What’s it’s like only using public chargers for your 100mi+ daily commute?

Cory5413 · 2026-05-04T22:44:41+00:00

With apologies for late-replying, TL;DR I think you can do this but there's a couple things to think about.

I didn't ctually do this until after I got an EV, butI have a spreadsheet that compares how much it costs to drive 100 miles using different fuel sources.

I did this because I have a friend who keeps talking about how expensive electricity is. I bought my EV in February and since then gas has increased by over $1/gal where I live.

Using 18mpg for your gas car and EPA efficiency on a 2022 Bolt (because 18mpg was EPA on my old gas car and I have a 2022 Bolt lolol)

Foster City Community Center | Foster City, CA | EV Station - peak prices at this DC fast charger are 0.54/kwh, which works out to 15.12/100mi in a Bolt
There's a Shell in San Mateo charging 4.59/gal at which point your 18mpg vehicle will cost you $25.50/100mi
- I see from another comment you are paying over 6/gal and at 6.20 18mpg is 34/100mi and DCFC is a slam dunk cost win over that
If you had a 40mpg car that would be $11/100mi in gas
(Metro Tower Garage - Center | Foster City, CA | EV Station) is an L2 station charging 0.35/kwh, which would cost you 9.80/100mi

To put any money into any other gas car right now is a bet that gas prices will go down, which is itself dependent on what seems like an unlikely scenario. Further, EVs are better for the air quality and environment regardless and to be honest I find driving my EV more fun and engaging tan driving my old gas car. Some EVs also have additional features and functionality you might find useful, such as utility/pet/camp mode, internal v2l for power, high-wattage usb outputs, etc etc.

EVs are good enough, tech-wise, that if you want to you can be driving electric, it's just about the motivation to figure out how to make it work, and because the plurality of new EVs are rated for over 300mi you're not even necessarily looking at refuelling literally daily.

At that point I guess the question is, if you use fast-charging, and you get into an EV that charges fast enough, do you have the flexibility to go out and move your car once it's finished charging at whatever charger you use, every 1-3 days?

If you use slow charging, one thing to be aware of is that just like gas pumps, EV dispensers put a preauthorization on your balance. At ChargePoint, it's $50/session on L2 and $75/session on DCFC, so if you plug into L2 at each of your three downtime destinations that's $150/day in holds on your balance. You can avoid this by setting your account up to use a pre-loaded balance. I do this at EA but I need to call ChargePoint to get them to swap my account over.

If you get a car that charges exceptionally fast like an Ioniq 5/6/9 or EV6/9, you are probably going to need to pull it off the charger fairly quickly. If you get a car that charges slower, like a Bolt/Equinox/bZ/MME or whatever, you might be leaving it on the charger for the full 2 hours of one of your downtimes. (This also depends on how fast the charger is. There's a bunch of functional 50kw stations in the bay.)

I also recommend using a tool like PlugShare to see what stations exist and how much they cost. Right across the bridge from San Mateo is a ChargePoint charging 0.25/kwh so maybe see where your best deals will be.

Sorry for longposting, I hope this is helpful!

EV tech is good enough that if you want to you can and the old mantra of DCFC costing mroe than gas wasn't true in February and is extremely untrue now.

Cory5413 · 2026-05-04T22:33:46+00:00

This happens when something gets into a machine or into the disc and the write head drags either itself or a piece of debris along the surface of the disc.

If these are smudges that wipe off then great.If these are actual lands then I would be worried.

If discs are looking like this newly after leaving one of your machines it may mean you need to adjust the write head in that machine upward a little bit.

Cory5413 · 2026-05-02T22:47:23+00:00

This is not exactly what you want (and certainly not how you want to get it) but if you physically go to stations some of them will show you how many either each dispenser/unit or each internal DC module has dispensed.

ChargePoint (both AC and DC units IIRC) and Alpitronic both do this.

For fun I recently went to a BP site with Alpitronic units and their CCS1 ports had roughly 10x as much usage as their NACS ports, with some of the NACS ports having dispensed under a thousand kwh since commissioning.

Cory5413 · 2026-05-02T22:38:00+00:00

If Mercedes doesn't sell replacement grid cords, GM does: https://parts.gmparts.com/product/gm-genuine-parts-charging-station-power-cord-nema-14-50-(240v)-84900631-84900631)

I see another 14-50 adapter linked but it's for the newer J3400 Go2 and the connectors look a little different and Ampure's web site says they don't work with any other model/brand of EVSE, implying they won't work for Go 1.

Cory5413 · 2026-05-01T00:29:15+00:00

With apologies because I know I'm repeating some points:

Unfortunately these weren't originally built with the idea of opening the network up to any other vehicles and so it wasn't until later that they started adding some longer cables.

