I would recommend OpenBSD for laptops. I'm not sure why, but my machine under FreeBSD had similar power issues and enabling apmd did nothing to resolve them.
I installed OpenBSD because someone said it supports think pads better and they were absolutely right, my machine is cool, quiet and the battery lasts ages. OpenBSD also requires X11 to be installed for ports to work, so maybe it is designed more for desktop use?
The OpenBSD developers dogfood the OS on their own laptops (mostly Thinkpads). I'd imagine that's one big reason why it works so well. In contrast, I've heard (but have not verified) that many FreeBSD devs do much of their work on macOS, and ssh to or virtualize FreeBSD.
I installed OpenBSD because someone said it supports think pads better and they were absolutely right, my machine is cool, quiet and the battery lasts ages. OpenBSD also requires X11 to be installed for ports to work, so maybe it is designed more for desktop use?
For reference I'm using a Lenovo Thinkpad x201s