I've just submitted an offer for a slew of T480/T490/T14 and some Elitebooks in a "B-class" state; busted screens, malfunctioning keyboards, etc, avg price is in the $30 range. no SSDs, chargers, and save for a coupla T14s with onboard RAM, they're usually without RAM. so once completed, they should be in the $100-$150 range.

I wouldn't dwell too much on the price, whether you can have it for $200 or $300 isn't really significant, it's not like you're doing this twice a year. whatever you get now will last you for many moons, so amortized over that period that's nothing to fret about. make sure the battery/ies are OK as finding a good aftermarket replacement's gonna hurt.

T14 is obv better than T480; yeah the latter's got two batteries, but the former sips way less power while packing more power; also Ryzen options (5000-series and later only). serviceability is similar, huge cross-model/generation parts-compatibility. soldered RAM used to be an issue, but with today's prices, having 16 GB on-board (+ one slot free) can be a welcome addition. def stay away from the X1; the heft difference is insignificant but it drastically limits the upgrades and repairs you can do on your own.

I am in the US. A month ago, I paid $280 for a Gen 2 with 11th Gen i7, 16 gigs of RAM and 500 gigs of storage.

My T480 is showing its age and here in the US they are overpriced. X1 gen 9 can be found for a solid price on places like eBay but I do think T14 is generally the best value.

In the USA I paid $200 for a T14 Gen. 1 with 8 gigs of ram and 256gb SSD in 2023. About a year and a half later in early 2025 I got an i7 16gb ram 256gb T14 Gen. 3 for $250

What do you mean you’re only going to be using it for backup files? Like as a way to store your backups? An external hard drive will do that, or basically any old PC you can find in the dumps will work. If it’s just hosting backups it just needs enough power to turn on and host a network share.