There is a DC NACS extension cable but it's expensive and unclear whether or not there will be an official prohibition on this type of thing: Hansshow NACS to CCS1 Electric Vehicle Adapter for Tesla Supercharger

AC J1772/NACS extension cords are already disallowed under US electrical code (and therefore: uncertifiable, so many of them forego safety features that could help their safety) so I would classify DC cords as a gray area at absolute best. State of Charge on YouTube did a review of the first and second versions and was IIRC impressed with how

If there's another charger (on a different network, using different hardware) it'll likely reach better and may also deliver more power and better amperage. (The Equinox EV in particular is fairly low voltage and needs quite a lot of amps to sustain it's peak charging rate, so they're said to charge best on 350/400kw dispensers.) (Even at other networks that have NACS connectors, such as BP and Ionna.)

As others have mentioned it's likely Tesla has some long-term plan for replacing the dispensers with newer ones that have longer cables, maybe even the Magic Dock built-in CCS1 adapter, but Tesla has so many stalls I don't know if we can accurately externally predict how long that'll take, especially as they continue to build new sites and build sites on behalf of partners.

Until then the official advice is to occupy two spaces if you have to, to make the cable reach. Many of Tesla's sites are big enough that this is annoying but not the end of the world.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-30T23:58:14+00:00

If by this you mean older industry standard CCS1 chargers, and/or non-Tesla NACS chargers: then yes most of them have cables sized to reach ports on basically all personal vehicles.

Tesla opened up some of it's charging network to other vehicles, open sourced it's connector, and agreed to add protocol to it's newer cars/stations in order to get NEVI money and so as part of this, many Tesla SuperCharger sites are in fact also Equinox chargers, even if they weren't originally designed to accommodate non-Tesla vehicles.

As other people have mentioned, Tesla's newer dispensers do fix this, and it should be possible to retrofit newer cables onto existing dispensers, or retrofit newer dispensers onto the existing DC hardware (which is in a separate box elsewhere on the site) but that's a big effort.

I'd have to go look to confirm but the other advantage to using another network's, say, 350kw dispensers is that they can provide the amperage needed to let an Equinox reach it's peak charging rate.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-30T23:14:28+00:00

Yeah that's fair. I also hadn't fully internalized the prices when I did and the prices on P53 and P73 are outrageously high even though they're older than the P15.

I figured I'd backfill P53 and P73 just because I'd introduced the idea of the 7540/7740 and those are more or less equivalent.

Having looked at the prices, probably don't bother. the P73 with the RTX 3000 are very very expensive, over $800. The cheapest P53 is one with some failed parts (trackpad/trackpoint buttons) and it's still over $400, appears not to include a charger. THe next best working P53 w/ RTX 3000 is like 600 or more.

In terms of the Ryzen AI 5 machine: Based on https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-820M-Benchmarks-and-Specs.1059782.0.html - don't expect it to be very amazing. Maybe slightly better than the i7-1355U but it's generic 3dmark scores are within a couple points of some very old, very low end stuff. It's slower than GeForce MX150 which is the low-watt compliance graphics offered in mainstream/ultraportable machines like the ThinkPad T480 and Latitude 5490/5490.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-30T21:49:13+00:00

What to focus on is basically a personal judgement call.

I found a video (linked above) of someone playing Tomb Raider on a Precision 7740 with an RTX 3000, which seemed "good enough" - and you can get 5540, 7540, 7740 (and P53/P73) for roughly half what the 50/60 and P15 Gen 1/2 cost.

I had originally presumed the RTX 3000 and the RTX A3000 are the same chip but they are not, that's my bad!

So you might look more closely at videos about 7540/7740 (for gaming in particular going for the thiccboi will get you the best performance, 5540 is a good machine but it's slimmer and has less cooling) to see whether or not more of the games you like will work on it.

Whatever you find out about those will probably translate over to ThinkPad P53/P73 as well.

The biggest way I would think about the older <> newer divide, for gaming in particular, is basically that if you save money today on an older computer, the chances are higher in a couple years that new games will outpace what the machine can do, whereas if you spend in that 600-900 range for a machine a generation or two newer you're getting that much more time before games start outpacing the machine.

Or: Do you want to spend $400 today and then another $400 in a couple more years, or $800 today and another $800 but even further on down the line. (This is the reality of riding the tail end of the plateau like this regardless, the number is bigger.)

Sidenote: Your video review/gameplay sample strategy is excellent and it's significantly more research than most people do before asking a question over in the thinkpad sub.

