ThinkPad E470

22 Aug 2017

Recently I’ve been looking for a Linux-friendly, budget laptop. I like ThinkPads, and all of my laptops have been either T-series or X-series but this time I didn’t want to spend that amount of money and was looking for cheaper alternatives.

Browsing Lenovo website, I realised that a reasonably configured E470 would cost about €1000 which was about how much I was willing to pay. I configured it, so it has:

Including VAT it set me back €1032 which I think is reasonable.

Unlike my other laptops, this time I kept the Windows mainly because it has a discrete GPU—granted not a high-performance one but still much better than Intel HD ones—and I thought I might be able to use it for some light gaming.

I installed Debian testing on it, and everything worked out of the box! The only issue I have with it is that middle-click isn’t working, but this patch will fix it.

Being a budget laptop, E470 lacks some features of X and T series. For example, it doesn’t have ThinkLight or the keyboard isn’t backlit. Its only video output is HDMI which caused me some headache. My monitor only has DisplayPort input; so I bought an HDMI to DisplayPort adapter not realizing that those cables aren’t bi-directional. They’re suitable for scenarios in which you need to connect your DisplayPort-capable device to an HDTV, not the other way around. However, there are converters capable of doing such transformation, at higher costs.

The Good

The Bad

The Ugly