FreeBSD. I didn’t even factor new Thinkpads into my initial search. Is that ill-advised?
Drr thanks for the suggestion!
 
AlexanderProphet said:
Hi there,
I have a Thinkpad x220... there’s only about a 30 degree “sweet spot” both horizontally and vertically where the colours look reasonably okay.
Click to expand...
I wonder if you got one with a "security" screen? ISTR seeing panels with a "security" option such that the viewing angle is deliberately made smaller to restrict "should surfing". Goto Lenovo Parts Finder, enter your serial number and have a look at the part description for the LCD panel. I'm assuming it's the original, as-built panel, which is what the part finder will show.

If you bought second hand/used, another possibility is a 3rd party filter fitted by the original owner, but you can almost always tell if a filter has been added. Most have a border/bezel that sticks to you original bezel rather than just a plastic sheet carefully laid over the screen like a phone screen protector. The latter is what you get if it's a factory fitted privacy filter, ie it's an extra layer added to the screen.
 
I really shouldn't be commenting here, but my ThinkPad X270 from 2019 (the model was originally released in 2016) seems to work well with FreeBSD and doesn't have any screen or battery issues. I believe successors include the X280 and X390. I bought it because there was an article on laptops in the FreeBSD Journal around the time I bought it and the author recommended it and used it himself.

Edit: I'm not sure what the sweet spot of the screen is in degrees, but I've never had any issues with it.
 
AlexanderProphet said:
… I was under the impression that most new hardware simply doesn’t work with FreeBSD. …
Click to expand...

Around six months ago:

grahamperrin said:
… I sometimes see suggestions to not expect support for computers that are less than one year old; words to that effect.

My point, with bugs such as 255072 (legacy boot) and 255073 (UEFI boot):
  • a better generalisation might be, at least two years old. …
Click to expand...

Some time later, a massive change for the better, largely thanks to Foundation-sponsored work. In a nutshell:

grahamperrin said:
  • FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE, and its installer, fails to boot various computers
  • FreeBSD 13.1-RELEASE will succeed.
Click to expand...

Q1 2022 Software Development Projects Update | FreeBSD Foundation
  • includes FreeBSD on Framework Laptops
– and so on.
 
AlexanderProphet said:
Hullo there.
Apologies if my posts seem a bit disjointed as I’m very socially awkward even for a Unix geek...
My budget is up to £500 (GBP).
I would like something that doesn’t need too much coaxing to work with FreeBSD, hence the focus on Thinkpads... I remember using Linux in like 2006 and having to compile my own sound and webcam drivers and it just made me frustrated.
Diizzy thanks for your response. I didn’t anticipate battery problems as the p50 is certified renewed (???) and I’ve been running my x220 since 2018 with no battery issues. But you have me a bit worried now as I may have just got lucky that time.
I was under the impression that most new hardware simply doesn’t work with FreeBSD. I didn’t even factor new Thinkpads into my initial search. Is that ill-advised?
Drr thanks for the suggestion!
Click to expand...
I would guess that this https://classic.pricespy.co.uk/product.php?p=5940240 (599£ currently) is a much better choice in the long run, decent screen (IPS, 300 nits, 100% sRGB) and doesn't break the bank. You can also upgrade RAM if needed (which isn't certain these days as some uses low power ram). https://psref.lenovo.com/Detail/ThinkBook/ThinkBook_15_G2_ITL?M=20VE00RPUK
It's not the best thing ever made but for its price I'd say its good for what it is (you can find a lot of reviews online)
According to https://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_5.4#Graphics Tiger Lake should work in 13.1
The only "downside" I can find is that LAN is Realtek but that's not the end of the worl
Worth mentioning is that it also supports Thunderbolt 4 which is very nice at this pricepoint (not supported in FreeBSD currently).

This is, if you're shopping for a 15.6" laptop...
 
I personally am never too concerned about degraded battery in an older laptop that is a well known brand (such as Thinkpad). It is quite easy to buy a cheap knockoff battery on ebay and they are fairly good.

I have an x220, x230 and x240.

My x220 does have a very poor screen brightness, I actually just assumed mine was faulty, so it is somewhat reassuring to hear that I am not alone. The x230 and x240 are indeed better; though at the expense of a loss of the Thinkpad light and instead opting for a backlit keyboard.
 