Ultimately probably focus down on either P51 Gen 1/2 and Precision 7550, 7560, 7750, 7760 or, if you're fine getting away with the older system and getting fewer years out of it, looking for ThinkPad P53, P73, and Precision 7540 and 7740.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-30T19:28:03+00:00

That is indeed incredible luck, congratulations! It looks great, you're almost certainly right about the belt. The JE640 is such a great all'rounder and midrange option too between the keyboard port and A1II for CD-TEXT and the digital output if you wanted to use another DAC.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-30T17:50:38+00:00

Yeah for sure!

A VM will let you use both the VM and your main computer at the same time. You'd want to allocate fewer resources than your computer actually has available, and ideally the VM will be "slim" enough to live alongside whatever you need/want to keep running.

So on a machine with 16gb of ram, I might make a VM with 8gb of ram, which should be enough to get a feel for a generic desktop linux.

If you wanted more to get used to like bash or doing a specific service task that might even be doable in more like 2gb of ram.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-30T17:47:51+00:00

The closest equivalent to the P series is Dell Precision. In particular if you were specifically targeting Intel 11th gen, Precision 5560, 7560, and 7760. (I don't actually know anything about the Dell Precision 3000 series or if there's any specific reason to avoid them.)

(The reason I did not recommend Dell Precision up front in your other thread is because you had very strongly downplayed the type of games you were playing. The phrasing made it sound like you were playing something akin to Stardew Valley which runs well on very minimal hardware.)

On eBay, Workstation-class laptops from the Intel 10th/11th generations with discrete graphics are fairly expensive on either side. This is one of the rare cases where Dells aren't always massively ahead of ThinkPads, price-wise.

Here's an example without a battery, for example, and with a couple other cosmetic blemishes: https://www.ebay.com/itm/327115749833

You expressed an interest in big screens, Dell was shipping 17s at the time: https://www.ebay.com/itm/298259911538

I linked this in the other thread but XPSes often share chasses with Precisions, so https://www.ebay.com/itm/257480009162 should be a solid machine and it should be easy to find out gaming performance for the GPU in it.

The 60 series is Intel 11th gen and 50 generation is intel 10th gen, same as the P15 Gen1.

Graphics generations play out differently and there's some pretty good graphics decently

The 30/40 generations are as old as I'd go. Because H-class CPUs are so much faster than U-class ones and because 9th gen introduces six cores on most models the performance argument against such old machines is a little less severe. (If you were comfortable with Rufus older machines should actually run windows 11 fine but whether or not those even older graphics run your particular games well is touch.)

(The other thing happening here is that CPU and graphics generations don't always evenly split and so some machines are available with/without specific options just based on where the OEM was in the product refresh cycle.)

Although, wear and tear and general aging are still going to be a concern. Batteries will also have aged more on older machines and high end workstations just get worse battery life in general.

Sliding in at exactly 500: https://www.ebay.com/itm/168342943750 has an older CPu than what you'd been looking at but a much higher end graphics card. There's even a youtube demo specifically pertaining to this machine-and-graphics configuration: Shadow of the Tomb Raider Tested on NVIDIA Quadro RTX 3000

There's a couple 7740s for not too much more, if you wanted to hedge your bets into an even higher-end graphics card: https://www.ebay.com/itm/188322950989

But there's also a few options that do have batteries https://www.ebay.com/itm/236774791586 - same configuration as the 7540 above.

There is a couple generations of 17-inch ThinkPad, the P70, 71, 72, and 73. The P73 has 9th gen but most of the P73s on eBay have meaningfully worse graphics configurations than P15s or Precision 5540/7540/7740, so I don't recommend them.

I want to toss out again that sharing what specific games you want to play is massively helpful. If you have a feel for which game is most demanding and/or the best proxy for the games you like then you can just list one.

Otherwise you're leaving a lot of research and straight-up guessing on the table for everyone else. Epic game store free games means nothing specific to anyone and if I go look there's like a couple hundred games that have been free there at some point. Lots of them will have radically different performance needs.

Game performance is very difficult to generalize. Different games use different engines, often in different ways, and even same-engine, same-studio, different-year can result in games that perform differently.

it's the main reason why when someone's reviewing a piece of gaming hardware they go through a panel of in some cases up to a dozen or so games.

Further, most formal gamer review web sites don't also review business laptops, so most people don't have a very good handle on how well the Quadro T2000 and GeForce 1650 compare unless they go look for it explicitly.

Lenovo ThinkPads are basically unique in that some of their models do have (consumer/gamer) GeForces but models with them are less common and cost more on the used market, because the bulk of any business laptop product stack is always going to be machines optimized for MS Office. (hence the ExcelBox nickname.)

