11-12'' screen notebooks offer the best of two worlds: portability and performance. I wouldn't trade my X240 Thinkpad for anything else as it takes (bag included) less than half the space in my motorcycle topcase, and the dual battery runs it well over 8 hours.
It has a nasty hardware problem though, as it completely freezes down to requiring a cold reboot if I grab it with my left hand in the empty space left of the trackpad, but it appears other Thinkpads share the same problem as well. However after some years I had absolutely no problems in normal use.
I don't think that is a defect of thinkpads at all. something is clearly broken in your particular machine. Is your hard drive located in that spot, loosely connected, and perhaps not connected at all when you squeeze it right there.
It has a nasty hardware problem though, as it completely freezes down to requiring a cold reboot if I grab it with my left hand in the empty space left of the trackpad, but it appears other Thinkpads share the same problem as well. However after some years I had absolutely no problems in normal use.