Lenovo has removed the TrackPoint nub from new ThinkPad laptops
145 comments
·January 19, 20250xbadcafebee
dijit
The “X”-line was not trying to be a macbook, only the X1 was doing this, which was a class of its own and confused the product lines tremendously.
X- was always ultraportable business laptops, essentially the smaller version of the T-, lots of connectivity, conservative design etc.
T- was the standard sized laptops built to business standards- usually built the best and lasted the longest, with a conservative design and port selection.
W- was the desktop replacement class, the super-amped variant of the T-, compromising portability for power.
Everything else was confused, experimental, sub-tier, and the X1 muddied the branding of the other X-series..
cosmic_cheese
There’s some legitimate reason for concern in my opinion. In some cases, form is function, and a lot of buyers of the X1 Carbon (and formerly the X1 Nano, RIP) bought them for thinness and lightness without compromising too much on classic ThinkPad qualities (like the trackpoint). The T series, while great, sits in a different category and has a different audience.
In the event that X1-series ThinkPads lose their trackpoints, I think those who are interested in the X1 Carbon are more likely to consider laptops from other manufacturers than to jump to the T-series.
f1shy
How would I love a mac with lenovo keyboard!!! They should copy that.
philjw
I was using an X230, later a T480s with macOS between 2017 and 2020 when Apple decided to only sell glued-together unfixable devices with butterfly keyboard. Loved the key-travel, repairability, docking stations - but also the quick switch between keyboard and trackpoint. Even configured some gesture-combinations with the trackpoint (e.g. right click + trackpoint swipe to left = navigate back). Switched back to MacBook after apple released silicon macs and improved the keyboards but always good to have a backup ThinkPad.
walterbell
Lenovo keyboard case for iPad Pro would be a starting point.
raffraffraff
I'd live a Lenovo with a Mac trackpad. I owned a P1 and the trackpad was horrendous.
whatever1
I got the standalone thinkpad Bluetooth keyboard and the Magic Trackpad. I 3d printed a case and voila.
adultSwim
I'm waiting for an ARM Thinkpad with a haptic touchpad. Thanks for sharing your positive experience with the T14s.
shrx
The hibernation issues are so frustrating. I eventually gave up and disabled secure boot.
legitster
> Does that mean the TrackPoint is dead? No, thankfully. It will still appear in the other ThinkPads made by Lenovo, said a company spokesman.
This is not about the death of the nub, but about how far the Thinkpad brand name can be diluted.
mouse_
Lenovo has been enshittifying ThinkPads and then walking back their bad decisions when people won't stop bitching, ever since they bought the brand from IBM. They've tried:
> Removing the trackpoint buttons altogether (walked that back)
> Switching from 16:10 to 16:9 (walked that back)
> For some reason, moving the fan exhaust to the right side instead of the left (made people's hands hot when using a mouse so they walked that back)
I'm surprised the bigger news regarding this laptop isn't just how ugly the thing is. It looks like one of those huge $200 Toshiba laptops you'd see at Wal-Mart in 2010. I can't even begin to imagine how much money Lenovo has wasted on changing their tooling to spite customers and then changing it back when they realize they need customers, almost every generation.
> How many times do we need to teach you this lesson, old man?!?
hinkley
Is there a picture of it closed? The tab sticking out for the camera. I want to see what it looks like, closed. I have concerns about finger prints on the lens, despite them making affordances to discourage it.
taskforcegemini
don't forget the killing off of the 7-row keyboards
nayuki
I hate the keyboard in the photo (ThinkPad Aura Edition). It has no gap between F4/F5 keys and F8/F9 keys. It has no Right Ctrl, which I use frequently for keyboard shortcuts, especially because I use Dvorak (e.g. Ctrl+C/V/S/T). It has tiny Up/Down arrow keys. I care a lot about how the keys feel to my fingers without visually looking at the labels.
For reference, I own and use the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 7 for many years, and the ThinkPad X220 for many years before that. The keyboard layout on both of these are more agreeable to me, albeit not perfect (e.g. X1C7 dropped the Context Menu key, which I actually use on computers where it's available; X1C7 doesn't have dedicated volume up/down keys unlike the X220).