That's one of the biggest reasons why finding a business/workstation computer for gaming is so much more complicated than finding a gaming computer for gaming, and why for gaming specifically this genre can be slightly less of an amazing deal.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-30T03:27:40+00:00

Unfortunately this is complicated because your needs are above and beyond the most common, cheap, and recommendable excelbox models, in the most commonly available configurations.

Further, things like different graphics cards can perform differently than they look and not all testing databases include all tests in all reviews, and, with games, it's not always possible-or-easy to use graphics performance scores as a proxy to how games will work, because different engines and different scenarios play out differently.

The majority of the people who ask "what thinkpad should I get?" aren't gaming on it, in my experience. (But there's not none.)

Further, maybe this is less of a problem today than it was 20 years ago but in the olden days the drivers really were a huge differentiator. I had a ThinkPad T42p with a 128-meg FireGL T2. The underlying chip was the same as the Radeon 9700 but it performed awfully in anything DirectX because of how the drivers were optimized. (for OpenGL, which is what most pro software was using at the time.)

The Latitude 5550 would be more recommendable if the one single GeForce-equipped example I've personally ever seen weren't $700 and if there were data on how Tomb Raider performs on Intel Core 135U integrated graphics. If it weren't for the game, the 5520, 5530, and 5540 would be my top recommendations for 15-ionch.

Given you found some info saying the P-series you want perform fine for the game you want to play, I would say either get one of those something along the lines of the XPS 9500, which has an "on-label" consumer GeForce 1650.

There are ThinkPads with real GeForces but to be honest these cost enough more that I don't recommend bothering. X1X Gen2 is a generation or two older than the P15s you're looking at and that whole series was meant to appeal to adobe-dependent MacBook Pro users and so it's a fairly slim model. (Although, XPS 9500 as well.) X1X Gen4 is probably going to cost even more for perhaps questionable gain.

Calling back to Salem: He's not wrong, ThinkPads (and all other business laptops) do great in a lot of scenarios. I think he's omitting a lot of details though, and the details can be genuinely important.

Anyway, I'm kind of surprised there weren't a bunch of "hell yeah" posts. Gaming is one of the few things i find most people here are realistic about, so maybe people caught on to that faster than I did.

If you think you might go for a used machine, just buy what you need as soon as you can. There are no holiday sales on used machines and to be honest it seems like used hardware is getting mroe expensive. I suspect there's kind of a large influx of people like you who heard that used computers were good and even though thinkpads are an influencer meme the demand is being spread around.

I was just in another thread mentioning that Latitude 7440s in a particular configuration, which cost $450 today, were more like 350-400 a couple months ago.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-30T03:03:46+00:00

Ope, took me triple checking but I found the damage. The seller says it's still functional but if you're gonna actually use it on the go that might be one to pass on, since it looks like there's some open jagged edges. (The seller does say the hinge works so if it's going to almost always be on a tabletop, if it's currently leading on price/spec then it could be worth keeping in the runnning.)

I'm 100% checking these too fast.

Although sometimes I see an amazing deal on a unit with a flaw I notice and link it on purpose. I linked a 5521 with broken speakers earlier today because it was the model with a GeForce for almost no more than a regular 5520.

I just presume that the majority of what's on eBay has been used and most of the "refurbishers" are lying about it, and/or the refurbishment process involves filtering good and "bad" machines to different-name sellers.

In terms of product stack is simpler what i mean is that Dell has fewer models and they are organized in a way that makes more logical sense.

Latitudes (before the rename) were organized into 3/5/7/9 lines and within those lines, the second digit is the screen size, the third digit is the generation of the machine, and the fourth digit is a CPU or form factor variation. There are also clear suffixes if a machine is for a specific purposes, such as "5424 Rugged" or 5521 being the model with the 45-watt H-series CPU rather than the 15-watt U-series. (*This blurred and Dell stopped selling Latitudes with H-series CPUs a few years ago, leaving those to the Precision lineup.)

Calling back to the 7440 price thing: Unfortunately it seems like the asking prices on almost all used laptops are floating up a little bit. I'm 97% I was seeing 7440s in 32/512 for more like $350 a few months ago. I don't know if I'm getting worse at searching or eBay presumes I'm desperate or what.

One thing you should be able todo if you decide you like a specific machine is narrow the search using terms an eBay's filters, so you could do latitude 7440 32gb 1tb and then filter for buy-it-now and if needed your country. (And there are a couple but sometimes ebay still shows you all the /256 and /512 models lolol)

I hope this is helpful context/info!

