The T series of laptops are part of Lenovo's ThinkPad product line. Formerly an IBM brand, Lenovo acquired the ThinkPad brand following its purchase of IBM's Personal Computing Division (PCD) in 2005. The T series is officially the flagship ThinkPad product, offering high-performance computers aimed at businesses and professionals. The ThinkPad T series was originally introduced in 2000 and was produced by IBM until 2005.
IBM introduced the T series as part of their ThinkPad brand in May 2000, succeeding the high-end ThinkPad 600 and 700 series. The laptop was meant to cater to users working with multiple networks and in different environments. This resulted in the development of the IBM Embedded Security Subsystem.
From its inception, the series was designed to balance speed and mobility. Despite a 14.1-inch screen, similar to desktops at the time, the titanium composite body on the laptop was designed to keep the weight as low as possible. Users were also given options to swap components for mobility, like a DVD player, writeable CD drive or numeric keypads.
The ThinkPad T20 was released by IBM as the successor to the ThinkPad 600X and ThinkPad 770Z series laptops. With a weight of , the T20 was the lightest laptop offering with a screen size of . With the addition of an internal 8x DVD-ROM drive, the weight remained as low as .
In October 2000, the ThinkPad T20 was upgraded and released as the ThinkPad T21 laptop with the Intel Mobile Pentium III (800 MHz) CPU. The 14.1-inch liquid-crystal display (LCD) offered a higher resolution of . The hard disk space offered was a 32 GBhigh for the time.
Further minor refinements were made to the T2X series resulting in the T22 and finally in 2002 with the T23 a Pentium III-M 1.13 GHz "Tualatin" having 128 MiB of RAM and a 30 GB hard drive.
The ThinkPad T30 was released in May 2002, with options for the Intel Mobile Pentium 4-M processor with the Intel 845 MP Mobile Chipset. Additional options included the ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 video controller with 16 MiB graphics memory, a 14.1-inch LCD with a resolution of , and 1 GiB PC2100 RAM. This was complemented by a 60 GB hard drive and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive, making it a powerful laptop.
Announced in March 2003, the ThinkPad T40p represented the first in the T series' "performance" class of laptops. The ThinkPad T40p offered a Pentium M clocked at 1.3, 1.5, or 1.6 GHz, ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 with 64 MiB VRAM, a 14.1-inch LCD with resolution, a maximum of 2 GiB PC2100 RAM, and a 60 GB IDE hard disk. The design was followed by the T41 and T41p and the T42 and T42p (ATI Mobility Radeon 7500, 9600, and Mobility FireGL T2), with almost complete parts interchangeability, except for the fan (normal or p-series), keyboard (14.1" or 15"), screen (14.1" or 15"), and screen inverter. The 15-inch T42 and T42p models were offered with an optional or "FlexView" IPS LCD.Launched in April 2005, the ThinkPad T43 and T43p laptops were the last T-series laptops manufactured for IBM. The major improvement was a move to lower-cost DDR2 RAM and a bus speed increase from 400 MT/s to 533 MT/s. Their Pentium M Dothan features the XD bit, making it the first ThinkPad that could run Windows 8.
In December 2004 Lenovo announced the acquisition of the IBM PC division including the ThinkPad brand (at the time, 40% of the PC division was working in China) ThinkPads were being made by Lenovo's arch-rival Great Wall Technology.
Lenovo released the ThinkPad T60 and T60p laptops in February 2006. While designed and manufactured by Lenovo, the T60 and the T60p still featured the IBM logo on the machines. In May 2007, the T61 and T61p laptops slowly phased out IBM logos in favor of the ThinkPad logo. It also was the first T series model to adopt widescreen resolution as a mainstream option; the traditional 4:3 aspect ratio screens was also offered as an alternative at the time but mass industry adoption of the widescreen standard meant that it was the last ThinkPad of its kind to use the 4:3 standard.
The naming convention for the T series was changed by Lenovo following the release of the ThinkPad T400, T400s, and T500 in July 2008. The Txxp models (like the T61p) were replaced by the W series. Designed as mobile workstations, the W series grew to become Lenovo's line of performance-oriented laptops. The T series remains Lenovo's premier line of laptops, aimed at corporate and enterprise users and is praised by users for its outstanding Linux compatibility. The T-p lineup later returned as an irregular T##0p line with only T440p, T460p, T470p and T540p models. They were replaced by the P series.
<br />The ThinkPad 25th anniversary edition was released on October 5, 2017. It was based on the T470, but brought back the classic 7-row keyboard. In 2018, Lenovo introduced the ThinkPad A485, which officially is not part of the T Series, but it shares the same housing as the T480. It offers an AMD Ryzen PRO 2000 processor and lacks Thunderbolt 3 support but has USB-C support. The A475 had been similarly released in 2017 as a variation of the T470, but with AMD Carrizo or Bristol Ridge processors. In 2019 Lenovo officially introduced AMD CPUs in the T series, and differentiated it with the digit 5 at the end of the model number (i.e. T495).
