They used to be. I am writing this from the above-mentioned T480. It is 3 years old, has both usb-c ports replaced, small crack on the backside of the screen and the keyboard zif is broken, so the tape cable is... well taped to the connector.
On the other hand my X200, T420, T450 are still in mint condition. To be completely fair, modern macs are also way off from well-built. Shiny yes, but sturdy is the last thing I'd call them.
BTW, in older ThinkPads, the drain-pipes under the keyboards actually worked - you could pour water on it just for kicks. Now it is there only for decoration.
It really is a shame that the USB C ports are not modular on newer ThinkPads, you basically have to send the laptop for board work to get them replaced once the USB C ports go.
Not really, I had mine replaced at revolt.bg for about 60 EUR, both labour and spares. Miraculously, they had both of them on stock, so it was a Thurday to Wednesday job. Massive respect to those guys.
Anecdata, but before going all-in on ThinkPads I thought I share my experience.
For the ThinkPad x13 2nd gen Ryzen I received for a customer project (with the customer not interested in getting it back after the project was completed) it's too early to say anything about reliability, but somehow the touchpad isn't centered properly and I always hit left click when I want right click - it's unbearable and surprisingly bad for a ThinkPad.
Before, I had an ThinkPad E495 Ryzen that worked ok but after two years the touchpad got stuck - the pointless (for me!) construction with touch point and extra mechanical buttons (only acting as barrier) certainly didn't help.
Before, I had my beloved Dell XPS 2016 which however had a swollen battery. Still, I consider it one of the best notebooks I had; gnome 2 and Unity also just got it right.
In the last four years I got five (!) ThinkPad and Dell Precision notebooks for customer projects having battery or memory problems OOTB (the x13 I mentioned above was a notebook that finally worked).
The notebook I used for the longest time (7 years) was a PowerBook G4 2003. I hope my current MacBook M1 will last me about as long, but at least 5 years. In terms of power management, display, and usability, a Mac notebook is in another league compared to Dells and ThinkPads with Linux, it's not even funny. Linux desktops have regressed to the point they have ceased to be usable for me. With the newer MacBooks, I think Apple listened to customers and nailed it; I'd just prefer lighter (non-alu) materials.
They really are. For example, I have a P53s (basically a renamed T590) that will randomly clock the i7 CPU it came with down to 400MHz under active use for extended periods of time, and I can't run anything that actually uses the cores on the i7 for more than a minute without hitting the 95 degree PROCHOT. The dedicated GPU also will clock itself down to 100MHz and shift the termal throttling range from 75 degrees to 65 degrees randomly, on a system with a single fan cooling solution.
Just magical, and I can't wait to see Lenovo's next trick.
I unsubscribed from Lenovo at their Superfish debacle. Intercepting HTTPS communication with their own certificate? Now ain't that somethin'.
And the next up was when they had a special place in the laptop for their bundled bullshit, so that they persist EVEN IF you reinstall Windows on the lappy.
