I've got a t470s, it's really not that bad. Roughly equivalent to swapping parts on my 2010 MBP, you remove the bottom and everything is right there. I don't lo

I've got a t470s, it's really not that bad. Roughly equivalent to swapping parts on my 2010 MBP, you remove the bottom and everything is right there. I don't love that I only have one DIMM slot, but it's still a very serviceable machine. I also had an x220 (I actually keep it around my office as a spare). Adding a second SSD to the WWAN slot required basically a complete teardown of the machine. The swappable battery seemed nice, but the battery in mine falls out because the locking mechanism broke. For my use I actually prefer the newer style thinkpads. If I need to replace the battery I'll deal with the 5 screws on the bottom. Regarding the t490 RAM, it's like my T470s, one stick soldered and one DIMM slot. I'll also add that although Lenovo is far from perfect (superfish), they do have a history of correcting bad design decisions based on customer feedback (see the t440/x240 trackpads).