Interesting, Lenovo must have a wide spread over their product range, then ... at least quite a few of their products are amongst the top scorers on iFixit repeairability scores ... changing the keyboard on my IdeaPad was a different story, though 😅
this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2026
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The Thinkpads are typically quite easy to work on. Lenovo's consumer grade laptops are mostly disposable junk though.
It was the same way with the Dell Latitude and Inspiron lines. The latitudes were stupid easy to work on, but more expensive and business focused. The Inspirons were trash.
Well, depends on how brave you are ...
I've replaced the keyboard on my IdeaPad Flex 5 ... removing plastic rivets and replacing them with superglue isn't fun but it's holding up great so far ...
One of the display hinges crumbled (or, rather, the plastic mount it was screwed into), I repaired it with heavy-duty epoxy ... the screen is held in the bezel with adhesive clay.
The laptop has been heavily used over the last 4 years, including many on-stage shows ... so I wouldn't call it unreliable, and it was ridiculously cheap for what it is ... so I wouldn't call it junk ...
It's good Thinkpads are still repairable but their build quality went to shit in recent years.
...I literally just swapped a heatsink in a modern thinkpad yesterday. Can't say I agree with this.
Unless maybe they are only grading consumer-channel laptops? Because it is trivial for me to get replacement parts and manuals for any X, T, or P-series.
Apple is absolutly the GOAT on this. I need a macbook for work. The fact that the hard drive is solder to the mobo is bullshit.
Anecdotes from an independent repair shop owner / operator.
I very rarely encounter reparability issues from Lenovo devices. I’ve worked on the full range down to Chromebooks and all the way up to high-end ThinkPad workstations. Parts are generally available, if not from Lenovo then on the aftermarket. They have repair documentation on their site. There are cases where the memory is soldered, but that is not something that is unique to Lenovo.
From my perspective, the least repairable devices end up being the LG and Samsung laptops. Parts are much harder to come by, which means that when they are available they’re usually quite expensive. Their designs are hostile to repair, documentation has not been readily available, they haven’t used modular memory for about 10 years now.
Microsoft’s Surface lineup has historically been real bad for repair, it’s not until recently that they’ve been turning a new leaf. Their logic board designs are so unusual that even component level repair becomes a huge pain compared to others.
Shouldn't this also be weighed against the actual reliability of these devices?
Sure you could take it into consideration. However, the abuse these laptops go through in an office setting wil not be saved by reliability. Then fixability is the different between fixing it or throwing it in the bin.
We should think about ruggedness and reliability as two different metrics. Some models are quite good at dealing with physical impacts, vibrations, moisture, dust, etc. That doesn't always translate to reliability for ordinary use, or failures caused by other things related to design or manufacturing, or even software/firmware issues.
Lenovo Thinkpads ≠ IBM Thinkpads. They steadily got worse and worse. My T495 broke down really fast and didnt turn on anymore. Easy to replace some parts but hard to replace the rest
I swapped the battery in mum's leonvo with minimal fuss.