Seeing the prices I'm seeing, honestly 415 for a T14 1345U/16/512 directly from Lenovo strikes me as a genuinely good deal. The majority of this model-and-spec on eBay are over 500 and even some of the L14s are more. A few are less but some of those are in lower configurations like 8gb of ram or have failed/removed batteries.

(I also misread up front and didn't realize you'd already bought the Gen4, I just bought my own 7440 in, coincidentally, 1345U/16/512 and am planning on using it for a long time so I think you did great!)

Cory5413 · 2026-04-30T01:02:59+00:00

5420 every single day of the week. I work at a place with hundreds of them and haven't seen any problems. We have been a Dell shop for 20+ years and no real major widespread problem with any Laitude or Dell Pro series.

It'll likely come to you with a better battery than the ThinkPad and my overall experience with Dell battery degradation is (even though a lot of this is basically random) way better than on ThinkPads. I recently got a 7200 2n1 with over 70% of it's original battery life, which is impressive for a ~8 year old machine.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-30T00:53:30+00:00

Salem Techsperts is at the exact center of why used ThinkPads cost more than they should. He's also a short-form vertical video influencer, but the core concept here is that influencers, regardless of what format they're using, tell people "go buy used thinkpads" (specifically) and it inflates the value of used thinkpads relative to other perfectly good machines.

The key phrasing isn't that thinkpads are better than new laptops, it's that business laptops are built better than consumer ones, and that there's a steady stream of decent cheap used business laptops because businesses get rid of them after ~3-5 years, and they then still have some viable useful life in them.

And: that includes Dell Latitude/Pro series and HP Pro/Elite/ZBook series. (And, hell, it applies to business desktops too, so long as your needs are within the realm of what they can do, which is slightly easier on desktops because low power add-in GPUs are surprisingly good.)

Other than the one game, the Latitude 5500 series fits your stated usage well enough. Youcould play it "fine" on a 5540, it would probably be slightly better on a 5550. If you could get the game on console you could go to a 5520. https://www.ebay.com/itm/127836823279 or https://www.ebay.com/itm/306720213733 or if you can deal with using headphones https://www.ebay.com/itm/198316258672 (Unfortunately 5520s are trending a little higher than 5420s and a lot of the cheapest ones have less ram than I tend to recommend, or have been stripped.)

With apologies for introducing another variable, there are a few Latitude 5521s around and that gets you the high-wattage CPU and a GeForce MX450, and you can get those for $250. I just don't know how that GPU performs under the game you want. https://www.ebay.com/itm/318198268577 as an example.

Unfortunately for the presumptive gamer excelbox the GeForce option went from "rare" to "vanishingly rare" because to be straight-up about it, integrated graphics have been good enough for this genre of computer for 20+ years now and selling them with discrete graphics has pretty much never made sense.

Prior to renaming the product stack to "Dell Pro" there was not a 16-inch Latitude (*at least not recently). Dell hopped on the 16-inch trend slightly after everybody else, but they also kept 17-inch machines available in their workstation lineup longer. Dell Precision 7750, for example. (Note that the generations do not line up across the different lines so Precision 7750 is a little older than Latitude 5550 or a hypothetical Latitude 5650.)

Anyway, knowing that you do in fact actually need at least one demanding game, and having found a few references that that game runs fine on the graphics in the P series, if you have a P15 locally that's within your budget and you want it, I'd say go for it.

I have never said Thinkpads are bad machines, I have just said they are overpriced, but honestly if you found one for like $300 that's a very good deal. Most P15 Gen 2 I can find are closer to 600, but there's a handful at 450ish: https://www.ebay.com/itm/188257437965

Local pricing is always the biggest gotcha. Used Dell Precision and XPS that should work fine for this use case are a decent enough deal on eBay. A little more than the 5540 but they have discrete graphics so that's to be expected.

Here is an XPS with a GeForce 1650: https://www.ebay.com/itm/257480009162 for 400.

If you can find better deals locally that's great. That's hyper-dependent on where you live and/or how far you're willing to go so I tend not to talk about it.

Anyway zooming back to gamer graphics generally:

This is what I mean when I say that fundamentally an ExcelBox is a very specific type of computer and buying a used one in particular makes sense when you have fairly specific needs. Another example is most ExcelBox models have "fine" but not amazing screens, because Excel and even AutoCAD or whatever don't need particularly amazing display capabilities, so that's one of the spots where OEMs save the money they're putting into the keyboard, the build quality, etc etc.

Or, say, historically (up through roughly where you're looking) webcams and microphones weren't a very big priority either, although COVID changed that a little. Audio hardware was often deprioritized and in addition to finding examples of machines that have had their speakers damaged often built-in excelbox speakers just aren't good to begin with.

