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First of all the keyboard, track pad, and the track pad buttons all wear out extremely quickly. Granted I have had this machine for almost a year now but even in the first few months of low to medium-ish usage I could already notice that my track pad was beginning to wear out and the most frequently used keys on the keyboard had become incredibly glossy. In fact my E key is so glossy that it now looks like a smudgy piece of glass. I was also very surprised by how quickly the track pad wore out. Within ~2-3 months of usage I could notice that parts of the top pimple layer of the track pad was starting to come off in white flakes. I was not expecting this from a Thinkpad and I am very disappointed by it. At this time the top layer of the track pad is almost completely gone and some of the pimples have rubbed away and are now flat. I might be taking of the top pimple layer of the track pad which is just a sticker if my understanding is correct in order
to fix this issue.
What also disappointed me is the quality of the stupid soft touch rubber layer that they put on the other side of the screen or on the lid if you want to call it that. Granted I have carried around my school books on top of the computer quite a lot when moving from class to class but I still find it ridiculous that it started to show significant signs of wear so quickly. By the end of the first month of usage it already had plenty of strange scratches and scars which deeply annoys me as I generally take very good care of my electronics. Now it probably wasn't so smart so carry my school books on top of the computer but it's not like they were super hard or anything. In fact I always had a flat plastic binder on the bottom in an attempt to reduce the amount of scratching to the lid. I am obviously partly to blame for this but I think that they shouldn't have used the stupid and pointless soft touch rubber layer on the surface since it does nothing and it doesn't go with the rest of the laptop since that is matte plastic. At the very least they could have used a higher quality rubber layer that doesn't wear so easily. I find this very disappointing from a laptop that is generally well built and is marketed as being built like a tank.
Also who the hell designed the speaker grills? Within 2 weeks of normal usage they had become completely clogged with dust and random particles. This would have been acceptable if there was an easy way to access them from the back to blow out the dust but there simply isn't. I find this deeply annoying because it looks awful and my electronics are generally in a very good shape and very clean but this thing just soaks up dust from absolutely everywhere. The screen is also rather disappointing. While I have no problem with the 1600x900 resolution which is very good for a 14 inch screen, it doesn't go all that bright and as such becomes very hard if not impossible to use outside in bright sunlight despite the fact that the screen is matte. When compared to other laptops and my 2 monitors that I have for my desktop, it gets completely blown out of the water with its "lack" of colours and its poor viewing angles. It's a shame that it is so bad since it's relatively high resolution and has a matte finish.
Battery life with the 9 cell battery is good but at an average of ~5-6 hours with the screen brightness on 33%, the battery plan on maximum battery life and on very light usage such as browsing the web or taking notes in Libre Office with Wi-Fi on it is still a far cry from the 15 hours that is marketed by Lenovo.
Other than that it is a solid laptop and I would recommend it but these problems really do annoy me when the laptop is otherwise so well built.
