How long have I longed for a ThinkPad? Every time in my life that I’ve considered buying a laptop, the latest ThinkPad models have inevitably figured high on my list of desired computers. They once bore the IBM logo, now Lenovo, but they’ve always been that paradigm of no-nonsense work machine that you know you can rely on. Sturdy, hardy, and covered in deep matte black, ThinkPads are iconic.

But the reason I haven’t owned a series of ThinkPads over the past two decades is twofold: one part is that Apple’s MacBooks have been superior in battery life and user experience, while the other is that the proper ThinkPads have generally been out of reach financially. Lenovo has mostly been a good guardian of the ThinkPad brand, but it did misapply the label on its plasticky ThinkPad Edge laptops. I owned one of those and it definitely didn’t live up to the storied reputation of this portable PC.

These considerations have been turned on their head in 2017 with Lenovo’s fifth-generation ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which seems to be the beneficiary of a perfect confluence of events. Apple has made its MacBook line worse, not better; Lenovo has lowered the entry price to its legit ThinkPad range; and I’m once again on the hunt for a new laptop. With prices starting at just over $1,100, the X1 Carbon is a 14-inch no-nonsense work computer that’s easy to fall in love with, whether you’re coming from the Mac or Windows camp.

The model I’m reviewing is priced at $1,275 and comes with an Intel Core i5-7300U CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a worthwhile upgrade over the base X1 Carbon: a 256GB NVMe SSD. That storage drive is double the size and substantially faster than on the entry-level model, working over the PCI Express bus rather than the more typical SATA. For another $50 you can upgrade the 1080p display to 1440p, for $111 more you can double the memory, or for $120 you can double the storage again to 512GB. These are all reasonably priced upsells from Lenovo, subject to the company’s arcane “instant savings” mathematics, and I can see the attraction in all of them. But for my needs and preferences, the review unit was ample.

The thing that doesn’t change with any of the X1 Carbon variants is the build quality. I love it. There is no creaking to be heard or keyboard flex to be felt. The brutally minimalist black surfaces (this laptop’s also available in silver, but that’s a sacrilegious color for a ThinkPad) have a soft-touch finish that resists fingerprints and other blemishes admirably well. The hinges are a thing of metal beauty: they open out to a full 180 degrees and feel strong enough to hang a door on. The first laptop I ever bought was a Samsung X10, but its right hinge broke a month after the warranty expired. I still regret not getting the ThinkPad X series I was eyeing back then.

Also universal across X1 Carbon models is the keyboard. I love that, too. Each key is a vast island of loveliness, perfectly shaped and positioned to give me the best typing experience. For such a thin laptop as this ThinkPad is (15.95mm / 0.6 inches), the key travel is cavernously deep, which compares very favorably to Apple’s almost-flat MacBook and MacBook Pro keyboards and practically everything else in the same category. If I had to give you my reasons for why I continue to favor laptops over 2-in-1 hybrids, I’d point to this keyboard first and the X1 Carbon’s hinges second.

The traditional ThinkPad TrackPoint — the red nub in the middle — is present on the X1 Carbon and it works well. It’s a very alien experience for anyone habituated to the swiping and gesture controls of a touchpad or screen, but it will please old-school types, and it doesn’t get in the way of my millennial ways of using a PC either. It adds a couple of hard mouse buttons above the laptop’s trackpad, which I often use in combination with the trackpad. The trackpad itself is reliable and accurate, giving me no cause for complaint.