ThinkPad has shipped continuously since 1992 under IBM then Lenovo, maintaining visual and design continuity from the 700C through the 2026 P14s Gen 6 AMD.
Key Takeaways
The 1992 IBM ThinkPad 700C launched at ~$4,350 with a 10.4-inch active-matrix color TFT and in-keyboard TrackPoint II, rare features at the time.
Three design threads feed the “bento box” origin: internal compartment layout (IBM/David Hill), a Yamato wooden prototype modeled on a shoukadou lacquer box, and Richard Sapper’s “black cigar box” exterior framing.
The IBM-to-Lenovo handoff in 2005 kept Yamato engineering intact; Lenovo crossed 60 million ThinkPad units sold by 2010.
The 2012 X230 marked the keyboard inflection point: 6-row Precision Keyboard replaced the 7-row classic, same chassis as the X220.
A 2025 P14s Gen 6 AMD with Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 370 and 96 GB DDR5 SODIMMs runs 70B-parameter LLM workloads with a Copilot+ NPU in a 1.39 kg chassis.
