This laptop hides a dark secret: What Lenovo does not tell you about this compact ThinkPad workstation

IBM and Lenovo ThinkPad laptops used to be renowned for their modularity. Things have changed since the good old days, and nowadays, many components that used to be repairable are not, like soldered Wi-Fi cards or charging ports in the case of ThinkPads.

However, Lenovo did keep true to one aspect of the modular design, at least on most ThinkPad laptops: The easily user-replaceable keyboard. To this day, taking out the keyboard of a Lenovo ThinkPad T14 or ThinkPad L14 is as easy as loosening two screws and sliding the keyboard out of the laptop - the so-called top loaded keyboard. Sadly, this feature did get axed on some models, like the thinner Lenovo ThinkPad T14s or the Lenovo ThinkPad P1 , but at least, buyers still have the choice between models with a modular keyboard and those without. Plus, even on the models with the "bottom loaded" keyboard, you were still able to eventually replace it, the process was just more complicated, as the entire laptop had to be disassembled and the number of screws increased a lot.

From the outside, the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 6 Intel which we recently thoroughly reviewed, looks like any of the other models with the bottom loaded keyboard - changing it means taking apart the entire device. However, when you delve deeper into the laptop, you will notice that there is something that makes it different: There are no screws that hold the keyboard in place. Instead, Lenovo uses small plastic rivets, which are almost impossible to remove without damaging the laptop.

In essence, this means that if the keyboard breaks, you always have to throw away the whole palmrest assembly - a waste of money and resources, and not very environmentally sustainable, either.