As long as you're talking Thinkpad. I made a conscious decision to buy a cheap Ideapad N581. It's cheap by any measure (i3, HDD, 4GB, ar8161, bcm4313, glossy crappy screen).

But I thought, hey, it's Lenovo so at least it'll last. The "legendary" lenovo keyboard would be OK if some keys didn't just jump out of their socket when pressed at the slightest angle (my F5 is really jumpy).

Plus apparently they thought they could save perhaps a fraction of a cent by using a crappy breaky screw for holding the hinge mechanism, meaning that 4 months after buying it (and having never used it outside home) one side of the hinge just broke and now I cannot tilt the screen without making the whole situation worse.

But hey, I've decided to use it as a stationary on-desk laptop with external keyboard, mouse and screen. Despite crappy specs the thing flies and does what I want.

Point being: if you need to be on the move, get a small and solid and matte laptop. If at home, buy whatever looks good. And i3/4GB is plenty. And nobody needs an SSD..
(my craptop -- with debian -- with slow HDD boots and reacts faster than my office computer with SSD and i5 and 8GB -- with Windows... --)

So like they say: YMMV..