As before, Lenovo’s venerable ThinkPad T480 remains a top competitor within the business market. It is a product of years of refinement and careful revision, rivaled only by a handful of truly top-notch machines. As we said during our last review, its construction is mostly very solid, the design is ever-practical (and immediately familiar), and there’s a good selection of ports on board. The input devices are also very good, the machine is quiet under operation, and it’s fast, too—at least, for general application performance, and in context with category averages for CPU performance.
What’s improved with today’s model versus the previous starts with the price, which is currently around $1,712 (at Amazon). Beyond that, since this configuration lacks dedicated graphics, temperatures and power consumption are also well below the values we measured from the previous model—though there are still a couple of bothersome hot spots on the bottom of the machine under load. The display remains bright and features good contrast, but as before, the color coverage is woefully inadequate, which leads to drearily washed-out colors and lackadaisical picture quality.
Though it falters in the realm of display color quality and a few other sparse categories, Lenovo’s venerable ThinkPad T480 remains a top competitor within the business market. It is a product of years of refinement and careful revision, rivaled only by a handful of truly top-notch machines.
Unlike the MX150 setup, this machine (of course) can’t really handle any sort of heavy GPU operation such as even light gaming. That’s expected—but what was unexpected is the lower CPU performance we received from the Core i7-8650U in our test unit versus the cheaper Core i7-8550U in March’s model. Perhaps most puzzling of all is the CPU performance ravine separating the T480s and today’s T480; even with the latest BIOS and all power settings properly configured, we couldn’t provoke scores anywhere close to what we saw from our Core i5-equipped T480s last week.
Still, though it falters in the realm of display color quality and a few other sparse categories, the T480 remains mentionable amongst the respected ranks of such competitors as Dell’s Latitude 7490, HP’s Elitebook 840 G5, and Lenovo’s own X1 Carbon. The real choice is whether the T480 or T480s makes more sense for your particular application—but apart from the aforementioned quibbles, it’s hard to find major fault in any of these options.
Lenovo ThinkPad T480 Specs at a Glance
Before getting into upgrades and long-term ownership, it helps to lay out exactly what the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 shipped with. Lenovo sold this generation with a mix of 8th-gen Intel Core CPUs (Core i5-8250U/8350U or Core i7-8550U/8650U), an optional discrete NVIDIA GeForce MX150 GPU on higher-end configurations, and a 14-inch chassis that still manages to fit a full-size keyboard with a dedicated number pad row and TrackPoint. Depending on the configuration you land on, you’ll find either a 1920×1080 IPS panel (touch or non-touch) or a higher-resolution 2560×1440 IPS option.
- CPU: Intel Core i5-8250U/8350U or Core i7-8550U/8650U (8th-gen, quad-core)
- GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 620, or optional NVIDIA GeForce MX150 2GB on select SKUs
- Display: 14″ FHD (1920×1080) or QHD (2560×1440) IPS, touch or non-touch
- RAM: Two DDR4 SO-DIMM slots, officially supporting up to 32GB (2×16GB) at 2400MHz
- Storage: One M.2 2280 NVMe/SATA slot plus an optional 2.5″ SATA bay for a second drive
- Battery: Removable rear battery (23Wh or 48Wh) plus an internal 23Wh cell, supporting Lenovo’s hot-swap “Power Bridge” feature
- Ports: Thunderbolt 3, two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A, HDMI 1.4b, Ethernet, microSD, and a full-size SD card reader
Upgrading Your Lenovo ThinkPad T480: RAM, Storage, and Battery
One of the biggest reasons the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 still shows up on “buy refurbished” recommendation lists years after launch is how easy Lenovo made it to service and upgrade. Popping the bottom panel (11 Phillips screws, no proprietary tools needed) gives you direct access to both SO-DIMM slots, the M.2 slot, and the removable battery — none of it soldered down.
RAM: Lenovo officially rates the T480 for up to 32GB across its two SO-DIMM slots (2×16GB DDR4-2400), which is plenty for most business workloads, multiple browser tabs, and light virtualization. If your unit shipped with a single 8GB stick, adding a matched second module is the single best value upgrade you can make. Look for a ThinkPad T480 32GB RAM upgrade kit that specifies DDR4-2400 SO-DIMM to guarantee compatibility.
Storage: The T480 supports both an M.2 2280 NVMe/SATA drive under the palm rest and a second 2.5″ SATA drive in the bay usually occupied by the stock spinning-platter HDD on budget configurations. Swapping in a ThinkPad T480 NVMe SSD upgrade is consistently the upgrade that makes the machine feel newest — boot times and application load times improve dramatically over any mechanical drive.
Battery: Because the T480 uses Lenovo’s Power Bridge design (an internal cell plus a removable rear cell), you can hot-swap the external battery without the laptop ever powering down — genuinely useful for long travel days. After several years of daily charge cycles, expect noticeably reduced runtime; a ThinkPad T480 replacement battery restores most units to close to their original endurance for a fraction of the cost of a new laptop.
Lenovo ThinkPad T480 vs. T480s: Which One Should You Buy?
As we noted in our hands-on look above, the CPU performance gap we measured between our T480 review unit and the lighter T480s was larger than expected, even after confirming BIOS and power settings on both machines. The practical difference for buyers comes down to weight and expandability: the standard T480 is roughly half a pound heavier but gives you two SO-DIMM slots (versus one socketed slot plus soldered memory on the T480s), a swappable battery, and that second 2.5″ storage bay. If long-term upgradeability matters more to you than shaving grams off your bag, the standard T480 is the more sensible pick — which is exactly why it remains such a popular choice on the refurbished business-laptop market.
Is the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 Still Worth Buying?
Years after its original release, the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 remains one of the most recommended refurbished business laptops, and the reasons haven’t really changed: a genuinely excellent keyboard, a mil-spec-tested chassis, full user-serviceable RAM and storage, and a hot-swappable battery system that’s largely disappeared from modern ultrabooks. For light gaming or GPU-bound work, look elsewhere — the optional MX150 is a modest bump at best. But for writing, browsing, spreadsheets, and general productivity, a well-specced Lenovo ThinkPad T480 with a RAM and SSD upgrade still holds up remarkably well, especially paired with a fresh ThinkPad T480 65W charger if your original brick has seen too many years of daily travel.
Looking to dock your T480 at a desk? Check out our breakdown of the ThinkPad Ultra Docking Station USB-C for a clean single-cable setup with charging, video, and Ethernet.
