I'm in Germany and the last four times I bought via thinkpad-forum.de. As the name says, it's a board for Thinkpads which includes a marketplace. From my experience, it's considerably cheaper than buying in shops or on Ebay, and the machines are usually described very well. People on the forum are mostly very knowledgeable and include information like battery cycles and stuff like that, so you know very well what you can expect. I would think similar forums exists for other countries as well.
In my case - and I've purchased 10 of these over the years - it's exclusively eBay. I check the description and photos carefully to see if there are any issues or defects. Only one time did I receive a laptop that was basically a dud - an X61 from many years ago.
I've also bought a couple old 32-bit models from e-waste recyclers who were open to me just grabbing them from out of a pile of to-be-disposed-of equipment.
Not sure where you're located, but if there is a MicroCenter nearby, the I recommend them as well. Sometimes they stock these in refurbished condition, and from my inspections of the laptops, they're in good shape. Only buy if you can look at first-hand at the store.
Sites like NewEgg, TigerDirect, and Amazon also have these, but the reviews generally don't seem favorable. One major difference is that with eBay, you can view multiple pictures of the exact laptop you will be buying. With those other sites, it's just a stock photo, and it seems like there's less quality control over what's grabbed from their warehouses.
Also it's worth mentioning that refurbished Dell Latitude and HP EliteBook laptops are comparable. There seems to be less demand for these than Lenovo ThinkPads, so often you can get better specs for the same price. In my experience, the Dell Latitude laptops have maintained greater backwards-compatibility with older docking stations. If you're into embedded development or ever want to connect to a headless server directly, then only Dell will give you that docking station with a serial port. The drawbacks is the TrackPoint on a ThinkPad is always guaranteed to be there, while it's an optional feature with Latitude and EliteBook, and even when it is there, it isn't as good as what IBM/Lenovo has engineered. Another drawback is refurbished Latitude laptops often have dedicated GPUs, which is great for Windows, but often a pain for Linux.
Fully agree to alternatives like Lattitudes and EliteBooks. While the "ecosystems" aren't as large as those of ThinkPads, i.e. no Wikis and such, the hardware manuals are available and of the same quality/usefulness.
I think there is a certain inertness in perception of available choices, quality-wise. While ThinkPads were great for a time, that Nimbus should have faded by now, but it mostly didn't, although it makes no sense.
The really good ones are so old by now, that they are almost useless, except for terminal use.
The newer ones are only so, so, and the really good ones make no sense economically imo.
Then there are the mentioned alternatives. But it depends on
geographic availability, time, i.e. when a large batch of refurbs enters the market, and so on. It has something of looking for flotsam on the beach :-)
Anyways, if you know hardware/what to do, then you can get great value with better options for periphery like docking stations, displays (ratio/resolution), simply more bang for the buck with about the same build quality as the ThinkPads of yore once had.
Prime expamples are small adaptors from the µSata for the 1.8" HDD to something more modern, for under 10USD a piece.
Oh, and compressed air for really cleaning, new thermal grease or pads.
If you do this more often you can save insane amounts of money by getting a small compressor instead buying canned air.
I've had all three of these brands and Thinkpad is the best.
I've had Dell Latitude machines where the hinges break after about three years and will no longer hold the screen up. I've had HP EliteBook machines where the soft rubber touchpad buttons wear through (I had one with a three-year warranty and they did fix it while it was in the warranty period.)
Meanwhile the Thinkpad machines have had no issues even after more than three years. They just look beat up (for instance there's a rubber-like coating on the lid that wears off.)
But the one that beats all of them is Apple. My MacBook Pro is now over five years old and it feels almost like new. I've never gotten this lifespan out of any Windows laptop.
> The drawbacks is the TrackPoint on a ThinkPad is always guaranteed to be there, while it's an optional feature with Latitude and EliteBook, and even when it is there, it isn't as good as what IBM/Lenovo has engineered.
My 5-year-old HP ZBook's trackpoint is abysmal. I stopped trying to use it about 2 months in, and after 2 years its top surface fell off and got lost. I didn't bother ordering a replacement.
