When I bought my thinkpad I booted directly to the Debian installer via USB and wiped the disk. I get great battery life (check the Arch wiki for tips on your specific machine to fix a few issues that may give it bad battery at first install).
The keyboard is wonderful and everything except the fingerprint scanner works great.
I get twenty goddamn hours from my X270 and it's incredible. I never use the fingerprint scanner, so I recommend Thinkpads all the time. Good connectivity too, although I'd appreciate maybe another USB port or two.
The keyboard is wonderful and everything except the fingerprint scanner works great.