I'm never buying a Thinkpad again.
I'm a photographer and videographer. For my work, I have a very powerfull PC at home, and I also have a powerful laptop to work photos and video when on the field, on gigs.
After having owned a PNY Prevail Pro 3000 for a few years it was time to buy a new laptop.
I went for a 5 500$ CAD Thinkpad: the ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 4 Intel (16"):
- Processor
- 11th Generation Intel® Core™ i9-11950H Processor with vPro® (2.60 GHz, up to 5.00 GHz with Turbo Boost, 8 Cores, 16 Threads, 24 MB Cache)
- Operating System
- Windows 11 Pro 64
- Graphics
- NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX™ 3080 with Max-Q 16GB
- Memory
- 32 GB DDR4 3200MHz
- Storage
- 1 TB PCIe SSD
I ordered it directly from Lenovo. I received it, I set it up, but didn't needed it until 1 month after having received it (because I don't need a laptop on every gig I have).
So the first time I really used it on a gig was to record a powerpoint like I a did dozens of time with both my PC and my old laptop. But after 35min of recording, the laptop froze. I thgought it really sucked because that had never happened before with my other machines. So the next day I called Lenovo customer service. They told me to update a bunch of things. And then they told me to run a diagnosis. In the mean time the Laptop froze a few times doing simple tasks as browsing the web. Then I spent a few hours on the phone with abunch of people. And finally they told me I had to re-isntall Windows. So they sent me a USB key to reinstall Windows. It took a few days to arrive. I reinstalled windows and re-installed all my programs. And I was ready for the next gig on which I needed my laptop.
This gig was a 3 day event phtoography event with one of my good client. Usually, with this client, I set up my laptop and than, through the day, I transfer, edit and then uplaod directly the photos for my client to use right away. So from 9am to 10am, I took a bunch of pictures and at 10am I began a first transfer. After transfering a couple of photos to the laptop, it froze. I had to hard-reboot it by pressing the power button for 10 seconds. Just to transfer and to edit this first batch of photos, I had to reboot my laptop this way 5 times. It just kept freezing. At lunch time, the reboot count was at 12.
So during lunch, I call the """customer service""" (again), and I told the guy that i had done all what they wanted, that I had reinstalled Windows, but that the laptop was still freezing all the time and was now barely usable. I asked again (it was not the first time) for a whole replacement unit because I obviously had received a lemon, but the guy told me they wouldn't replace it. Instead, they would try to repair it. The guy told me they were gonna order a new motherboard (I would have to wait for them to get the part) and then they were going to send a technician to replace the part... But in the meantime I would be stuck with a unreliable machine. The next 2 days of my gig where a nightmare, I had to hard-reboot the Thinkpad at least 20 times per day. It made me look so unprofessionnal in front of my good client.
So this is where I am now. I have paid 5500 $ for a laptop because I wanted a powerfull machine a peace of mind. But now, I'm stuck with a machine that is unusable that freezes all the time.
At least if Lenovo and Thinkpad were owning their misktake and they were willing to replace the machine, I would be understanding. I get it, I got a lemon. It happends. But I should not penalized because Lenovo can't deliever working machine 100% of the time.
I'm so mad. It's been a week now and they still have not received the motherboard. And when they're going to receive it God knows how much time it's gonna take for them to book a technician to come to replace the motherboard.
I'm so angry at Thinkpad. They don't value their customer at all. They treat me like s***.
So, for your own sake, run from this company. They product is not what it used to be and their custumer service is a joke.