Comment by imiric

IMO the ThinkPad brand died after IBM sold its PC division. Lenovo has kept it alive because it is a cash cow, but the machines have shoddy build quality and are ludicrously overpriced.

My previous X1 Extreme Gen 1 (2018) had annoying coil whine and screen backlight bleed. One of the key caps broke off after a couple of years. Eventually I ended up doing a full keyboard and battery replacement.

My current X1 Carbon Gen 13 is nice and light, has no coil whine, but it's still made from cheap plastic. Considering it's a $2k+ machine, it sure doesn't feel like it.

In comparison, ThinkPads from the IBM era were built like tanks. Still plastic, sure, but they felt solid, and were reliable workhorses for years.

At this point the only thing keeping me on ThinkPads is the TrackPoint, but since trackpads are decent on Linux nowadays, I think I'm ready to finally ditch the brand. Some of the new Dell and HP machines look interesting. Frameworks seem nice, but I've read many issues about their build quality, and they're not cheap either.