I got my Lenovo X230 when I started with CohesiveFT almost 18 months ago. I’ve generally been very happy with it, but the cracks are starting to show – literally:

Frame above wrist pad coming away, and also a hairline crack at the top of the ExpressCard slot.

Not as robust

I’ve had a succession of ThinkPads – T20[1], T41, X60T, X201T, a loaner X220 from the good people at Bromium, and now my X230. They’ve all been pretty indestructible apart from the X230. The screen has always felt a bit flimsy, but now other bits are falling off it. Earlier in the week the ThinkPad logo on the wrist rest came off:

Look closely and see the marks from the superglue I used to put this back

and now I see that the indicator cover for the top LEDs has gone missing:

I don’t think I’ve been treating this one any harder than other ThinkPads I’ve owned, so I can only conclude that build quality is being compromised. I’d also note that my other Thinkpads have generally done 3 years of service before being retired, meaning that this one should only be half way through its journey. It also needs a new battery, as endurance has fallen from 5hrs to just over an hour – at least the battery is replaceable (and not too expensive).

The reason I got it in the first place

I chose the X230 because it can take 16GB RAM (and because I know from experience that 8GB isn’t enough for my typical usage). The newer X240 only takes 8GB RAM, which seems to me a significant step back.

From the Crucial memory configurator

I’ll soldier on for the time being

As there really aren’t any great alternatives. I quite liked the Dell XPS13 that I got on loan a little while ago, but that also tops out at 8GB RAM. At a push I might go for a 13″ MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM, but what I really want is an 11″ (or better still 12″) MacBook Air with 16GB RAM (and a 1TB SSD[2]). My fingers are crossed that after this year’s Intel Developer Forum we see some serious machines with lots of RAM and storage in a lightweight and robust package (and not more gimmicky convertible tablety things).

Update 23 Apr 2020

The X230 wasn’t my last Lenovo in the end. I got an X250 when I changed jobs that’s lasted brilliantly for over 4 years, and more recently got a used X270 for my wife.

Notes

[1] My T20 survived an incident where a Newark taxi driver slammed the trunk down on my bag carving a gouge into the lid of the laptop. I’m pretty sure that most lesser machines would have been smashed to bits by that. My T20 came through with a scar, but it had no effect on how I used it, and it delivered a few more years of reliable service.
[2] I recently swapped out the Samsung 840 500GB SSD that I put in when I got the X230 for a Samsung 840 evo 1TB mSATA SSD. The process was pretty painless as I was able to have both drives in the laptop at once. Having completed the migration I moved the new SSD to an mSATA to SATA adaptor, as the mSATA port on the X230 is only SATA2, so I was missing the full (and impressive) speed of the newer drive.