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Disagree! I've been using Thinkpads since 2004 and was a bit obsessed with them around 2010 and almost had a museum with old machines I bought on eBay. I had two 701cs's butterfly models etc. Every model I've had was much better than the one before in almost every way. There's a lot of nostalgia with the older models, but man, compared to what we have today they were unusable and you would not carry something like that around! Super heavy, easily scratched rubber paint, bad plastic.

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.

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Entry level Thinkpads are not particularly impressive.

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.

Entry level ThinkPads aren't really ThinkPads, the E-series in particular. Those ones were previously known as ThinkPad Edge, which were designed by a different team.

Exactly. Buy T, X or P series. For non-demanding users L series might be OK, but I prefer to buy second-hand / refurbished T series instead. Avoid E series, or at least don't expect any "ThinkPad-ness" from it.

TBH, if anyone else brought a remotely competent eraser pointer to market, I'd probably consider them. Even the hyperconfigurable Framework doesn't offer one.

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.