As my x220 is quite literally falling apart right now, I'm looking for a replacer. I was hoping something like this would be it. So your comment is a bit of a cold shower.
I have a x220 i7 + SSD + 16GB ram and am mostly happy with it. But for the follow up, a better CPU would be nice (rust compiler mostly), and a bigger screen. I fear the compromise on the track pointer will be unavoidable.
Have a look on reddit for /u/xueyao. He makes a couple of modded Thinkpads, including the "X330", which has the X220 keyboard, a 13.3" FHD screen, with plans for an 11th gen version early next year. There are mods aplenty apart from those ones. Internal USB instead of BT, a second MSATA connector, and the currently popular (and on my to-do list) USB-C charging mod.
I have a T480 I just upgraded with 32GB RAM; I highly recommend it. Not as light as the x220 and doesn't have the nice keyboard, but the price was right at ~$500. Came from a liquidator with a 512GB SSD + NVME mod already in place. Handles most things nicely; still have a desktop with a GPU for heavier rendering tasks.
I'm in a similar jam. I currently use an X201 Tablet, I refuse to move to a newer ThinkPad as the build quality really begins to suffer, and I'll be relegated to a 16:9 display.
I'm waiting for an announcement about the Raspberry Pi CM4, if they offer a model with 8GB of RAM, I'm very tempted to look into designing a carrier board that can replace my ThinkPad's motherboard. It will need an active DSI to LVDS converter to drive the display, and a small microcontroller to act as an embedded controller to read keyboard scancodes, trackpoint input and talk to the battery.
I have a x220 i7 + SSD + 16GB ram and am mostly happy with it. But for the follow up, a better CPU would be nice (rust compiler mostly), and a bigger screen. I fear the compromise on the track pointer will be unavoidable.
Anybody has some inspiration?