My apologies for taking so long to reply - I'm not the best at checking my comment threads on HN. I basically specced up all the way since I expect this laptop to be with me for the next several years, and went with the 1440p IPS display. To be honest this is not something I usually pay great attention to - I don't use this laptop for gaming, only dev/browsing/casual use. On the whole I thought my 2013 Macbook Air screen looked better. I didn't boot up the ThinkPad and think "Wow, I'm so glad I got the 1440p screen" (in fact I didn't even remember which one I chose to be honest).

Part of lack of wow factor may be the fact that when I first uninstalled Windows and switched to Linux my resolution in general was all messed up - some apps would take up too much screen space, others would be tiny. There was no consistency and it ruined the experience (one miraculous dnf update day this seems to have been largely resolved, but I still do not find anything special about the 1440p display experience on the laptop).