Kira Herdman

About 2 months ago I got a Lenovo ThinkPad T480s. While the specs where very nice, a Core i7 8th Gen, 8Gb Ram and a 256Gb NVMe SSD, there were 5 upgrades I wanted to do to it.

It is important to note that the main reason why I got this ThinkPad is to use it to type out my blogs, send and receive emails, do research and browse the web. I have installed Steam on it and I do play some light or old games like Stardew Valley, Vampires Survivor, Supreme Commander 2 on it to name a few, that is not the main reason why I got this laptop.

If you need to edit photographs professionally, edit videos professionally or play the latest games, don’t get this class of laptop. You really need a laptop with a modern dedicated GPU in it. If a T480/T480s has a dedicated GPU it will be an old one, probably the GeForce MX150, which is the mobile version of the GT 1030.

Changing the Thermal Paste

The first thing you should do if you get a second hand laptop is change the thermal paste. Most people don’t do this, and it can effect the performance of a laptop quite a lot due to the system overheating.

To change the thermal paste on a T480s is very easy. Undo 5 screws from the bottom of the laptop, then disconnect the battery. Then you need to disconnect the fan from the motherboard and that comes out. You might as well clean it while it’s not in the laptop.

There are 4 screws that hold the heat sink down, undo them and lift the heat sink out of the laptop, making sure you do not bend the heat pipes. Clean the old thermal paste off the heat sink and CPU, then apply the new paste, and put everything back together.

If your ThinkPad has a dedicated GPU then you might have a few more screws to undo, but the process is exactly the same.

This will stop your CPU from potentially overheating, so getting the best performance from your laptop for basically the cost of a bit of Thermal paste.

Upgrading the RAM

The most obvious upgrade I could do to it was upgrade the RAM. When I bought it, it only had 8Gb of RAM that was soldered onto the motherboard, but it had a spare SO-DIMM slot.

So I went to my local CEX and bought a stick of 8Gb DDR4 SO-DIMM RAM. It cost me about £15 for it, which is an OK price in this economy (I got the RAM in May 2026). After unscrewing 5 screws of the bottom of the ThinkPad I put the RAM into the slot.

While I was there I checked what was the part number for the Battery as I will want to replace the battery in the future.

After a quick boot into Windows 11, I confirmed that the new stick of RAM was recognised and that it is now working in Duel Channel. Duel Channel is important as the laptop uses the iGPU built into the Core i7, so you get a bit of a performance boost from that as well if you have duel channel memory.

While 8Gb was fine for what I intend to do with this laptop (hint, installing Linux, see below), I just like my computers to have at least 16Gb in them for headroom.

Installing Linux

I hate the direction Microsoft is taking Windows. I hate all the AI that Microsoft is bundling in with it, taking up memory and CPU resources. Furthermore, I also hate the fact you can not fully turn off analytic’s, you need a Microsoft account just to install it (Yes I know there are workarounds), updates breaking systems and the default install is full of stuff no one asked for. All this can slow a system down by as much as 10-20%, especially on lower end hardware.

As someone who has used Linux on and off since 1996, so very familiar with it, I decided to install Linux on the T480s. ThinkPad’s have excellent compatibility on Linux thanks to developers using ThinkPad’s all the time. I also want a stable distribution as this ThinkPad is manly for use with wring this Blog and other office work.

I have decided to go with Linux Mint as it is based on Debian, of which I am very familiar with, very stable and more up-to-date than a vanilla Debian install.

So after a quick install, Linux Mint works perfectly with this laptop apart from the fingerprint reader. While I got it to be recognised, it doesn’t seem to work properly like it does in Windows 11. As I only use it to log into the machine, I don’t mind not using it for the sake of the privacy and stability Linux gives me.

So this system is staying on Linux Mint for the foreseeable future.

Changing the Keyboard

I like back-lit keyboards. I had one when I used an Acer gaming laptop, my old Intel MacBook Pro as well as my MacBook Air M1. Likewise, I also have a back-lit keyboard on my desktop PC, which also happens to run Linux Mint.

The ThinkPad did not come with one. So after some hunting on eBay I bought a brand new back-lit keyboard that was compatible with my ThinkPad for only £25. When it came 3 days later it took me all of 15 minutes to install it.

All you have to do to install it is pry the left and right trackpad buttons up with a spudger, unscrew the 2 captive screws behind them, then use the spudger to force the keyboard towards the screen. Lift the keyboard up gently as there are 2 ribbon cables underneath you need to disconnect. Do the reverse for the new keyboard.

