Even if you want to give them a pass for unethical behavior, Lenovo still installs a lot of extra software that you don't really need. If you do buy a Thinkpad, I recommend reformatting the machine and doing a stock Windows install.
They seem to claim performance/battery improvements with their magic single disk "RAID" interface. Doubly dubious because said device just binds with the windows software raid driver.
What is worse is lenovo disables the included AHCI (breaking both Linux and Windows), so you have to use their install media to install the OS. Which of course installs whatever crap the original laptop came with.
that should be done with all computers no matter who you buy it from
However, given there's a recovery partition and you don't wipe it while doing a stock install, "try both and see which you prefer" is clearly an option.
If you don't want to wipe, you can selectively install and uninstall the Lenovo software. I have a 12.5" Thinkpad Yoga that I've uninstalled lots of stuff and it works great now. Some things, like Lenovo's power management tools, didn't get along very well with the standard Windows tools.
The default power settings on Linux are pretty bad, though. Anyone with Linux on their laptop should create a boot service that runs this command:
powertop --auto-tune