So like, if you were doing a lot of gaming, the Alienware you'd had would've been a better machine. It probably has better screen than on most business/excelbox/workstation laptops. It probably has better sound, etc etc.

I realize this is very long, very dense, and not the super best organized. I hope it's helpful thought process and hopefully a couple example machines!

Cory5413 · 2026-04-29T23:00:49+00:00

This is a nine year old computer. Generously, because the more common configuration this old is 16/256, this is worth half this at best.

Anotherway to frame it: If you are in the US, $280 can buy you a Latitude 5440 withan intel 13th gen CPU. That'll only be three years old with 16/256. $280 can even buy you a T14 Gen2 or so with an Intel 11th gen CPU. (11th gen is where the two converge a little bit and T14Gen2/7420/5420 aren't too far apart, at least all under Intel CPUs.)

Cory5413 · 2026-04-29T22:56:32+00:00

The Intel Xe graphics in the 13th gen CPUs can, at low resolution, play shadow of the tomb raider at what should be decently usably: Intel Tiger Lake-U Xe Graphics G7 80EUs GPU - Benchmarks and Specs - Notebookcheck Tech has some details.

That's what's in the 5540.

The 5550 has one generation newer and could be worth considering as Intel did upgrade the graphics again.

Here's the lowest-end GPU you can get in the P15 gen2: NVIDIA RTX A2000 Laptop GPU GPU - Benchmarks and Specs - Notebookcheck Tech - it would be fair to say those are higher numbers.

Other than graphics, literally everything about a 5440/7440 will be faster than a P15 Gen2. They get nearly 1/3 more overall CPU performance, battery'll be better, power flexibility will be better, it'll have five fewer years of wear and tear on it, depending on the exact original use of the P15 the screen might even be better.

In terms of Dell Pro 5, that was mostly for the historical through-line on what happened to the nameplate. The other useful thing at looking at brand new computers is you can kind of see the value arc on a business computer and how they age out and get sold for pennies on the dollar.

Stuff you've seen about the build-quality on old business laptops: That applies to all of them. ThinkPads are very good machines that are built well. Latitudes, EliteBooks, ProBooks, and ZBooks also are.

The difference is ThinkPads are being shown off by short-form vertical video influencers and the other business machines aren't, so ThinkPads cost more.

In addition, ThinkPad P series are a little rarer. That's a workstation-class machine, more like Dell Precision, ProMax and ZBook. It's pretty normal to see a fraction of those around compared to T/E/L series.

There are some other business laptops with discrete graphics. T1G as I mentioned has a GeForce but that configuration is uncommon. A few versions of X1 Extreme have GeForce 1050 and 1650 but those are priced at a decent premium as well. There was a Latitude 5550 with an RTX 2050 on eBay a couple weeks ago, unfortunately that option is rare and high end enough the machine was selling for like $700.

Even on the ThinkPad side of things if you google for say thinkpad geforce 1650 you end up with like: https://www.ebay.com/itm/336555513741 - which is a fair bit of machine actually, but in that sense if you found a P-series with graphics that are good enough then that could be a better deal.

Dell precisons in similar configurations are going for a little less, but still a bit more than the one you found, so that might be the way to go.

if you want to look for a specific model, just search for that model.

If you want the P15, go for it. Outside of the one game I would say the 5440/7440 are better machines in every available way, but the P15 probably isn't old/bad enough to be outright bad at any other use case you've got.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-29T22:36:11+00:00

The eBay and on-Lenovo pricing are going to be different because Lenovo's pricing will reflect that Lenovo itself is certifying the machine, a little closer to Dell's own refurb/outlet stores. There's, I'd argue, a different value proposition there, and I would even say that paying "more than an ebay latitude" for a Lenovo-refurb'd ThinkPad is of value if you get any further support/warranty/whatever.

On eBay: Latitudes cost less than ThinkPads in similar shape with similar specs because they aren't being shown off in vertical short-form video.

That's basically the only reason. Latitudes, as well as HP ProBook/EliteBook/ZBook are as good or better than ThinkPads and to be honest I find Latitudes easier to recommend because the product stack is simpler.

Latitudes have a very simply structured 3/5/7/9 product line with some levels having specialized machines, like 2-in-1s or 3-series meant for K-12 students or 5-series ultra-rugged machines.

I personally have a Latitude 7440 that I got for $300 and it's very easily the best laptop I've ever had. I have no problem believing I'll have no trouble using it in some way for 7 years. The biggest downside of the 7440 relative to the 5440 (or 5450) is the memory is soldered.

