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by Hasknewbie 3457 days ago
I am not saying that you cannot get a decent X260, but notice how now in every Thinkpad thread there is a significant number of "me / my team had a number of thinkpads, we've had to go through N replacements during the last year", whereas a few years ago they were the poster boy for reliability. Thinkpads now have the engineering/manufacturing tolerance of a low to mid range consumer laptop, even though they are supposed to be professional equipment. This is unconscionable.

This is why I don't recommend something like the X260. You can't buy a premium laptop and "just hope" it will have none of the reported defects. We pay a premium with an expectation for reliability, not for a QA lottery.

Conversely it seems most complaints are for the X2xx and T4xx series, which is why I believe it has to do with manufacturing tolerance: maybe on 15" it's just good enough to not have any significant defect, and they kept the same M.O. for the more compact models, and there problems did pop up.

(The screen resolution has in fact been getting better for the latest two generations, but here again it is only to catch up to the competition. Remember when you could get a 15in Thinkpad with an IPS 2048x1536 display, long before the "retina" buzzword came to life? That was before Lenovo took over.)

2 comments

>I am not saying that you cannot get a decent X260, but notice how now in every Thinkpad thread there is a significant number of "me

Well its subjective either way. We've got over 300 of the things in the office though, so more inclined to trust that than counting complaints in threads.

I'm sure there are better laptops out there but the x240/260s are far from duds. What they are though is old...office is replacing them with x1 carbons thankfully - with HD screens (finally).

What would you suggest then?

In my experience, only Thinkpads and Latitudes have provided me satisfying user experiences.

Except XPS 13 and Macbook Pros, which I tried and I don't like the feeling.