Should I skip purchasing a Thinkpad T480/T480s because of the Thunderbolt Firmware Problem?
Should I skip purchasing a Thinkpad T480/T480s because of the Thunderbolt Firmware Problem?
I've been meaning to buy a used Thinkpad T480/T480s for a while because of its build quality, user serviceability, ubiquity, price, keyboard, and etc., but I've kept hesitating due to one issue: Its thunderbolt/USB-C firmware.
From my understanding of it, apparently there's a bug in the laptop's firmware that causes it to continuously write to the chip/software that handles the USB-C and thunderbolt ports until said chip/software breaks. This is a deal-breaker for me since, though I don't use thunderbolt, this can cause the only charging ports on the device,
which are also brilliantly soldered onto the motherboard
, to stop working and render the entire laptop unusable.
There is a firmware update to fix this, but since I'm buying used, there's no way of me knowing for how long the laptop had been used without that fix and how much damage had already been done to the chip/software. Even if it's sold with the firmware fix applied already, what if it was already damaged nearly to the brink of failure and is just waiting to break at some indeterminate point in the future?
I'd really appreciate getting some insight or an answer to this, otherwise I can't go through with buying a potential brick. Thank you.
Alongside a comprehensive list of affected Lenovo products, there were updates for the Critical Intel Thunderbolt Software and Firmware patches for ThinkPad models. You can find more details at pcsupport.lenovo.com.
You often encounter issues when purchasing used items.
The T480 laptops were reliable machines.
It appears that the tb problems have been thoroughly addressed and resolved.
I wouldn't skip these units for that reason.