it feels a bit better than a pad tbh but I always plug in a mouse. They're nice on laptops since I usually have my touchpad disabled because of how much my palms can interfere with that while typing (so annoying to randomly click somewhere while typing), but I often would still want a way to move the cursor whenever my cat is sitting on my mouse and being an asshole. So, leaving it activated helps there. Also, it's nice from an ergonomic point of view because it makes it easier to feel for home row rather than the two small marks on F and J (if you're in the dark with a very dimmed screen or something like that)

if your input style is highly keyboard focused, its really nice to be able to control the mouse with zero movement from typing position. thinkpad with the red dot is the shit if you're living on the command line or IDEs all day