For some reason, there is some controversy that the trackpad is somehow still more useful than the trackpoint. I've got a 2018 model thinkpad, and I can tell you... Lenovo may have introduced a 'chiclet' style keyboard (still not bad though), they may have made repair less of an option (although still better than its peers, afaik), and the thing may be a finger print magnet (besides the last thing, every laptop manufacturer suffers the same problem, but generally even worse, to be clear). There's one thing they got very right, and that's the trackpoint system.
Trackpads are clearly hold a dominant share in the laptop space - I'm pretty sure thinkpads are the only laptops that still manufacture with trackpoints. But I don't understand why - the damn things don't need to be red! If they aren't to consumer taste, why don't HP, Apple, and so on, make a different colored trackpoint? One with a different texture or finish? Who knows! All of this seems possible. Maybe the red, bumpy dot seems a bit 'utilitarian' for your taste, but well, that's not inherent to the idea of a trackpoint.
A trackpoint has in mind that the user will want to be always using the keyboard. In fact, this is much more efficient. So why have we drifted away from the trackpoint, even as the desktop computer (with the mouse) has, it seems like, become less important than the laptop?
Probably the trackpad. The trackpad drags you away from the keyboard, asking you to move your hand down. Now it doesn't seem like much, but constantly moving your hand back and forth to type is a real hassle. That means you'll be less prone to want to use hotkeys (since that requires even more going back and forth), and more prone to just pointing and clicking. Why am I getting so worked up about this?
Because I'm coming from a born-again Vim perspective (it's not a cult :P). Hotkeys make life less annoying on the keyboard. However, having a bunch of different hotkeys for different programs is very difficult to learn. Which is why I try to find vim-respecting software, so I can use the same hotkeys across different software. Luckily, many command-line program programmers have this same thing in mind, and make such compatible software. It's a beautiful feedback loop! All of this doesn't seem necessary, from the POV of trackpad land, but as Henry Ford is fabled to have said, "if I had asked the consumer what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse". The consumer doesn't know what they want - they become ingrained into a certain system of doing things, and then within this local minima, they seek options which maximize this minima. Certainly, with a better trackpad, you will be more productive on a computer that is otherwise a replication, save for having a smaller and/or less responsive trackpad. That is not in doubt.
Problem is, the trackpoint is just as effective, if not more. Perhaps there are some applications where the trackpad really is king (I don't know any off the top of my head), but I can't imagine it's a wide scope. Consider where your fingers are when you type - your index fingers are near G and H, and your thumbs are near the space bar. So, what if I told you, we put the trackpoint near G and H (so it's left- and right-hand respecting), and then we put left-click and right-click... right below the space bar, where your thumbs are. Scroll you say? What if we put a button between left and right click, so when you hold that button down, and adjust the trackpoint, that scrolls (or can be used for expanding/contracting things)!
It makes beautiful sense. The trackpad seems entirely dumb knowing that. It's kind of nice if the thing I'm doing has no hotkeys and rarely requires typing... but that is an extremely rare example... since almost every application (even non-Vim-like) have hotkeys. Even then, the trackpoint is much more sensible. I guess if you've really mastered your laptops particular trackpad, then great. But it's kind of unnecessary. Consider getting a thinkpad. They're really great (although some from 2010s to 2017s?? apparently have some annoying physical layout, where the left/right click buttons were part of the trackpad, which caused issues... but that's a trackpad-related problem, not a trackpoint-specific problem).