I now have a very nice new back-lit keyboard for my T480s. An added bonus is I also now have a spare keyboard in case something happens to this one.

Change the Battery

At first, I was going to change the battery, which is very simple on the T480s. Undo 5 screws on the bottom of the laptop, unplug the cables from the battery to the motherboard, undo the screws that keep it in place, lift the old battery out. Then do the reverse to install the new battery.

BUT after checking the battery health, it is currently standing at 85.7%. After some testing on Windows, the battery lasted about 5 hours before needing a recharge when doing the typical work I will be doing on the T480s. The battery will also last longer on Linux (see above) as the laptop doesn’t work as hard due to less background processes running compared to Windows, so the CPU will use less overall power when doing the same tasks.

You can check the remaining health of a battery if you are running Linux by opening a terminal window and typing inxi -B. The bit you are looking for is the condition of the battery.

To do this on Windows open a command prompt then type powercfg /batteryreport. This command creates a detailed HTML report that will be located at C:\Users\your-account\battery-report.html, so navigate to that directory and open the report.

5 hours battery life is fine for me. I did check to see how much a new battery will cost, and on eBay they cost between £30-£40. I will probably change it when the Battery heath will get below 80%.

Performance with the upgrades done

While manufactures want you to get the latest and greatest hardware so they can satisfy the unending thirst of their shareholders, you don’t need to do that. If all you do is basic tasks then any CPU that is a 4th generation Intel Core series and above, or any AMD Ryzen processor will be good enough.

The Intel Core i7 8550u in my T480s is still plenty fast enough for my needs, in fact a 7th Gen Intel Core i5 model of the ThinkPad T480s would be plenty fast enough.

Here is a real world example to how good the Core i7 8550u in my T480s is: –

I run an on device proofreader called Eloquent, which in turn is based on the open-source version of LanguageTool. This excellent proofreader can easily work with my editor of choice, Zettlr, as Zettlr has an option to use a locally installed version of LanguageTool. This means all my data never leaves my ThinkPad, so in turn is a lot more secure than using a commercial solution like Grammarly, which uses the cloud to function. My ThinkPad T480s does not slow down at all when this exceptional proofreader is running in the background doing its thing.

While all the above is running, as well as a client to connect to my ownCloud server, the Vivaldi web browser with its built in mail client open, and a Tailscale client running in the background, I am only using 3.5Gb of memory (See the screenshot above). Besides light gaming, this is probably the most amount of memory I will ever use on this ThinkPad. This is less than what the same laptop was using while idle on the desktop on a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 11 installed, which was almost 6Gb of memory.

Also while using Windows the system fan would be on all the time, ramping up and down like a yo-yo. Since I installed Linux the system fan hardly turns on at all, even when all the above is running. The fan only comes on if I reboot the system, which I do about once a week, or when I am light gaming. Otherwise, the ThinkPad silent running for the vast majority of the time. When I am not using the ThinkPad, it is in sleep mode, which works perfectly in Linux Mint.

The installation of Linux Mint also uses a lot less disk space the default install of a new Windows 11 operating system. With everything installed, including 11 of my favourite games on Steam, I still have over 100Gb of space left on the 256Gb SSD that is installed in the ThinkPad.

Conclusion

Now I have a very fast, reliable, easily repairable and upgraded laptop that will, hopefully, last me a very long time. While I wouldn’t recommend this laptop for serious gamer’s, professional photographers or professional video editors (due to lack of a modern dedicated GPU), for almost everyone else I can not think of a better laptop than the Lenovo ThinkPad T480/T480s.

If you want better battery life the T480 is for you. This is due to the fact that the T480 has 2 batteries, one internal and one that’s easily hot swappable. The T480 is also slightly more upgradable than the T480s thanks to having 2 RAM slots to upgrade the amount of memory you can have installed. However, the downside for the T480 is its lot thicker and weighs significantly more than the T480s.

However, if you want a slim, light, but still with a perfectly good workday battery life, workhorse then the T480s is the model for you.

ThinkPads, especially this generation of them, are known to be built like tanks, and are also known for there reliability and repairability. They are the ideal work laptop. Even today the latest ThinkPad models are still very popular with businesses and governments all over the world.

There are usually a few ThinkPad T480 and T480s models available on eBay for less than £150, so are not very expensive to get. An additional added bonus is you will be keeping these fantastic laptops out of the land fill, so helping the environment as well.

The ThinkPad T480 and T480s are called the last great ThinkPad models ever made. I have to agree with that sentiment