After reading a lot of praise on Thinkpads on HN, especially by Linux users, I decided to but a Lenovo X1-Extreme (gen 1) for work. Specs basically maxed out.

Here is my experience with the X1E:

# Business use & warranty:

For business use, Lenovo offers on-site repair. Lenovo will come to you and repair or replace a broken device. At a reasonable cost (~300 eur) you can extend this to a 3 year contract. Compared to Apple (who have zero options for on-site repairs, and zero extended warranty options for small business) this is infinitely better for professional use. Regardless of how many 'pro' titles Apple slap on their products, you basically get 0 service from them, even if you pay.

# Hardware:

- Coil whine. So. Much. Coil whine :-(

- Laptop comes with 2 M.2 slots, one occupied by the factory SSD. This allowed me to install a second SSD for a Linux/Windows dual boot. RAM is also user upgradable.

- Fans are noisy and ramp-up is very aggressive, might be able to tweak this.

- 4K display is gorgeous, though I am kind of bummed that there was no matte finish option when I ordered my gen 1 (matte OLED became available in gen 3).

- Keyboard is really good.

- Audio (speakers) are quite bad compared to a Macbook of any generation.

- After first month of use, the display started showing signs of damage (not just dirty) by keyboard imprints, even with careful use.

- Ethernet uses proprietary connector, you must buy a Lenovo dongle (though they are inexpensive IIRC)

- Charger has proprietary connector, X1E cannot charge via USB-C

# Linux support:

- WiFi, webcam and function keys work out of the box. Fingerprint reader does not, but have not made any effort to use it.

- Audio output switching often leaves driver for internal speakers in a weird state, causing a weird delayed noise/crackling effect during playback.

- The (insanely expensive) Thunderbolt dock (AN40) is unreliable under Linux. Most notably when laptop goes into standby. Hot-plugging almost never works. Even after all the firmware updates (which require a windows only utility btw). With an external display attached (DP, via TB3 dock) and the laptop in stand-by, the dock starts emitting some stray interrupt that will eat 100% CPU, ramping the fans up to maximum.

- The Linux ACPI driver is quite bad. Battery status is almost always 'unknown'. If battery status does display 'full', it usually reports $random percentage between 60 and 80%. Wake-up after stand-by has endless other problems.

- USB ports (internal, or on TB dock) regularly become unresponsive after stand-by. May be related to ACPI issues.

- The dual GPU (Intel + nVidia) situation remains a nightmare under Linux, though this is not Lenovos fault obviously.

# Windows:

- Lots and lots of bloatware out of the box

- Laptop regularly wakes up from sleep while in my backpack, burning 100% of the battery of you don't notice it.

- Otherwise works fine under Windows.

# Conclusion

So, concluding, my first-time experience is mediocre. Linux support isn't great, though the laptop mostly works as promised under Windows. The service and support of Lenovo is (in my experience) on-par with Dell, and light years ahead of Apple.

Due to the praise for Lenovo here on HN, I had high hopes for proper Linux support, but that was disappointing.

In 2019, when I bought the X1E, the offering by Apple was really bad, which made me look for other brand laptops. But if I was to buy a new laptop today, I'll probably go back to Apple. With M1 support shaping up (thanks Marcan!), it might even become a good Linux machine.