I detest the 20-year-long trend of computer manufacturers messing with laptop and desktop keyboard layouts, chasing after sleekness or the latest fashion trends to the detriment of typists. I love laptop keyboards that differ from desktop keyboards as little as possible. I love standard 104-key keyboards on desktop and hate anything that messes this up. These details matter a lot to me as a touch typist, and as some who uses those keys that many manufacturers have implicitly deemed "useless" by their removal (e.g. Home, End, Right Ctrl, Right Windows, Context Menu).
Back to the article though, I used TrackPoint a lot on X220 because it functioned better than the touchpad. The X1C7 has TrackPoint but the motion feels unnatural to me, so I end up using the touchpad instead (which has improved over the X220). I was able to use the center button as middle click on X220 but there is no software to support that feature on the X1C7; maybe this is related to the TrackPoint vendor changing from Synaptics to Elan. Either way, I wish Lenovo made a ThinkPad that has both a good TrackPoint and a good touchpad; they were clearly capable of doing it in the past but have regressed.
quanto
The real tragedy is the omission of top TrackPad buttons.
Middle-click paste is widely used in Linux, and while I tried mouse emulators with limited success, it sure is good to have a physical button at your thumb. With a tiling window manager, you can copy (by visual select depending on the application) and paste (middle-click) without ever leaving your home row across multiple windows. This is a serious work flow tool in REPL.
Moreover the new haptic feedback they got on button-less TrackPads have motors etc which are not as reliable as million-click-tested ThinkPads' physical buttons.
Laptops are the tools of our trade, and unfortunately, we cannot make too many compromises, especially for the sake of trendy aesthetics. If ThinkPads want to be MacBooks, then we might as well buy MacBooks; indeed, many of us already do. Almost a decade ago, Lenovo already made a similar mistake with 2nd generation Carbon X1 (and some T series) and they had to revert back. Having a diversity in the market place is important, and I surely hope Lenovo keeps ThinkPads as uniquely performant as they have been since the IBM days.
bityard
I use middle-click paste VERY heavily in day-to-use of my laptop. It's getting hard to find a laptop that still has a middle button at ALL. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when they finally remove it. (The constant march toward design minimalism means this is a matter of WHEN not IF.)
Also, F Dell for not putting power/sleep lights on their laptops anymore. It was the only reliable of way of knowing whether its safe for me to put my laptop in the bag without cooking itself to death.
mrandish
> Also, F Dell for not putting power/sleep lights on their laptops anymore.
Yes! It makes me crazy that product designers continue removing helpful LED indicators users rely on - all to maybe a save couple pennies per unit. Other offenders are power supply bricks not having a small LED lit when it's receiving power and Ethernet switches not having RJ-45 sockets with the standard-forever dual orange/green indicators. Sometimes power bricks are on extension cords or power strips which get turned off or kicked loose. Yes, users could open the laptop, log in and finish some pending Windows update just to confirm it's still charging. But that's stupid.
Just this week I needed a cheap, generic 5-port unmanaged switch and almost clicked buy without noticing they'd used connectors without indicators. I quickly found another unit with all the same features and (probably) the same chip and board, which did have LEDs - and it was $5 less! Yes, I could walk to wherever the cable goes to check that the device is on, active and what speed it's at but that's stupid.
Relatedly, there is a lesser circle of hell reserved for product designers of consumer devices intended for daily desktop or nighttime bedside use, like wireless phone charging stands, who put an LED on it that is so fucking BRIGHT it could give a sunburn. Some of them go for extra credit by making the Lighthouse of the Gods BLINK like aircraft landing lights - when indicating normal use - not an exception state.
Yawrehto
Until last year, when it broke, I had a Dell that seems to be from 2012 (Latitude E5530, but I might have gotten one of the numbers wrong), albeit refurbished and with more RAM. It was bulky and didn't have a lot of RAM (half as much as my current laptop), but it had its advantages over my current, newer, laptop, like feeling sturdier and more secure (my current laptop has a little grate over what looks like part of the motherboard, which feels weird; doesn't that make it super easy for stuff to get in?), a DVD drive, and that beautiful middle-click button, which also makes it easier to figure out the dividing line between left and right click.
null
pinetroey
The only reason we buy Thinkpads, is because of the trackpoint and the 3 buttons. They could remove the trackpad, we disable it anyway.
I do hope other manufacturers will fill this gap. Lenovo's quality has been going downhill.