To clarify, most laptops models comes with different models of screens (specs) so mentioning some random model doesn't help much... =)
While third party batteries might be available quality is usually poor and batteries have limited lifetime and a limited amount of charge cycles A 5y "old stock" battery will most likely not perform any better than one that's been charged lets say a few hundred times or so.
 
Hullo.
Dave, that’s intriguing about the security screens, I’d never even heard of those. Certainly if it’s like this by design, I can confirm that it works.
Graham, I’ve been drooling over Framework laptops on YouTube! That would be cool, like a Dell XPS but with FreeBSD and you can swap out parts.
I was also looking at Slimbook briefly, it’s a company in Spain (I think) and they were partnered with KDE at one time and sold laptops with Linux preinstalled. I have no idea if they’d run FreeBSD though and they’re not as sexy as the Framework ones. There’s almost nothing on here about Slimbooks and FreeBSD.
I really need a mobile workstation dedicated to FreeBSD as I’m hoping to get sponsorship for an app I’m working on. I don’t have a Plan B.
Okay so, after learning that IPS and 300 nits IS an upgrade, and all kpedersons other Thinkpads have okay displays, the p50 is in my shopping basket now so I’m almost committed. If I decide to buy it I will let the forum know if it works.
 
What you might want to look up about the P50 is in what state nVidia graphic is regarding FreeBSD and if its switchable (which I think is unsupported on FreeBSD).
 
Thanks diizzy. The Handbook doesn’t mention any problems with nVidia... but when you say “switchable”, do you mean it possibly can’t be switched at all? Or do you just mean it can’t be dynamically switched based on the load the computer is under? I understand some graphics cards do this.
Thanks.
 
diizzy said:
To clarify, most laptops models comes with different models of screens (specs) so mentioning some random model doesn't help much... =)
Click to expand...
Exactly. Extremely relevant for ThinkPads from back when IBM was making them. I don't know if Lenovo has changed anything in the years since.
 
Okay so, I just went ahead and bought the Thinkpad p50. Admittedly I was probably going to do this anyway. It’s arriving this Saturday. I figured I might have to mess around with xorg but hopefully the threads you linked to diizzy will help.
I also had £20 left over so I bought some Chicken Bone Broth for Tigger. :D Tigger is the gorgeous thing in my profile picture, and she feels the same way about chicken as I do about computers.
 
It arrived a day early! It’s a beast, it weighs about the same as a 2015 MacBook Pro, which I wasn’t expecting. Luckily it’s only for home use. Key travel isn’t as much as I’d like.
B7E6D186-E82C-4FD5-B397-90DF72D90ABC.jpeg

I’ll start it up soon, with a FreeBSD image on a USB stick inserted so it doesn’t try to boot into a Legacy OS.
 
Very cool. Loving the numpad :)

I would recommend booting into Windows once to export all the drivers:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/dism/export-windowsdriver

You never know if you might need to get it repaired one day and the techie is less than knowledgeable about *nix. It is a pain to obtain all the drivers separately.

(Use the Shift-F10 key press in the Windows 10 "initial welcome setup" so you can bring up a command prompt to extract drivers without accepting the license)
 
Well that was unnerving and dramatic.
I tried to install FreeBSD with ZFS, and UEFI/legacy switched to “both” in the BIOS. It claimed to have installed successfully but upon rebooting, Windows was still lurking around and told me that my computer “needed repairing”. Lol! I reinstalled FreeBSD with Legacy Boot set, and chose UFS just for good measure. And I’ve just logged into the installed system!
I expect the problem was UEFI but I suppose it might have been the file system. Also it might have been me impatiently pulling out the USB stick at the wrong moment.
I honestly thought for a minute I’d bricked the thing.
As far as the hardware goes, the display is a MASSIVE improvement from the x220. Colours are more vibrant and I have a 60 degree viewing range horizontally now.
Also I think the previous owner barely used it - there’s not a scratch on it, no wear on the keycaps and it even has that plasticky factory smell.
Now I just need to install all my KDE and sudo and things to make it comfy!
Thanks for all the input.
 

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