I’ve been using a Lenovo ThinkPad X230 as my general-purpose Laptop since about 2017. The X230 came out in mid-2012, so even at that time, it was already around 5 years old. This hasn’t bothered me, since I don’t do any heavy computing on my Laptop. It’s more or less just a machine for generally simple tasks, such as web browsing, chatting, programming, simple games and various system administration tasks.

I was initially running Windows on my X230, but I’ve switched to using Manjaro Linux about a year ago, since I realized that nothing I do on there actually requires me to run Windows. Though Linux is generally faster than Windows, it still won’t be terribly fast if you’re running an 11 year old CPU. In my case, that was an Intel Core i5-3320M.

Of course, I’m aware that the X230 is a quite well-loved model. It is a genuinely fantastic laptop after all. As a result of this, there are all sorts of mods out there to extend its lifespan, such as the X330. This is essentially a general modernization mod that adds a higher resolution screen, newer WiFi standard and I’ve also heard of some people managing to squeeze a quad-core i7 in there.

However, I didn’t really want to take that route. To me, this feels more like life support. Sure, maybe you can get a few more years out of this thing, but even the quad-core i7 (3615QE) that you can supposedly fit in there isn’t all that fast. Not to mention, it’s ridiculously expensive. If you’re dedicated to keeping your X230 at all costs, this is a fair enough solution. However, buying a newer refurbished laptop is a hell of a lot cheaper and gets you slightly better performance at a lower power draw.

Looking for alternatives

Since I’m not exactly swimming in money, I decided to just buy a more modern laptop to replace my X230. But of course, it had to have some of the same qualities of the X230 for me to view it as a suitable replacement. Those include:

  • Easy to repair & upgrade
  • Good durability
  • Long battery runtime

There’s also some general requirements I have for a new laptop:

  • Trackpoint
  • Faster CPU than the X230
  • At least 1080p Screen resolution
  • Support for >16GB RAM

This may sound like a fairly simple list, but you’d be surprised how hard it is to find something like this nowadays. The ThinkPad X-Series laptops of the last 5 years or so have all had the RAM soldered in, so you can’t upgrade it. And unless you’re proficient in BGA soldering you can’t even replace it if it fails. This is already a massive failure in terms of repairability and upgradeability.

Looking at other manufacturers besides Lenovo, this seems to be a trend when it comes to this form factor. Dell for example doesn’t even offer Laptops in that size anymore. Their 12” devices are all so called “convertibles”, which is essentially a tablet that you can turn into a laptop by connecting a keyboard/trackpad combo. HP doesn’t seem to be making 12” laptops anymore either. As a result of this, I was more or less forced to look at larger machines.

Of course, all the Laptops I looked at were refurbished business machines, since those tend to be the most reliable and are usually the only ones that have a Trackpoint. On top of that, businesses usually get rid of them after around 4 or 5 years, so the refurbished market is full of those laptops for usually very good prices.

Looking at 13” and 14” machines, I didn’t quite like the form factor. This is all personal preference of course. My thoughts behind that were that if I’m gonna get a larger laptop, I at least want to have a Numpad. Those seem to be commonplace on 15” Laptops, so I decided to go with that form factor. While a small laptop is convenient, I don’t entirely need that small of a form factor anymore.

I used to carry the X230 around all the time, more or less balancing it on my palm, which is something you can’t really do with a 15” machine. However, these days I mostly use it on my living room table or just as a general purpose computer I can easily bring with me, so I didn’t exactly need an ultraportable. All things considered, 15” seemed like the most comfortable size for general use.

The replacement

Dell Latitude 5590

I ended up deciding on getting a Dell Latitude 5590 with an Intel Core i5-8350U, 16GB RAM and a 256GB NVMe SSD. The reason I went for a Dell machine is quite simple. I’ve owned many Dell machines in the past, including various Optiplex desktops and a PowerEdge server. In fact, my first ever PC was a Dell Dimension E521. I always got the impression that Dell makes pretty solid machines (if you ignore the dumpster fire that is Alienware).

I paid 260€ for this laptop and spent an additional 40€ to upgrade the NVMe SSD to a 1TB Crucial P3, since 256GB is quite limiting. The SSD upgrade procedure was absolutely trivial, so no complaints there. But let’s look at each of my requirements in detail to see if the Latitude 5590 is able to fulfill them.

Easy to repair & upgrade?

This being a newer laptop, of course this isn’t as simple as with the X230. Though comparing that to the X230 would probably not be all that fair, since you can practically take that thing apart while blindfolded. It’s still quite nicely maintainable though. You’ll need to remove 8 screws to remove the bottom panel, which will give you access to the cooling system, the SSD (M.2 2280 and 2.5” SATA), the two RAM slots, network adapters and most of the ribbon cables.

