Lenovo ThinkPad 15.6" 20S60029US 2020, Core i5-10210U, 8GB, 256GB SSD, Black

The ThinkPad T15 Gen 1 is reliable but painfully underpowered. The 8GB of RAM and aging Core i5 put it at the bottom of our performance charts. At $824 USD, it's overpriced for what you get. Only buy it if you need a durable basic office machine and find it heavily discounted.

The Core i5-10210U is a 4-core chip from 2019, and it feels like it. Base clock is 1.6GHz with a turbo up to 4.2GHz, but with only 8GB of single-channel DDR4 at 2400MHz, this thing chokes on anything beyond light multitasking. The 256GB NVMe SSD is quick enough for boot times, but it's small by today's standards. Intel UHD Graphics lands at the 14th percentile, so don't even think about gaming. The 15.6-inch FHD IPS display is serviceable but sits at the 40th percentile, which means it's about average for brightness and color. The fingerprint reader and Thunderbolt port are nice touches, but they don't make up for the weak core specs.

Stacked against the Apple MacBook Pro M4 Pro, this ThinkPad looks like a fossil. The MacBook's M4 chip absolutely demolishes the i5-10210U in every metric. The HP OMEN Transcend 14 and ASUS ROG Strix G16 are gaming machines, so they're not direct competitors, but they highlight how weak the Intel UHD Graphics really are here. The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition offers a better screen, better battery, and a more modern design in a similar business-focused package. The MSI Creator A13V is aimed at creators, but even its entry config beats this ThinkPad on CPU and RAM. The only thing the ThinkPad wins on is that classic keyboard and the reliability score.

At $824 USD, this is a tough sell. You can find newer machines with 16GB of RAM and better CPUs for less money. The EUR pricing is even worse, ranging from 1,690 to 1,710 EUR, which is frankly absurd for these specs. The CAD price of 1,979 is also steep. You're paying a premium for the ThinkPad badge and the business-grade reliability, but the performance per dollar is terrible. If you find this on a deep discount, maybe. At full price, absolutely not.

The Lenovo ThinkPad T15 Gen 1 is a business workhorse that's showing its age. You get the classic ThinkPad build, a decent keyboard, and Windows 10 Pro, but the internals feel like they're from a different era. The Core i5-10210U and 8GB of RAM are fine for email and spreadsheets, not much else.

Our database puts the total score at 35.5 out of 100. That's rough. The reliability score is the one bright spot at the 81st percentile, so it probably won't die on you. But the RAM sits at the 6th percentile, and the CPU isn't far behind at the 12th. For a machine priced around $824 USD, you're paying for the ThinkPad name more than the performance.

Skip this if you need any kind of real performance. Students running multiple browser tabs and Office apps will hit the RAM ceiling fast. Anyone doing photo or video editing, programming, or even light gaming should look elsewhere. The Intel UHD Graphics are a dead end, and the 256GB SSD will have you juggling files within months. If you need a machine that'll last more than a couple of years without feeling sluggish, this isn't it.

This is a machine for a very specific buyer: someone who needs a cheap, durable laptop for basic office work and doesn't care about performance. If you're just answering emails, writing documents, and maybe doing some light web browsing, it'll get the job done. But for anyone else, especially students or anyone doing even light photo editing, this is a pass. The 8GB of RAM is the real killer. You'll feel the slowdown within a year of use.