Typing this on a Lenovo Thinkpad P16 gen2
riedel
I have a Z13 with virtualized button on the Touchpad. At least the simulated haptics are decent. But I agree that 3 physical buttons should be standard. I however also have external ThinkPad/Trackpoint keyboards which I use most of the time. I am waiting for a track point keyboard for the framework. However the framework market place, that was supposed to serve niche needs, is rather an illusion.
null
CoolCold
typing back from T16 Gen2 - here I don't disable trackpad (due to larger size I guess?) but, on my last T480 - it was surely disabled!
daft_pink
That’s the whole point of buying a Thinkpad. I will never buy a Thinkpad ever without a Trackpoint.
saltcured
Me too if being a bit hyperbolic. I also use the external Thinkpad branded keyboards with Trackpoint for desktop machines or even our "media PC" hooked to our TV screen. I feel vaguely disabled if put in front of a computer with only a touchpad, in the "I have no mouth but I must scream" sense.
I am keyboard focused, and mostly use the Trackpoint to change window focus or place a text cursor. I would prefer a desktop mouse for any precision pointer movement such as in photo editing or vector drawing.
The biggest frustration I've had is plenty of regressions in how Linux, Xorg, and/or Wayland handle the Trackpoint input. The calibration, acceleration, etc. can go completely crazy after some software update and it is basically impossible to bring it back the way it was using the available GUI desktop settings manager. Worse, this happens differently for different Trackpoint hardware instances, so in a household with multiple Thinkpads and external keyboards, muscle memory doesn't carry from one machine to another.
I also like getting scroll wheel emulation via Trackpad gestures, but the drivers seem to get into weird states of ignoring inputs on one or both. I don't know if this is some ham-fisted attempt at "ignore input while typing" that generalized into "ignore input during other inputs" and gets it wrong. I'll see moments where scroll gestures stop working, or others where the Trackpoint seems to be unresponsive.
risho
i've bought and used plenty of thinkpads over the last decade and have used the trackpoint a grand total of 0 times. it's definitely not the whole point.
jemmyw
The whole point? I've been buying a bunch of used ones because they're solid machines, and the battery is reasonably easy to replace. I've never liked the track point, it's not the whole point or even any point for myself.
daft_pink
To be fair, the wheep holes are pretty nice as well. I bought my first Thinkpad after I accidentally dumped a whole glass of water on my Toshiba laptop and it stopped working, so this was the initial feature that attracted me decades ago.
Another plus at the time was the strong Linux support, but Dell has better Linux support.
Also to be fair, I use a MacBook Pro as my laptop these days, and mostly use a desktop computer 95% of the time, because desktop computers I haven’t been brainwashed to think that laptops are better than desktops and prefer their superiority.
ori_b
Yeah. Other than the trackpoint, there are a number of vendors that used to sell pretty solid machines with easy to replace batteries. The trackpoint was the only thing you had a tough time getting anywhere else.
network3rr0r
Well it is the whole point for OP
Not sure reactions to every claim others make as some attempt to normalized opinion is useful. Kind of vain of you to think they were obliging you to feel so much given a banal personal expression. Go take a cortisol stabilizer and jerk off for 8 hours to waifus
pton_xd
Always loved the TrackPoint and only buy ThinkPads for that feature alone.
Maybe I'm getting older, or lazier, but these days I usually carry around a small mouse just in case I need to do some pointer navigation. Can't stand using a touchpad and always disable it.
Rochus
> Does that mean the TrackPoint is dead? No, thankfully. It will still appear in the other ThinkPads made by Lenovo
Good.
riedel
From a quality perspective, widening the product range was the mistake Lenovo did after taking over from IBM. The bios and the controller firmware IMHO has become a peace of sh* because they have to support so many configurations. Does not seem that they have learned. They are trying to emulate the MacBook in the completely wrong way.
badgersnake
Yeah, I don’t think finding ways to make your premium product less distinctive and more like the cheap product is a great business strategy.
ecliptik
I still miss my X61s daily.
The trackpoint was great simply because I didn't need to move my hands anywhere else when using it, could keep my fingers all on the home row and still move pointer.
j7ake
Can be done with Mac. You use your thumb at top of trackpad while fingers stay on home row.
commoner
You can't scroll with just your thumb, while you can scroll with a TrackPoint while holding down the middle mouse button. Using your thumb on a trackpad with your hand positioned above the keyboard is also less accurate and restricted to a narrower range of motion.