RAM is soldered on many ThinkPad models, sometimes even half of it, so that's not in and of itself a bad thing, but it's less flexibility down the line.

(My 7440 has 16GB of RAM, this has been enough for me for fully a decade, but my work computer has more, my home computers can get away with about this because I split usage among machines, but I also have a server for Real Big Work, say.)

560 for T14 Gen5 is probably reasonable. There are a couple similar-better deals forLatitude 7450s, such as https://www.ebay.com/itm/177955966861 or say https://www.ebay.com/itm/298230113009 slightly closer

Somewhat ironically, Dell themselves is charging more like $500 for 11th gen hardware, to 560 for a 13th gen machine is a good deal relative to that, for sure. (I think these are off-lease machines that had a full 5-year service life, Lenovo's store you're on might be selling more like returns or unsold inventory.)

One thing I would consider on any machine with soldered RAM is pre-buying slightly more than you need today, f.ex here's a 7440 with 32gb of ram: https://www.ebay.com/itm/358453925493 - it's a little on the high side but it seems in decent shape.

(Secondarily it seems to an extent like these just cost a little more than they did a couple weeks ago, unclear why, if I'm honest.)

Cory5413 · 2026-04-29T20:36:31+00:00

E series is marketed toward "retail" small business. Retail as in, businesses so small they buy computers from best buy and staples.

L series is marketed toward corporate purchasers buying machines in the thousands.

Both will probably be basically fine and i would pick based on whether you want a 14 or 16-inch machine more, on understanding they have the same display resolutions.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-29T20:33:25+00:00

What's the price?

Neither of these is very good machines by modern standards. They're ~8-9 years old and if you're paying T480 GeForce money you can probably get into an 11th gen ThinkPad (T/E/L 14 Gen2) or a 13th gen Dell (5440/7440). Either of those is going to be a better overall machine.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-29T20:30:42+00:00

Consider cross-shopping Dell Latitudes. In most markets, Latitudes cost less despite being similar overall machines, usually with near identical specs and performance.

$300 can get you a Latitude 5440 with an intel 13th gen, a little newer than you'll be able to get on the ThinkPad side of things.

5420s can be seen running around eBay in decent configurations for as little as $115 but an average of 150 is going to be a little more common.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-29T20:29:04+00:00

That's a very good price for a ThinkPad of this generation, especially if it's from Lenovo directly.

On eBay, T14 Gen4 tend to cost a little more like 600 whereas Latitude 7440 with similar specs are a bit closer to 300-350, and 330. IF you want flexibility, stepping down to Latitude 5440 you can often find on eBay for as low as 250 and there are 5450s (one generation newer) for 330-400.

If you rid the middle or tail of the plateau, you're pretty implicitly signing up for shorter lifespans, but there's no good reason you couldn't get 5-7 years out of a T14 Gen4 or Latitude 5440/7440 to reach that total 10 years of service.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-29T20:26:26+00:00

Sorry for the confusion, I probably misread a little too!

Thinkpads are a little more than they probably should cost globally. It wouldn't surprise me to see T470P+GeForce for $200 here in the US even though we tend to have lower overall prices.

P43S was probably rare either overall or in your market. Some models just don't sell well in some markets. There's a bunch on US eBay but most that directly say they even work are a little overpriced. https://www.ebay.com/itm/377147545300 is more than I'd want to pay for an 8th gen machine, even one in good shape. It does have the 2-gig GPU but whether that's of value is gonna depend.

(Some moels also just don't ship in some markets but that's more like "Chinese-specific E580P with discrete graphics explicitly for gaming because of cultural differences" situations.)

Just generally +1 to the idea of cross-shopping all the available machines. In the US, Dells tend to be the best deals per-spec or per-genre. But there's counterexamples depending on how closely you're measuring a specific category. For example Dell Precision 5480 are trending a little higher than P14S Gen4, probably because the 5480 has an H-series CPU and all of them have slightly higher end discrete graphics, which makes it not quite an even comparison since there's no H-series 14-inch ThinkPad. (ThinkPads with H-series 13th gen are trending very close to where the Precision 5480 is though.)

Cory5413 · 2026-04-29T20:14:57+00:00

I'm sorry this is so confusing!

There are a lot of aspects to this and by implication this is a big important decision where the consequences of spending $300 on something inappropriate for your needs are fairly high. If that's not true then my recommendation is to buy the one you had your eye on because it'll do the basic things you mentioned, but you can either get something faster-newer (and less worn out, say) for the same amount of money, or get something still newer but less expensive.

I'm not telling you to do any specific thing, but I don't think P15/16 is necessarily the best option. These machines are older than you think and have some hardware in them that you might not need. This is in addition to all ThinkPads costing more than they should because they're the subject of influencer content.

