The screens are actually the very reason I choose a thinkpad over a mac. Gloss screens are pretty much impossible to work on if you prefer dark colorschemes, and at least the thinkpads give you the matte option.

Another of these things I don't get. Matte screens become unreadable with indirect light. I've been a long time ThinkPad user.

But dim screens just don't work, no matter if it's matte or not. Bright screen with anti-reflective layer work much better, hate to say that.

> Bright screen with anti-reflective layer

True! I've come to realize that anti-reflective coating is more effective than matte screen.

I don't think I fully understand what conditions you are talking about. I very rarely put my screen brightness any higher than 50%, and I've never maxed it out. My first thought is that it's not the brightness, but the contrast, that is the cause of your problems? Or perhaps I just have a model with a brighter screen... (currently on a T460, though I don't remember the screen specifics)

EDIT: I might add as well, that part of the point of using a dark colortheme, is to not be looking into a lamp...so perhaps I am simply more okay with lower brightness, because I explicitly look for dark colorthemes. That does mean I am very sensitive to finding a colortheme with good contrast.

Let's say you have a lamp behind your screen. The light will be visible on your screen in some way.

With a reflective screen, you'll see a reflection of lamp, bright and clear. I think everybody agrees that this is annoying.

With matte screen, the reflection isn't strong or clear, but a larger portion of the screen is affected, since the matte layer scatters the light.

With a anti-reflective but non-matte screen, you'll see a 1:1 reflection - but only very very dim.

In my experience across the Lenovo matte screens, and comparing it to MacBook screens, I found the latter to work better.

There's a significant difference between the MacBook and cheapo reflective screens.

You can buy matte screen protectors. I put one on my macbook and it was night and day.

Do you think it was as good as a factory-produced matte screen? While I was aware you can do this, I'm a little hesitant to do something which is an absolute minimum for usability, in case I'm not happy with the outcome. It feels a bit like having to install a keyboard on the laptop myself, because the laptop didn't come with one...

I honestly couldn't tell the difference. You lose some output and viewing angle, but you did so on the matte screen as well. I had it on for like 6 years and my wife still has hers on from 2011.

I like matte screens too but my problem is their brightness. T495s comes with a 250 nits screen which can be quite dim. The Intel models have more screen options.

While not for most people, it is realtively easy to replace the screen with a higher quality panel. I have a T495, and replaced the panel with a higher quality one. No screws, just sticky stuff, I was concerned about this at first, as I didn't know of the sticky substance would remain viable after swaping thescreen, but it is working great. Since I am not changing panels everyday, it isn't an issue.

Yes, I've seen the DIY videos of it, but I never felt confident enough to do it myself. And what would you do with the old panel? Ebay?

ebay is a good option. I pickup old broken laptops on a semi regular basis, fix them, and give them away, so I keep the old screens around.

I use a T495s with the 400-nit low power display and it is by far the best screen I've ever seen on a laptop. I have no idea what you're talking about; of course, if you go with the 1366x768 screen that Lenovo seems to continue to offer inexplicably, you're shafted, but the 1920x1080 400-nit screen is incredible. It's matte, thin, extremely low power (powertop tells me it's under 1W right now at 30% brightness, which is already too bright for a well-lit root), and is easily replaceable. And it's not touch either, which is an advantage in my book.

Is it a silent machine?

It is. I never hear the fan running. But annoyingly, they've put the fan vent on the right side of the machine, so every now and then I can feel the hot air from the vent when my mouse is close to it, but I never hear it. Even in the quietest environments.

Sounds great. What component setup (CPU and GPU) do you have?

I have the Ryzen 5 PRO 3500U (4c8t) with integrated Vega 8. I haven't done any under/overclocking or anything special, it's a pretty vanilla machine. I've only swapped out the NVMe drive it came with for a Samsung one.

I just recently bought a T495 and am really happy with it :) I also opted for the (pricey) screen upgrade, so YMMV.

I have a T495. I highly recommend it. Be warned, the keyboard is a chiclet keyboard, not the traditional Thinkpad keyboard. But having an AMD GPU and an AMD CPU automatically makes this my choice after having dealt with the horrors of NVIDIA on Linux.

The traditional ThinkPad keyboards are long gone (save for the T25 anniversary model). That said, they are still better than most other laptop keyboards I've tried.

After having cycled between HP, Dell, and Asus, bought my first Thinkpad two months ago (T490). Was rather shocked at just how much better the keyboard is compared to the others, and for those others I'd always tested the keyboard at a store first.

I think the old ThinkPad keyboards are gone forever now. All models are chiclet.