From 2020 onwards, the naming scheme was changed again, with the letter "T" followed by the screen size in inches, then the generation number and the screen size and CPU manufacturer in brackets (e.g. T14s Gen 2 (14" Intel), T16 Gen 1 (16" AMD)), similar to the scheme used by the X1 series.
The ThinkPad T400s is a slimmed-down T400 with a soldered 25 W processor, support for smaller batteries, and no discrete graphics option.
Lenovo started to change the standard six-keys block Insert/Delete/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn on the top right of the keyboard. The Insert key moved above the F12 key and the Delete key has double height.
In 2014 Lenovo issued a product recall, dated April 1, on specific ranges of Thinkpad series batteries which had shipped from October 2010 to April 2011 due to a potential fire hazard, including some shipping with or for the model T410.
While the T410 and T510 use the Serial UltraBay Enhanced, the T410s continues to use the Serial UltraBay Slim to achieve a thin and light design.
Original standard five/six-key block (Ins/Del/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn, the Insert key moved away in 2010 models) disappeared.
This line introduces a touchpad with no physical buttons on the top and bottom and latch-less cases on all models. The ThinkLight was removed due to the presence of a backlit keyboard.
The ThinkPad T440 builds on a thinner design with soldered 15 W fourth generation Intel Core processors that are noticeably slower than 35 W third-generation processors. Other changes include 4 GB of soldered memory accompanied by one SO-DIMM slot for expansion, as well as an M.2 2280 slot replacing the mSATA slot. Other features include PowerBridge, the combination of a 3-cell internal battery and a 3- or 6-cell external battery, replacing the UltraBay and slice batteries.
Based on the ThinkPad X240, the T440s provides a 14-inch display and 4 GB of soldered DDR3L memory and one SO-DIMM slot instead of no soldered memory and only one SO-DIMM slot
Continuation of the T430 design language and reverted to the Serial UltraBay Slim.
Continuation of the T430 design language and reverted to the Serial UltraBay Slim. It also adds a numeric keypad.
Reverts to two SO-DIMMs, the previous touchpad but only with the physical TrackPoint buttons.
Reverts to the previous touchpad but only with the physical TrackPoint buttons.
Based on the T450 design. A version with entry-level professional GPU options and ISV certifications is available and known as W550s.
Model with Quadro RTX GPUs known as P15v Gen 1.
Model with Quadro RTX GPUs known as P15 Gen 1.
Model with Nvidia RTX GPUs known as P15v Gen 2.
Model with Nvidia RTX GPUs known as P15 Gen 2.
Model with Nvidia RTX GPUs known as P15v Gen 3.
Introduces Intel Core Ultra 100 Series processors with some graphics configurations including Intel Arc Graphics. The internals were redesigned to allow for two removable SODIMM DDR5 Modules, marking a push for a more repairable design when compared to the previous generations.
Introduces AMD Ryzen 8040 Series processors with the same integrated graphics as the previous 7040 Series. The internals were redesigned to allow for two removable SODIMM DDR5 Modules, marking a push for a more repairable design when compared to the previous generations.
Introduces Intel Core Ultra 100 Series processors with some graphics configurations including Intel Arc Graphics.
Introduces Ryzen AI 300 series processors with updated integrated Radeon Graphics.
Introduces Qualcomm Snapdragon Series processors with integrated Adreno Graphics. The successor to the ThinkPad X13s.
The S=slim version of T14 is very similar to thicker T14 Gen 6. Main differences:
T14S has no LAN port. It has less Customer Replaceable Units (CRUs): only battery (58Whr). For example keyboard is not as easy to replace.
T14 became available much later, in summer 2025.
Introduces Intel Core Ultra 100 Series processors with some graphics configurations including Intel Arc Graphics. Intel processors were the only configurable processor brand for this generation. The internals were redesigned to allow for two removable SODIMM DDR5 Modules, marking a push for a more repairable design when compared to the previous generations.
Introduces Ryzen AI 300 series processors with updated integrated Radeon Graphics.
Introduces the Intel Core Ultra 200 series processors with integrated Arc Graphics on certain models. Lunar Lake Intel Core Ultra 200V series processors have a physical limitation of 32GB of soldered LPDDR5X RAM, while Meteor Lake Core Ultra 200U and 200H series processors have removable SODIMM RAM that can be upgraded up to 128GB physically
Customer Replaceable Units (CRUs): Battery, Bottom cover (D), Keyboard, Memory, SSD, WWAN.
Introduces Ryzen AI 300 series processors with updated integrated Radeon Graphics.
Very similar to T14 Gen 6 (Intel). For example ports on left and right side of the notebook are 100% identical in 14" and 16" models.
But T16 is not sold with Lunar Lake V Series CPUs with soldered RAM, so T16 Gen 4 (Intel) doesn't support CoPilot+, because CoPilot+ requires at least 40 TPU NPU.