With the announcement of System76's new Lemur Pro laptop, I felt the need to write up my 4-year, long-term review of my Lemp10! No one asked for it, but I think it is warranted as I still use the device today as my travel laptop. It's missing most of the screws holding the bottom chassis together, has chipped hinges, and makes an absolutely weird "crunch" noise when you press down in the bottom-right corner. Yet, it is still my favorite laptop to use. Even after purchasing two ThinkPads (L15 Gen3 and a L16 Gen 1), I still prefer to use this machine as a daily driver.
I couldn't even dust off the laptop before I snapped a shot at it.
The Screen
The 14-inch screen is a good sweet spot for me when on the road. The screen itself is nothing to write home about, but it is exactly what you expect for a 1920x1080 screen. It is plenty bright enough for working outside, dims well in the dark, and you can even turn off the LED backlighting if you were looking to keep your laptop open without it going to sleep (and avoid burning more juice in the process). At 60Hz, again, it was a typical screen to look at. You can, however, bend the screen back a full 180 degrees. I actually found this useful sometimes when showing colleagues my screen and could hold the chassis like a book. Sounds weird, but it worked for me.
Overall, the screen has held up; no dead pixels, burn-in, etc. There is some LED backlight bleed, but it isn't too noticeable. You are not going to get the OLED blackest blacks, but the colors still feel crisp.
The Chassis
I gotta tell you, this laptop is LIGHT. Like, so light I forget its in my backpack. The chassis isn't the same quality of a MacBook Air, but it has to be lighter than it. That is one of my favorite things about this laptop; I can carry it anywhere and it doesn't feel like a burden. My kids have stepped on it, dropped it from medium height (4 feet max), and still remains intact. Over the years, I have replaced the nvme drive and added more RAM (maxed out at 40GB). Because of this, I have lost the chassis screws along the way. Could I find some in my collection of screws I have gathered over decades of building electronics and computers? Probably! Am I going to? Nope.
The Lemp10 has taken some damage, mainly around the hinge and the edges of the chassis. There is a wire exposed now because of a chipped hinge, but everything still works like a charm. It makes some creaking noises when I use it now, but I am sure that is due to the missing hardware...which is ultimately my fault. Keyboard flex is only noticeable if you are a mad typist. No crunchy keys, no dead backlighting, and the labels on the keys still look as good as they did on day one. Year three was probably the most taxing on this computer as it started to experience children playing with it when left unattended, so there are some random bite marks and scratches. The rubber feet on the bottom of the chassis are non-existent. I think the last one fell off during my travel to SCALE 23x this year. It is probably sitting on the floor somewhere in the Pasadena Convention Center...
I wish the chassis was of better quality and the screws on the bottom of the chassis were captive, but this was something I would only experience as I bought my ThinkPads within the last year. Final complaint on the chassis? Yeah, the webcam is horrible (720p) and I wish I could disconnect it entirely without having to snip the wire.
Hardware and Performance
I opted for the i5 (Core i5-1135G7) mainly because the performance ratings were not much different than the i7. At the time I configured it with 16GB, but later upgraded it to 32GB (then 40GB) when RAM wasn't so dang expensive. Battery life still rocks, but I couldn't give you a metric on it other than I can still go a day of medium-light use without having to charge it. That said, I use a MacBook Pro (not by choice) for my day job, so the Lemp10 mostly comes out at night.
It has seen its fair share of distro hopping, but mainly has been a NixOS machine. I see zero slowdown in my day-to-day usage, but I spend most of my time in the terminal and/or working on languages that do not require compilers (soon to change !!!!). As an Infrastructure/Backend Engineer, it has been an excellent machine to work on. I only upgraded to a Lenovo L16 Gen 1 because I got it for an absolutely great deal ($850 on eBay), new in box. I needed something that could act more as a mobile workstation, when needed, and did not care about the weight too much. Additionally, I considered the Pangolin, but it was hard for me to justify the cost difference. It was the economical thing for me to do and I would do it again if in the same situation.
I didn't even mention Coreboot yet—but man, the boot time or wake from sleep is exceptionally fast. I wish all of my laptops had this and it has ruined me for my future purchases. I even thought my new L16 was broken when I first booted it up because it just took so long to boot. I had completely forgotten about Coreboot!
Here is my only nitpick for the hardware; it has 8GB of soldered-on RAM and a single expansion slot. I understand why this was done, but I think we could have squeezed in another slot to push this baby up to 64GB.
Final Thoughts
If this was my only laptop, if RAM prices weren't so inflated, or if money wasn't an issue, I'd be budgeting for the new model. The 16-inch actually sounds like a win-win situation: it would provide updated compute, a larger screen, and would still be lighter than my L16 by a pound! For now, I will keep proudly showing off my Lemp10 to any Framework user asking "what laptop is that" with a confused look on their face.
Go ahead-look up my serial number. I dare you.