If you want something practical and productive right out of the box then just go with Ubuntu for any hardware.

Thinkpads are popular in the Arch community (and vice versa), so there's discussion and documentation available if that's your cup of tea.

What you are really asking is what Linux distro people would recommend. Full stop.

That laptop has Intel graphics, which have great Linux support. It will run practically any distro without any extra effort.

Fedora works well on most hardware I've tried, especially the ThinkPad T & X series. Currently running F26 on a 5th gen X1 Carbon.

I read a review about running OpenBSD on them last night. It’s probably wide open to anything.