X220 - Material updated?

I mentioned it on the MB problem post, but my new replacement X220 seems to have a different type of plastic and coating on the lid, from the old X220 from July 2011.

Just from tapping the plastic, it does not feel as brittle as the old one. Keyboard pieces also feel lighter in terms of weight, and softer to touch. My old X220 felt like just hard plastic. This new one feels like higher quality, more refined plastic. Obviously it is hard to tell from pictures, I think the material has definitely changed.

Has anyone else also had two machines (old and new) to confirm this? Below link is a picture of old (left) and new (right). You can kinda see that the colour of plastic is slightly different. Old is darker black, and new has slight navy-ish tint. It is more noticeable in person.

Picture

Anyone?

 

It seems unlikely they'd change something midstream.

 

I wish I could show you, because they are definitely different. I had them side by side, and touched, felt, looked, inspected them carefully.

I also think that it would be unlikely to change something, but I see what I see.

 

Unlikely, though not entirely without precedent.

Also possible is that (since many ThinkPad parts are mutli-sourced), the parts in question are simply from different manufacturers and thus exhibit some small variation.

 

I can vouch for this.

I have 2 x220's infront of me right now.

One ordered from the us and one from india, both from china.

One is Ash Black and one is asphalt grey, much like this.



The Keyboard also has a similar difference, ones blackish ones greyish, one has a hollow deep feel one has a short tight clicky feel.

The touchpads have completely different surface feel. One is rough, one is smooth even though they have the exact same texture.

The spacebar on the keyboards are TOTALLY different strengths.

One has a good clickpad the other one is a total nightmare where right clicks never register and the click is hard and there is a slight gap between the click and the surface so theres 2 clicking sounds when you click once.

The Ash black one from nov/dec with the better keyboard and touchpad was nov / dec. the newer grey one is feb/march and simply horrible.

The design is exactly the same but theres a noticible difference in quality. However I feel this is a vendor related matching issue and not a quality increase/reduction across the board.

 

My new replacement seems to have smoother trackpad. The bumps are not as accented as the old one.

In terms of functionality, I hadn't noticed any difference. I hate all touchpads in general, and use a mouse instead most of the time. But, when I had to use the pad, there was no noticeable difference, clicks or otherwise.

One more thing, for my old one, the top of the screen, the plastic strip part, broke on the left side. So I had been very careful with the right side to prevent breaking it when I had it. However, the new one feels more solid. Obviously, I am going to be very careful not to break this new one, but when I give it a "wiggle", it feels stronger. Also, there is not a lot of give around the bezel, which Lenovo might have addressed after the complaints about deformed/loose bezel.