How iFixit helps manufacturers make laptops repairable again
You probably know about iFixit. It’s the website that became famous for its teardowns, having started way back in 2003. But the site wasn’t just there to rip things apart. iFixit wanted to help people fix their tech if things go wrong and is now a driving force in the growing #righttorepair movement.
As a brand, iFixit spent much of its time in the early years bashing big companies such as Apple, Dell and Lenovo for lack of repairability. From the MacBook Air onwards, the momentum switched towards thin and light laptops, and that often meant Humpty Dumpty products: once something broke, it was very difficult to put it back together again.
Now that momentum is switching. Whether it’s due to the rising cost of living, a growing body of right-to-repair legislation or the increasing need for companies to show that sustainability isn’t merely a buzzword to include in their annual reports, laptop manufacturers are taking ease of repair seriously.
And iFixit is here to help.
iFixit fixes it for Lenovo
Head to iFixit’s Manufacturer Solutions page and you will see exactly what it offers OEMs. That is, original equipment manufacturers: companies that build the products we buy.
“As right to repair has come along and we’ve developed over the years, OEMs started asking us for help,” said Brittany McCrigler, Vice President of Manufacturer Solutions at iFixit, when we spoke at MWC Barcelona 2024. “And so we built this division that I run and we help them with things like repairable design, or providing strategies on how to get parts to customers, or how to write guides.”
In some cases, Brittany and her team go further still, partnering with OEMs to help them improve their products. For Lenovo, iFixit’s first step was to examine the third-generation ThinkPad T series of laptops.
“We call it our repairability assessment,” she said, “where we line up each action for each critical component to go through and give them a lot of notes and feedback and they listened – and it was just like the clouds parting. It was fantastic to see them responding so positively.”
The end result was that the third generation T14 scored 7.3 out of 10 for repairability, while the fifth generation has a 9.3 score. “It doesn’t seem like a lot, but to go from a seven to a nine for repairability is huge,” said Brittany.
Key improvements include a battery that’s far easier for end users to replace and a shift away from soldering components onto the motherboard. Memory is the obvious example, but it’s also easier to replace the Wi-Fi card, SSD and several of the ports.
There is room to improve – for example the Thunderbolt ports are still soldered on, while the slimmer T14s includes soldered memory for this generation – but it’s a step in the right direction. As shown in the video below.
For more detail on the Lenovo partnership, read Lenovo makes ThinkPad T series laptops magnificently repairable at MWC 2024
More to come from iFixit
This is a great innovation – enough to earn Lenovo and iFixit our top Best of MWC Barcelona 2024 award – but we want more, iFixit wants more and Lenovo promises more.
“The L series [of ThinkPads] is getting a very significant amount of these upgrades as well,” said Brittany. “So that’s really exciting. And I think they’re iterating through each product and working through on repairability of each, so we’re really happy to see that.
“We’re expecting to see even easier battery removal and more daughter boards in the future as well and potential updates to the cooling system.”
So Lenovo is clearly moving in the right direction. What about the other OEMs, we asked. Can we expect to see future announcements with Apple, Dell, HP? “There’s partnerships we can talk about in partnerships we can’t,” Brittany explained. For example, on the Manufacturer Solutions homepage you will find examples of iFixit’s work with Google and Samsung, and the company is also talking to HP.
While none of these partnerships yet go as deep as the one with Lenovo, Brittany is delighted with how far things have come since she first joined iFixit in 2012.
“I joined iFixit such a long time and this year feels like a victory lap. We got right to repair passed, OEMs in conversation and we’re seeing a really positive change. Kyle’s vision has always been really strong,” she added, referring to iFixit’s Co-Founder and CEO Kyle Wiens, “and we’ve always been behind him, but you start out and you think, ‘you’re doing what, what’s the goal?’ and now it’s happening.”
Tim Danton
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