Well I finally got all the parts in the mail needed to #refurbish this #ThinkPad L490 machine. 🎉

Unfortunately it does feature a 720p TN panel (a dramatically improved TN panel I should say), and a flawed M.2 connector. It accepts a #PCIe 3.0x4 drive, but it actually drops 2 of the PCIe lanes. Ordinarily that would be fine, but the M.2 drive I'm using is an #Optane H20, which acts as a PCIe 3.0x2x2 device: 1TB NVMe drive on the first 2x lanes and a 32GB Optane on the 2nd 2x lanes. 🤔

Soooo, it looks like I'm back to the drawing board regarding my #upgrade.

The Lenovo L-series does appear to be the last upgradable "small" form factor ThinkPad. My old go-to the X-series (13"), and even the T-series (14") all have at least one RAM module soldered to the board. I don't know if "dual channel" works without two matched size RAM modules (one on board, one in slot), but I suspect not.

The good news is if I stick with L-series, my components (RAM & Optane) are still good. 👍

After the L490, all L-series machines are now the L14 and L15 respectfully (14" and 15"). Most of their product lines line-up, so a 1st gen L14 and a 1st gen X13 or T14 feature a 10th generation Intel CPU (or 4000 series Ryzen). The caveat again being that only the L's have two RAM slots.

The L's are quite bare, shipping with 720p TN panels. I found a broken-screen 1st Gen AMD L14. CPU is a bit weak but it's still an upgrade over a 6th gen Intel. I would have swapped in a better screen anyway.