GTrusted

Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (2018) Charges with a 65W USB Power Delivery Type-C Power Adapter While Also Supporting Thunderbolt 3

If you're looking for a business laptop with plenty of interfaces, the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (2018) would be a good choice. This Windows 10 PC is a follow up of the 2017 model, Lenovo ThinkPad T470, with both supporting Thunderbolt 3 technology. Like the 2017 version, the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (2018) also offers a single Thunderbolt 3 enabled USB Type-C connector supporting Thunderbolt 3 (10 Gb/s), USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gb/s), DisplayPort 1.2 to connect with 4K@60Hz displays, and uses USB Power Delivery to charge USB Type-C devices. 

The Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (2018) comes with the newer 8th Gen Intel Core i7 processor alongside a higher 512 GB SSD and 16 GB DDR4 RAM as well as better NVIDIA Geforce MX150 graphics in comparison to the previous model. While the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (2018) uses a similar 14-inch 1920x1080 display as the T470, it is much heavier at 1.8 kg compared to the T470 at 1.65 kg.

Let's have a closer view of the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (2018) after we purchased and unpacked as below.

The Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (2018) ships with a battery pack, AC power adapter and documentation which are typical accessories for the ThinkPad models. The PC doesn't look too different from the older version either.

Rather than the conventional 45W power brick that came with previous ThinkPad, the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (2018) uses a USB Type-C based AC power adapter supplying up to 65 watts to the laptop. The 65W power adapter supports USB Power Delivery over Type-C for fast charging using the following power profiles- 65 watts (20 volts @ 3.25 amps), 45 watts (15 volts @ 3 amps), 18 watts (9 volts @ 2 amps) and 10 watts (5 volts @ 2 amps).  

The Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (2018) also has similar keyboard as the ThinkPad T470 that comes with a TrackPoint pointing stick to help with mouse navigation. Likewise the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (2018) also provides a fingerprint reader supporting Windows Hello’s fingerprint technology. This can be useful in case you happen to forget your password whereby just touching the fingerprint reader lets you log in to the notebook quickly.

One side of the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (2018) has a headphone jack, two USB Type-A based USB 3.1 Gen 1 (5 Gb/s) ports, one HDMI 1.4 connector, one RJ45 Gigabit LAN port, an SD card slot and a Kensington lock.

The other side of the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (2018) contains a USB Type-C port (that can also charge the laptop when plugged in with the supplied 65W power adapter), an optional smart card slot, one Thunderbolt 3 port and a nano SIM slot.

Like traditional laptops the Lenovo ThinkPad T480 (2018) needs to be inserted with the supplied external battery pack accessory on the bottom of the laptop.