Long Overdue ThinkPad T480 Upgrades - Screen & Keyboard

Posted Oct 28, 2025

By Shaw Sun

1 min read

I bought my ThinkPad T480 back in 2022 without really paying attention to the screen specs, it was a big mistake. It came with a 1366×768 TN panel, the experience was trash from day one. Luckily, I didn’t use it much since I landed a university job soon after and switched to my work laptop.

Anyway, buying a T480 isn’t just buying a laptop, you’re buying a project.

Fast forward three years, and I finally had time to give my T480 the upgrades it deserved.

RAM upagrade

This wasn’t part of the plan, but in a sudden burst of minimalism, I stripped my old MSI laptop for useful parts and took the rest to Best Buy’s recycle center. Now my T480 is rocking 16GB of RAM, with 8GB coming from that old MSI stick.

Screen Upgrade

This is a tricky part.

According to the T480 community, the Innolux N140HCG-GQ2 is widely regarded as the best display upgrade available, offering superior performance compared to other compatible panels. Problem is, it’s almost impossible to find a genuine one in the US. eBay sellers post random photos and claim they’ve got it, but they will just send you whatever “compatible” panel they have.

Buying from AliExpress was way smoother, the sellers actually respond and ship what they advertise.

I double-checked both the label on the back of the screen and the output from sudo get-edid | edid-decode, and both confirmed it’s a genuine Innolux N140HCG-GQ2.

Here’s the screen replacement guide I followed:

Keyboard Swap

The original keyboard was gross, greasy, crumb-filled, and not even backlit. I bought a US-layout backlit keyboard from AliExpress. The price difference between eBay and AliExpress wasn’t much, but since I was already ordering the screen from there, I figured I could wait a bit longer and save ten bucks.