Also the build quality of Lenovo laptops have gone down so much it's appalling.
Now a lot of things I miss a lot. The modularity, latches, ThinkLight, the upside down Thinkpad logo on the outside shell (oriented correctly towards the user, not the other people in the room), 7 row keyboard, good Fn keys functionality like media keys. The T400 that I regularly stood on to impress people how sturdy it was. But all of these things cost a lot in terms of weight and size (except the logo which was just copying the change that Apple made).
Just so you know the context: these are the machines I used a lot. T42p, R60, T400, T440s, T470s, T495s, T14s Gen2 (current).
If you respect the sturdiness vs. form factor trade-off, I believe build quality has gone up with every machine I bought.
I have an E585 (bought it with the 2700U and 1080p screen upgrades, but added my own SSD and extra RAM because Lenovo charged the moon) and it replaced an X230 Tablet.
Even though it's the "upgraded" screen, it's still dim and disappointing. I understand very few Thinkpads have excellent screens; while the X230T's was brighter, it managed to burn the browser chrome after a few years of using it for lap-surfing.
The X230 had a slide-off-the-back-side battery. The E585's is inside the case. You could slide open little hatches to access the storage and memory on the X230. The E585 was a single-piece cover with 8 or 9 captive screws and then has to be pried apart with snaps.
The E585 has a rubber foot to prop it to provide clearance for the vents; the tape holding it on gave out a couple months ago, so I've stuck little white adhesive rubber furniture feet on it.
Sometimes you can find a random business-line HP or Dell with one, but the Dell one I tried (some 7th generation Core i5 I rode for five years at work) was so terrible, especially on scrolling, that I just plugged in an external mouse, and it's a feature that appears on random models intermittently when it does appear, so it might not meet any of my other (admittedly limited) requirements.
But in the past few years, I have taken to just buying Dell's midrange business laptops. The build quality can vary by model but they are cheaper, ubiquitous, have great support while in warranty, and Linux always runs just fine on them if you pay attention to the hardware you're buying.
Model: Precision 7520 Cpu: i7-6820HQ Memory: 32gb Gpu: Nvidia Quadro M2200 4GB Storage: 500gb SSD Display: 15" 1080p
Pretty good specs for the price. Serviceable for older/lower requirements games. Pretty bulky machine though.
Granted - My work has been heavy on memory but light on CPU, so perhaps I'm not applying enough deadly heat.
TBF their monitors are good. I have two Dell P2723QE's and they are absolutely great.
My magnesium top cased T480 (non-s) with 64 GiB RAM, (4) 72 Whr batteries and the internal one still works and is good enough for the girls I go out with and Windows 11 Enterprise.