Batch 2, super happy here. Exceeded my expectations as far as fit & finish - from looking at the exterior of my machine, I don’t believe anyone would ever suspect that I’ve disassembled & reassembled it several times. Physically, everything is tight & solid-feeling. I’m pleasantly surprised about the 3:2 screen ratio - I’m enjoying it and not missing the old widescreen ThinkPad at all. Performance is absolutely fabulous.
My only two major disappointments are the sleep performance and the glossy screen. My experience is that using s2idle consumes way too much power on standby, and using deep takes way too long to wake up and has been unstable / caused system crashes. However, it sounds like this could be rectified in an future firmware update, even on Linux. I suppose I have been spoiled by the matte screen on my old ThinkPad, so the glossy screen has taken some getting used to. Color, brightness, etc. are all excellent, though.
One more minor negative - I agree with some other folks like @Stan_McIntosh (I still feel your pain man!) that connecting the WiFi antennas was really difficult. I wish in retrospect I could have ordered a DIY edition but with a factory installed WiFi card.
Overall Grade: A-