Keyboard replacement isn’t quite as simple as it is on the X230, but still very doable. You essentially need to remove a bezel that is snapped in at the top, remove several screws and remove the bottom cover to access the ribbon cables. It’s a good bit of work, but then again, you don’t exactly need to replace the keyboard all that often, so this is still acceptable, albeit a little annoying.

Display replacement is also a little bit sketchy. The screen bezel seems to be held together entirely with plastic clips, so I wouldn’t want to open that up if I don’t absolutely need to. But then again, the X230 display is also mostly held together with plastic clips, so it’s not much better in that regard.

Good durability?

This is a little bit questionable, to be honest. It looked durable on the pictures, but having it in person it gives of a slightly flimsy impression. It’s not terrible, but there’s some serious keyboard flex and screen flex. Maybe this actually makes it more durable, since the flex could actually help absorb any impacts, but I guess time will tell. At least it doesn’t feel like it’s gonna fall apart, but it certainly doesn’t feel as sturdy as my X230.

Thermals seem pretty good though, usually hanging around 45°C to 55°C during normal use such as web browsing, chatting and programming. After all, the cooling fins are quite large. If I compare this to my work laptop, which is a ThinkPad X280, running an i7-8550U, the cooler is quite a bit larger, despite having a weaker CPU. This should reduce extreme temperature variation and extend the lifespan of the CPU. But then again, CPUs rarely die an untimely death anyways, so I don’t think this is all too important.

Vent size comparison

ThinkPad X280 (Top) vs Latitude 5590 (Bottom)

Long battery runtime?

Well, this one is a bit iffy. The battery capacity is obviously significantly lower than an X230 9-cell battery. However, battery capacity isn’t actually all that important. Energy efficiency is far more important when it comes to battery life, and the i5-8350U draws a whole lot less power than the i5-3320M. Mine came with a 68Wh battery, which is currently at just under 80% battery health, so way past its prime. It is unfortunately very common for refurbished laptops to come with worn out batteries, so this doesn’t come as much of a surprise. On the bright side, the battery isn’t all that hard to replace. You just need to remove the bottom panel, remove a screw and unplug the battery. It’s far from the ease of battery replacement on the X230 though, which could be replaced without any tools, but at least its not glued down with that bulletproof glue you usually have on smaller devices

The runtime however is not all that great. Certainly nowhere near as good as an X230 with a brand new battery. Although given the fact that todays software requires much more processing power, I doubt an X230 with a brand new battery would last all that long anymore either. While running a CPU stress test using the command stress -c 8 at full screen brightness and full keyboard brightness I was reading around 36W of power draw from the battery (running at 3GHz). Under those conditions with a brand new battery, you’d get around 1.8 hours of battery life, assuming the capacity is exactly as advertised.

Let’s be honest, this isn’t exactly groundbreaking. I’ve seen far worse battery life on consumer laptops under full load, but this isn’t exactly great either. Although to be fair, I’m not going to be running this laptop at full throttle anyways. At idle with full brightness on keyboard & screen I’ve seen about 10W of power draw, so while actually using the laptop, I suspect you’ll see around 4 to 5 hours of battery life (on a brand new battery). Again, not great, but I likely won’t be using it much longer than that purely on battery anyways.

A nice advantage over the X230 however is that it can charge using USB PD, which means you can charge it with a 60W PD compatible powerbank. Those aren’t exactly cheap, but it should be able to almost double the battery life given a decent powerbank for around 50€. So in a pinch I can still go ahead and use it without access to a power outlet for about 8 hours if I really need to (assuming I don’t run any CPU intensive applications).

Was it worth it?

Honestly, despite it being inferior to the X230 in some regards, having a bigger screen at 1080p with a much more powerful processor has been great so far. In fact, I’m writing this post on the Latitude 5590 right now. I definitely won’t be going back to my X230 now that I have this one. I certainly like it, but I wouldn’t really recommend it to everyone as an X230 replacement. Perhaps you want to look for a different machine if anything I mentioned here is a major turnoff for you. Or perhaps you still need something smaller, in which case it would likely make the most sense to look at a 13” laptop.

There’s one significant issue with it though: the absolutely abysmal screen brightness of 220 nits. This effectively means you’ll be running this thing at full brightness most of the time. Especially in the middle of the day, full brightness is just about enough to actually see what’s happening on the screen. I doubt this laptop is even usable in direct sunlight. It’s a shame, really. The screen looks quite good. If it weren’t for the low brightness, it would be a very nice screen. It’s not a dealbreaker for me since I’ll be using this laptop almost exclusively indoor anyways, but I figured it’s worth mentioning.

Either way, this ended up being one hell of a wall of text. I hope it wasn’t too boring, as all of this was pretty dry technical stuff, but I guess it should be reasonably interesting for other nerds like me. I certainly could’ve written more about it, but I don’t want this post to be THAT boring.

Hope this was helpful to someone.