Summary
Model | T14s Gen 6 | T14 Gen 5 | Gen6 vs Gen 5 |
---|---|---|---|
Weight | 1.23kg | 1.47kg | better |
Dimensions | 312x220x20mm | 315x225x20mm | tie |
Screen (diagonal) | 357 | 357 | tie |
Ports | Left 2xUSBC, right 2xUSBA | Left 2xUSBC,USBA, right: RJ45,USBA, microSD | worse |
Battery | 58Wh | 52.5Wh | better |
Geekbench 6.4 | Single core 2347 Win (2349 Linux), Multi-core: 14312 Win (13587 Linux) | Single Core 2386, Multi-core: 10956 | better |
Speakers+microphone | not detected | works | worse |
External headset | works | works | tie |
Cameras (internal and external USB) | works | works | tie |
Dock | partial (one screen only) | works | worse |
Boot from dock | no | works | worse |
LUKS encryption | mostly | works | worse |
Firmware updater | no | works | worse |
Hibernate/wake up | works | works | tie |
Kernel upgradable | no | works | worse |
wifi | works (with kernel 6.14.0-15) | works | worse |
Hibernation for 1 hour | lost 2.9% | lost 6.7% | Better |
SSD | M.2 2242 | M.2 2280 | Worse |
For the tests I used two models of the Lenovo Thinkpad:
- T14s Gen 6 Snapdragon Elite X
- T14 Gen 5 AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 8840U
Operating systems
For laptop 1 I used Ubuntu 25.10 ARM
For laptop 2 I used Ubuntu 24.04.2
Kernels
For laptop 1 6.14.0-15
For laptop 2 6.11-0-17
Processor
Laptop 1: Snapdragon X Elite X1E78100 Qualcomm Oryon 3.417 GHz, 12 physical cores (no hyperthreading)
Laptop 2: AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 8840u with Radeon 780m graphics x 8 cores (16 hyperthreaded) 3.3 - 5.1 GHz
Battery
Laptop 1: upower -i
reports 58Wh capacity.
Laptop 2: 52.5Wh.
When put into hibernation laptop 1 lost 2.7 to 2.9% of power per hour. Laptop 2 lost 6.7%
Installation
Installation of Ubuntu 24.04.2 was successful with all options.
Installation of Ubuntu 25.10 on the ARM machine however, was much more buggy. First you had to disable Secure boot, which is normal. However, retaining the Windows partition as recommended then required a recovery key from the Microsoft site to boot into Windows, which was necessary to turn off BitLocker. After that it was possible to install Ubuntu alongside the Windows NTFS partition. With the latest versoin of the installer image LUKS now works, although it does not yet have a graphical prompt for the luks password, you can enter this on the commanline and all is well.
Thunderbird
When installing Thunderbird in the terminal multiple lines are producing instead of overwriting the previous line. So some terminal emulation here doesn’t work, but the installation succeeded.
Speakers and microphone
The internal speakers and mircophone were not recognised on Laptop 1 at all, not even after running qcom-firmware-extract
. However, after running that command an external headset, an Edifier K800 USB worked perfectly, but only when plugged directly into the laptop.
Cameras
Both the internal camera and external Logitech 720P camera worked fine on both laptops.
Firmware Updater
I tried installing the firmware-updater snap, but it won’t run.
As a regular user: error sending Activate message to application:
GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.Dbus.Error.NoReply: Message recipient disconnected from message bus without replying.
As root: touch: cannot touch ‘/root/snap/firmware-updater/common/.cache/desktop-runtime-date: No such file or directory.
Upgrading the kernel
Installation of Mainline failed on laptop 1, even after setting the correct repo cappelikan/ppa. When running apt update
it replies: Error: The repository ‘https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/cappelikan/ppa/ubuntu questing Release’ does not have a Release file. And it doesn't.
Tried running the ubuntu-mainline-kernel.sh file available on github, which installs version 6.15.4. It won’t reboot, cold or warm in 6.15.4. Reverted to 6.14.0-15
Wifi
This works as expected on both laptops. The VPN works as expected. However, on laptop 1, after upgrade to kernel 6.15-03, via the software updater tool, the wifi no longer works. It seems that qcom-firmware-extract
only works with kernel 6.14.0-15. After running this tool again it says it updated the 6.14 kernel, but that the latest is 6.15.
External monitors
Tested with a twin UHD display via Thinkpad USB-C Dock Gen 2.
This worked fine on laptop 2.
On laptop 1, however, closing the lid did not assign the main screen to one of the external monitors.
The first UHD external monitor was recognised at full resolution. The second external UHD monitor was not recognised, but was mirrored from the first. It does not appear as Display 3 in Displays control panel. Only the laptop (1) and first external monitor (2) appear.
The same behaviour was observed with twin FHD monitors. Attempting to set an external monitor as the primary did not work, and the cursor disappeared from the laptop monitor, making it useless.
With dock
Boot button on dock started the laptop. It then displayed the blurred grub menu.
Selection of first item Ubuntu in grub menu produced error: “Failed to boot either main or alternate entries.” It returned to grub and after selecting Ubuntu again crashed.
Booting from the laptop directly worked.
Shutdown while connected to the dock failed: USB cable bad?
Hibernation
Laptop 1 declined 2.7-2.9% after 1 hour of hibernation.
Laptop 2 declined by 6.77% after one hour of hibernation
Upgradeable Storage
Laptop 2 takes standard M.2 2280 drives, of which there are plenty of models up to 4TB. Laptop 1, however, accepts only M.2 2242, a 45mm long drive not yet made by Crucial. I found only one model that boasts 4TB. Most are 512GB-1TB.