[SOLVED] Price on used Lenovo Thinkpad T470p

[kkn01]

Hello!
I'm looking for a new durable laptop for school and some light gaming and I've heard good things about Thinkpads. Because they are rather expensive, I have to buy a used one and I found a T470p online. The price is 750€ and the owner says it's good as new and has been used very little. Currently however, prices for a brand new one range from $1500-2000. I really have no experience buying used laptops but my friend says that it's normal and the value of these laptops plummet right after purchase as they are mainly bought by large companies. Is this true or should I be concerned about the purchase? Thanks!

 

[Eximo]

Well, if it came from a business, that also means 40 hours a week used constantly. So wear and tear on the fan/keyboard/battery may be high.

I am very suspicious though, refurbished T470p are running about $1300. Quite late model, but still, I would think someone offering it nearly half off is hiding something. Either they stripped it of memory/drive/battery etc and replaced them with lesser parts, or the battery is dead (a good chunk of the cost of a laptop)

Typically, machines like these are leased to companies, and very few would be off lease yet. Additionally, they are often sold en masse to recovery companies when the lease expires and resold to other companies for retail or to service other large company distributions.

If your budget is 750 euro, what country are you in? You can probably find a mid-range laptop new with better or similar hardware.

 

[kkn01]

Thank you for the answer!

I forgot to mention that the seller also says the machine has a year of warranty left, would that help with any of the possible faults?

I'm living in Estonia and there aren't a lot of choices here... I'm also looking at the Asus Vivobook S530FN-BQ018T (i7, MX150), I really like all of its specs but I want the machine to last a solid 5 years, is it likely to make it? I've heard the Thinkpads can survive a decade.

P.S You can recommend me anything else up to around 1000€.

 

[anrkyuk]

Over the last 4 or 5 years I've bought a large number of T440 thinkpads on ebay from a firm local to me that refurbs and resells ex corporate machines for friends and family and my advice is this...

1. If the laptop has any physical damage other than small scuffs walk away, it's likely it's been dropped.
2. The battery is probably shot or very nearly shot, if use on the go is a requirement, factor in the price of a new battery.
3. Ask for a screen shot of the drive health report, if data integrity is a serious concern (although you should always back anything and everything up on an external drive) then also factor in the cost of a replacement drive.
4. Ask for a picture of the inside of the laptop, make sure it has been refurbished (cleaned) and not just flipped, also check pictures of ports closely as fudged USB ports are quite common on such machines.
5. Lastly avoid any ex corporate machine that is over 3 or 4 years old, as already said, corporate machines are almost always left on all day and are rarely serviced other than when they develop a fault.

 

[Eximo]

You might look into extended warranty coverage for the T470p, might make it less of a risk. Make sure that any such warranty is actually transferable to you in the first place.

I can attest that Lenovo and Dell business laptops "can" last years, but sometimes they don't. Random failures happen at any volume. I had a Lenovo T410, lasted just about three years before the fan died. Got a replacement, it died literal minutes after the tech dropped it off. Luckily I work within a few minutes drive of their distribution facility, had another about an hour later. It lasted until it was replaced later that year.

Dell Latitudes have been my daily driver for about 5 years now, haven't had one die on me yet. But a few of my co-workers have. One odd battery failure, one Windows corruption (suspected SSD failure), and a few screens that went dark.

Our last batch of Dells had some mismanufacturing done to them. Pinched wires in the hinge which lead to shorts and fires.

 

[kkn01]

So, everything considered and in case the Lenovo has a legitimate warranty, is it worth risking it or better to get the Asus instead?

 

[Eximo]

Going to have to go with your instincts on this one. The ASUS is a bit newer, but also more of a consumer model. Anything can last 5 years if you take care of it, I still have my Lenovo Y410p, but it mostly lives on a shelf and only gets pulled out when I need mobile hardware support (I have an XP VM on it for my old junk)

I've not personally owned an ASUS laptop, but my brother has gone through two over the last 12 years or so. But he buys top of the line and keeps them well past obsolescence. (In the early days ASUS started out only with high end laptop offerings, at least in the US) He gets the gaming models for the high end GPUs and uses them for modeling and circuit design.