I've bought a x230 on eBay for my partner, I installed Fedora on it and that has been fine, printers are working and most of the workflow is in a browser nowadays.
I've had to upgrade the keyboard once (2-3 keys fell off), but spare parts are available on eBay, and parts are very easily replaceable with an electronics screwdriver and a YouTube video, or by acquiring the Thinkpad service manual for more advanced procedures such as upgrading or replacing your screen (Which I've done to my Thinkpad X200 running Libreboot).
We are also considering a battery upgrade, which is still available on eBay even for older models.
My 9 cell battery is dead (30 mins runtime) but I can’t figure out what battery to buy. Original Lenovo are either too old to be good because they were made 5 years ago and sat on the shelf for years and the cells have degraded even if it’s technically new, or they’re just fake. I have zero trust in the safety, performance, and durability of the third party batteries sold on eBay or amazon.
eBay. Just wait for good listings. It's true that there is a non-negligible chance of getting burned, based on the general used laptop purchasing experience - but I've bought several and they've all worked as expected, pretty much.
This isn't due to any good qualities of the sellers. It's because ThinkPad makes damn good, sturdy laptops that are quite idiot-proof. I mean if you sit on your balcony and drop your laptop off the edge - that might destroy it. But it's going to take something on that level, and most people aren't that careless with electronics.
So you can be reasonably confident that anything ThinkPad you buy, if it isn't visibly damaged in the picture, will work as expected, in my (anecdotal) experience.
Thank you for responding. Is there any particular model that is better off than others, used? My usecase is programming - I don’t game, but I edit videos
I think the main thing you're looking for is 1) RAM - as much as you can get for your buck (might be worth lurking for a week to find out how much that is) 2) SSD.
If you get a high number on 1 and a checkmark on 2, it's almost guaranteed to be good for programming - realistically, for allowing you to run your browsers and something like GIMP and/or video editing.
I have a ThinkPad with 32 GB RAM and it takes a really heavy workload to pause my computer.
I frequently have several browsers & several browser windows open (say 6 windows total, mix of Chrome Brave and Firefox), and GIMP. No slowdowns noticeable (EDIT: some things do take a few seconds, like filters & exporting images from GIMP). Most importantly, using my window manager, I can switch from a full-screen browser to Emacs to GIMP instantaneously - not even a millisecond of noticeable delay.
Even many new computers purchased today can't beat that.
Also check for the screen. For quite a long time there was an Option for an abysmal 1366x768 screen. The same notebooks can be had with a proper HD screen, so get one with those.
You want to check whether the BIOS has a password on it. Most corporates use one but don't reset it at end of life and after the T420 you can't reset it without replacing the main board.
That's a really important point. To amplify on it, every ThinkPad has as many as three BIOS passwords: the hard drive password, the power on password, and the supervisor password. (Maybe even more than three, as individual hard drives/SSDs could have different passwords.)
The supervisor password is the one you care the most about.
You may get a seller who says "no BIOS password, boots up without a password." But the machine may still have a supervisor password, and if you don't have that you can't change the BIOS settings.
Always make sure there is no supervisor password, or the seller gives you the supervisor password.
eBay. I'm in Europe but there are some really good refurb sellers in UK and Germany. Got multiple x230 for ~100 GBP (~130 USD). i5, 8 GB RAM, pop in an SSD and you are good to go. Much better than anything else you would find in that price range.
I've bought around ten used thinkpads from Ebay over the years. Mostly, they arrived exactly as advertised. I only had to ship one back, which was annoying but I got a full refund.
Two of them had minor issues that were resolved to my satisfaction when the seller offered a partial refund of $5 or $20 (and me keeping the laptop).
All of them are still working perfectly today, including the T420 I bought for $100 in 2013 and the T400 I bought for $25 (with free shipping).
tl;dr: Ebay is a perfectly good place to buy used thinkpads. reddit.com/r/thinkpadsforsale is also good, especially if you want to buy an older one that some enthusiast already meticulously restored.