Question Should I avoid buying a Thinkpad T480/T480s due to the Thunderbolt Firmware Issue ?

[pandaparlor]

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.

 

[lvt]

Is there any official report on that issue?

 

[pandaparlor]

Is there any official report on that issue?

There was, alongside a list of all the other Lenovo devices affected by the issue:

Critical Intel Thunderbolt Software and Firmware Updates - ThinkPad - Lenovo Support US

pcsupport.lenovo.com

However, it doesn't address my concern of whether or not a sufficient amount of damage, which happens before the laptop gets patched, could still cause later issues or failures with the laptop.

 

[geofelt]

You always have the possibility of having a problem when buying used.
The T480 were good laptops.
It seems that the tb issues has been well documented and fixed.
I would not avoid the units for that reason.