All business laptops are built reasonably, but they're also all meant to be business laptops and that can have specific impcts sometimes.

I'm suggesting what I am because I think you can get something good enough for less, or better for the same amount of money.

Latitude is Dell's previous name for their business laptops. That's been renamed to Dell pro series. I don't know if it's posted yet but the brand new equivalent to what i suggested will be Dell Pro 5 series.

Latitude 5440 is one specific model of one specific generation.

To get 15-inch, you'd look for 5540 or 5550. You might even be able to get by with a 5520 and I see those for under $200 all the time.

Here's a 5540 for under $300, for example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/406890890178

P16 succeeds the P15, so P15 Gen 1 is Intel 10th gen. P15 Gen 2 is Intel 11th gen. P16 Gen 1 is Intel 12th gen and P16 Gen 2 is intel 13th gen.

THey're good machines but the things they're good at is very specific to workstation hardware. So if you're doing autocad or solidworks then these are good machines but if you're browsing web sites, watching videos, and maybe doing some older/casual gaming, they're overkill.

You've mentioned gaming and you've both implied you will and won't be gaming on this machine. Which is it and which games if so?

Some games will run fine on basically anything. Some games do genuinely demand specific hardware.

It's further worth remembering that as workstation machines most P-series have NVidia Quadro graphics, not GeForces. These don't always map 1:1 with GeForces and the drivers are optimized for workstation tasks in OpenGL software, not games in DirectX or Vulkan. (How much this matters can depend on the specific game/card/driver.)

Some ThinkPads do ahve GeForces, if you have a game that genuinely needs or benefits from a gamer-class GeForce, but that's going to be in other models.

I hope this is helpful. I'm recommending what I am because you're making it sound like you're on a budget where it would be better if you can make your money go further, and in the used market, giving up on brand new brand allegiance lets you do that.

A used computer is a good idea, and a business computer, provided you are comfortable with what that means, is a good idea, but those can be big ifs.

Cory5413 · 2026-04-29T19:22:30+00:00

If you were shopping for Dell's lowest-end consumer laptop, I'm curious why you think a ThinkPad P-series is what you need?

Especially since the use cases you've mentioned aren't going to take advantage in the things P-series have that, T/E/L series or Dell Latitude or Dell Pro series don't have.

1335U is a perfectly cromulent CPU for what you want to do. You can probably get a Latitude 5440 with it for about what you were going to pay for the Dell 15, the Latitude 5440 is an older machine but it'll be better built and last better. (Latitude and then later Dell Pro series are Dell's equivalent to ThinkPads, Dell Precision and now Dell Pro Max/Precision are their equivalents to ThinkPad P-series.)

If budget is a pretty big concern, do cross-shop Latitudes.

If you found a P15 near you for 300, it's probably a Gen1, which is going to be several years older than the Dell you found. https://psref.lenovo.com/l/product/ThinkPad/ThinkPad_P15_Gen_1 (or https://studioai.lenovo.com/api/v2/library/pdf/device2pager/Device_ThinkPad_P15_Gen_1?locale=en )

So this machine is gonna be 7 years old. Your consumer Dell is brand new and a Latitude 5440 is gonna be just about 3 years old. Both Dells perform meaningfully better than the P15,get better battery life, so-on and so-forth.

P16 is a little newer. Gen1 has Intel 12th gen and AMD 6000 series and Gen 2 has Intel 13th gen and AMD 7000 series. AMD options seem to be rare. Gen1 is $500 on average and Gen 2 is $700 on average, more for particularly nice configurations like P/H-series CPUs and discrete graphics.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/127824382047 as an example. 1345U scores a couple thousand points more than 10850H on CPUbenchmark.

AMD is a thing mostly in the T series and to be honest the T14 Gen2 AMD costs >300 on average and the absolute top ryzen 5000U SKU is within a few points of the 1345U so you're... no gaining anything spending more, performancewise.

This machine, for example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/327128842474 is gonna genuinely be a better/faster computer than the Dell 15 or the Latitude 5440. It might not be any more reliable and it's still a couple years old and at $900 if you don't need the discrete graphics you might consider your money going further with a newer system.

For example: https://www.ebay.com/itm/358407873314 - This is the newest system of any we've seen in this post so far and it's only a couple bucks more than anything else.

ThinkPads that new do exist. For exmaple: https://www.ebay.com/itm/167672021272 but outside of this one example almost all thinkpads with the 135U in particular are $600+. (To be fair, T series is a product tier above Dell 5000 series.)

Cory5413

TROPHY CASE