RhysU
Not remotely the same experience. One never picks up the pointer finger during input with the nub. The thumb on the track pad looks like one is a crab, constantly twitching and lifting.
walterbell
Only a handful of classic Lenovo devices (e.g. X230) achieved "aftermarket ecosystem" status, where enthusiasts and repair shops have kept devices working 10+ years after launch, sometimes with screen or other upgrades. How did the Thinkpad 25th anniversary edition fare for laptop longevity? Have any recent Thinkpad models gained "collector item" status?
There are external Lenovo USB keyboards with Trackpoints. If Lenovo wants to copy Apple, they could make a detachable $300 MagicTrackPoint keyboard for 2-in-1 Lunar Lake devices.
happycube
It was obvious the day it came out that the X25 was one CPU generation too early (dual core "i7") and even moreso now with Windows 11.
If it had a T480 motherboard instead it would've held up a lot better.
(also, a ThinkPad without a trackpoint is de facto, even if not from a legal perspective, false advertising, just like those dual-core i7's.)
jitl
I feel the trackpoint is less relevant today on laptops considering designs like MacBook Pro or these Aura laptops that have massive touchpads that are easily reachable without much hand movement. I can mouse with my thumb on a MacBook trackpad without much downward shift in hand position, and I find that a faster and more accurate pointing device compared to the trackpoint.
The place I really want the trackpoint is on my Glove80 or Kinesis Advantage, with these ergo desktop split keyboards I really never want to move my hand to the mouse, yet there’s no easy way to get a trackpoint. For a while I lived with an Apple touchpad in between my glove80 splits but it doesn’t seem any quicker or more ergonomic than a good mouse, although it is a bit more compact. I would love to see a stand alone trackpoint stick “mouse” that could easily be adapted to a desktop ergo keyboard. The happy hacking keyboard has a variant with a trackpoint, but it’s hardly ergonomic and is missing various modifiers.
mrandish
> The happy hacking keyboard has a variant with a trackpoint, but it’s hardly ergonomic and is missing various modifiers.
I'd like that too. I've seen a few other split custom keyboards that offer options for a trackpoint, ball or game controller thumb stick in the thumb panel position of a split. I think I recall seeing something like that as an option on a Moonlander keyb but it may have been someone's custom add-on or a mock-up. I think the reason there's not a standardized add-on is that the case edge geometry of these ergo splits varies so much between models.
Over the years I've purchased a few small, standalone modules with a ball or stick to put in the middle between the split halves - and I've seen lots of photos of people doing the same. I never use them very long. While they kind of work, the control needs to be tucked in close right near the thumb and it also needs to be attached to that side of the split so it moves as a unit.
Another complication is that I think a lot of us like granular control over tilt angles and that means the 'leaf' holding the thumb control needs to fit into the overall adjustable angle scheme so it can be secured at an ideal angle and distance offset below the main panel. And 'ideal' will vary per user hand size, mobility and preference.
As a related aside, I recently learned there are now high-end game controller thumb sticks which have adjustable height and stops. This isn't just telescoping stick height above the ball but actually moving the entire ball up and down inside the controller. On some models it can be changed in-place by turning the outer ring surrounding the stick clockwise or counter-clockwise.
cosmic_cheese
I find having a trackpoint to be advantageous in situations like sitting in economy airline seats where room to move your arms or position your wrist for using a trackpad comfortably can be awkward, even with MacBook-class trackpads. I don’t like having trackpad sensitivity ramped up super high though so maybe that’s part of the issue.
Kind of a weirdly written article. Only one model removed the nub, and it's from one of its "we're trying to be MacBook" lines (the X line, like the Z line, are more about form than function). And all that tech shipped in its other lines for a while, afaik.
I recently sold a Z13 because it had so many quirks (low battery life due to OLED, trackpad and trackpoint were crap, bluetooth barely worked through the dense metal chassis, display didn't fold down 180 degrees, felt heavy af).
I got a T14s instead. Holy crap, it is so much better. Feels lighter, the touchpad and trackpoint are great, 500nits low-energy display is "ok" but battery can last all day. I use the trackpoint all the time (partly due to the touchpad drifting for some reason, and partly just to have a more precise pointer for fine work). The only downside is the lack of more USB-C ports.
A random upside if you order it with Ubuntu: it comes with Secure Boot set up correctly. But then a downside: Linux kernel prevents hibernate from working if Secure Boot is enabled, unless you set up an encrypted swap and jump through hoops to set up the bootloader right (and of course it's not set up on Ubuntu). I can't believe it's still such a pain to get otherwise-standard laptop functionality with Linux.