How to test compatibility of new Lenovo ThinkPads keeping original SSD intact?

I very soon will be having two low/middle-range Thinkpads with Intel 12gen CPU (i5-1235U) and integrated Intel video:

  • Lenovo ThinkPad E15 Gen 4
  • Lenovo ThinkPad L15 Gen 3

According to my knowledge and HCL reports I have high expectations of making everything work properly on Qubes OS R4.1.1. Maybe except video artifacts on LVM password screen (irrelevant). Another downside I unfortunately expect - only one USB controller (like in Librem), but it’s not yet known.

If I am able to make everything work, I hope one of these or both will be added to recommended list. Because these Intel 12Gen-CPU with 10 cores is ~5-7 times FASTER than almost every current option from the list of recommended and certified laptops. Almost all of currently recommended devices are so outdated that are not allowing to play usual 1080p reliably from a youtube (vp9 codec), and it’s unacceptable for many people. I hope these new laptops will provide ability to play Youtube 1080p@60fps even at 2x speed with no issues.

I am asking the community to help me with this testing of these to devices. I have a list what I would check (like qvm-pci -vv, youtube playback and etc) but you may share yours if it’s important for you.
I hope this work will help me and community to have 1-2 new good options in case they need modern CPU for their Qubes OS.

Important thing - I have never installed Qubes OS on a USB drive. I’m not sure that buggy Qubes OS installer, that I had many problems before, is not going to mess with EFI and other partitions of existing OS on SSD. Any information on that?
Because I’m planning to return one of these two devices and would prefer to return it in the original state without ever booting to Windows.
Any advice is appreciated.

If you have a spare drive you could boot into a live and clone the whole SSD with dd if=/dev/nvme0n1 of=/dev/<spare-drive>

Good idea actually. I can clone the original state of the drive just in case by booting with some ubuntu livecd to an external drive (but to file instead of actual drive, because it’s more convenient). Or use clonezilla, but it probably will not preserve byte-perfect original state.