You're talking about best laptops. Parent said physically best. I don't think the answer is subjective - Apple most definitely makes far better laptops physically.
The M2 Air is astonishingly light, while being made of metal, as opposed to the ThinkPad's (cheap imo, but subject to debate) plastic. Don't see what the argument is.
It depends on your definition of "physically best". Which is better, a Ferrari Daytona or a Ford F-150? Macs are sleek and elegant, but they're built with absolutely no regard for long-term serviceability. Thinkpads are big ugly slabs of black plastic, but they're easy to open, they have a sensible internal layout and Lenovo provide service manuals and spare parts.
It would be more clear-cut for me if Apple used their engineering prowess to expose an M.2 slot or make it easier to fix a display without buying a $600 topcase assembly. The physical build of their products is fragile at best and consumer-hostile at worst, in my opinion.
My experience with airs is if you try to compile anything with them, the CPU cores peg, the fans go crazy, cpu throttles. (This was with an intel-based air.)
My point isn't that Airs are bad, but that they're not ideal for some tasks and saying any machine is "the best" without mentioning what you're using it for is less useful of a statement than you might think it is.
The Apple Silicon Mac Book Airs are a totally different beast. The Intel ones were unbearably slow for heavy computing tasks. The new architecture is really fast and doesn’t get very hot while being really fast.
I had a Lenovo think pad in 2013 for school. Carried it all over campus for 1 year. So unless their build quality is entirely different nowadays, I’ll never go near another thinkpad
It started literally falling apart in 6 months. One of the usb ports stopped working, the disc tray was stuck, the bottom left of the trackpad was sunken in, and the whole laptop felt cheap and was plastic. A ton of flex in the whole thing.
The worst experience I had with an aluminum mac was dropping it while open and having the screen shatter.
I don't know what ThinkPad you had, but I have had ThinkPads for more than 12 years, working daily, had let them fall on the ground (had to change screen twice), and they still work. There are companies that buy ThinkPads from banks, big companies, after 4 years of use, and they re-sell them and they work for another 10 or more years. Your experience is very weird.
I've had a ThinkPad 13 2G for about 6 years and it's still working fine, but it most likely didn't get the same level of use/wear that yours did.
It's a shame that IBM sold its PC business to Lenovo. Maybe it's just the model I have, but Lenovo's ThinkPads feel so much worse in quality than IBM's ThinkPads. I probably won't get another one when the time comes to replace mine.
That said, I'll consider a Framework or Starbook next time because even T series Thinkpads are getting thinner and bendier and the keyboards lower and worse.
This is the problem with ThinkPad, there are several models with varying price and durability values. Macs are great for people who don't want to think about their requirements.
