Thinkpad X230/X220 keyboard swap

2019-11-15

I recently replaced the keyboard in my Thinkpad X230 with the keyboard from and X220. There are a few reasons for this; while the chiclet keyboard on the X230 is decent (I've used it for about a year without any real complaints), the keyboard from the X220 is a much more typist-friendly layout, with a huge Return key, a more sensible layout for Home/End/PgUp/PgDown, and a huge Escape key which is wonderful for Vim users. There's also more key travel and a very nice aubible feedback with this keyboard, which appealy to my preferences. The Thinkpad keyboard part also includes the trackpoint, and the mouse buttons (the touchpad is part of the 'chin' section, but I have it disabled in favour of the trackpoint anyway). I think that the trackpoint sits slightly higher and is more pronounced, and that the mouse buttons have slightly more travel and click to them; this could also all be just becuase I'm using a new part without the curulative wear my old one had.

Hardware

The process for swapping the keyboard is fairly simple. First, you need to remove the existing keyboard:

1) Begin by removing the battery. 2) On the underside of the laptop, there are two screws which hold the keyboard in place; they're marked below:

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3) Remove these screws, then turn the laptop back over, and open the lid. 4) Gently pry the keyboard up from it's front edge. There are four retaining tabs on the X230's keyboard, one on each side of the keyboard near the left Control key, and below the arrow keys, and one each side of the space bar. 5) Once the keyboard has popped up, slide it forward gently to expose the ribbon cable. 6) Gently pry the ribbon connector upwards from it's seat.

Now you have the keyboard removed, you need to slightly modify the X220 keyboard to fit.

1) You'll notice that while the old keyboard had four retaining tabs on it's front edge, the X220 keyboard has five, larger tabs. From left to right, we'll number them 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. 2) You need to entirely remove tab 3 (which is adjacent to the middle trackpad button). You can do a neat job of this with a file and a sharp knife. I didn't have these tools handy, however, so I used a set of fingernail clippers (I know, I'm ashamed). The tabs are made of a sandwich of soft metal and plastic, so very little force was needed. 3) You need to re-shape tabs 1, 2, 4 and 5 to flatten them. Again, I used the clippers which I had to hand, and snipped the edges of the tabs, then bent the metal to shape and trimmed it as necessary to remove the bezel and create flat metal tabs.

At this point, you're ready to reconnect the keyboard: