Thinkpad X1 Yoga - What's the Point?

[thealphaoverseer]

Hi everyone,
My school requires me to have a 2 in 1 convertible, rather than a conventional laptop. I love Thinkpads, but I was surprised to see the differences. I've never used anything newer than a W540, so I've gotten used to socketed CPUs, upgradeable RAM, removable batteries and the like. I was thinking of a Yoga X1 like this one: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/ThinkPad-X1 ... 4074667032
but HP's laptops seem miles ahead on paper and cost. So, are modern Thinkpads not as great?

[thealphaoverseer]

After using both a HP Pavilion x360 (i7-10510U, 16GB, MX 250) and a Microsoft Surface Book 2 (i7-8650U, 8GB, GTX 1050), I finally bought a X1 Yoga 3rd Gen. i7-8550U, 16GB, WWAN and 1080p screen.
The Pavilion was straight up terrible. It was a budget laptop with nice specs, but it will always be a budget laptop. For the SB2, I had reliability concerns. 8GB of RAM wouldn't cut it either. Funny, how some new Thinkpad fans in the Thinkpad subreddit are ex-Surface fans.
All three of the laptops were $1000 AUD. I think I will keep the Thinkpad. My main complaint is that I prefer Thiccpads, not Thinpads. It feels weird having a Thinkpad ultrabook. Furthermore, the Trackpoint feels very different from my SL410k and the scroll button has the clicking part at the bottom, rather than at the top. The retracting keyboard is a nice touch. Kind of reminds me of the 701C.

The performance is disappointing, though. Even with undervolting, temps are 50 degrees at idle and 95 under load. I got 560 points in Cinebench R15.

Overall, I'm quite happy with it. It didn't meet my expectations, but maybe I'm just too used to my SL410k. My school required me to have a 2 in 1 laptop, but I guess an X220T/X230T wouldn't last another 3 years.

What do you think? The Thinkpad subreddit is leaning more towards newer stuff, but it seems that this forum still focuses on the classical era.

[mpcook]

I have also an X1 Yoga 3Gen and I love it. I also love my T420s, my X220, and for occasional use, the non-portable W520. I think Lenovo did a fine job with the X1 Yoga design, my only complaint being ability to upgrade the hardware. I have yet to tackle upgrading the drive (I have a 500G drive) so I installed a 256G micro SD card I use to park some of my files.

[skx]

Why would schools oblige 2 in 1 laptops? Feels very bad, I hope someone will sue the school to make education more equal and accessible for all kind of people.