I got a PowerBook 5300cs as a high school graduation gift. I think it spent more time in the repair shop than I actually ever got to use it. Those were some rough years for Apple.
I had one of these. (and a 230, and a 100. I liked small).
The localtalk/serial port was not well attached, so if it was used much (like, pluggin in an external modem over and over) it would get loose and detach from the board.
The ethernet dock was super fast (for 10bT) in my recollection, possibly because of the PDS attachment. Never had a full sized dock, or to my recollection, ever plugged a floppy into one of my machines.
The keyboard wasn't as bad as the 230, but it's not good either. On the other hand, the 140/170 series had unbelievably good keyboards.
Compared to other machines of the time, they were a complete pain to disassemble to replace parts. I think I did memory and a modem at one point. The only worse one I can recall is replacing the keyboard on a unibody MBP.
The connectors remind me of N64 stuff: designed to be used by crustaceans with palsied claws, they are giant, have one-way-dumbass latches and notches, and also have that "yea, beige was great but we're in grey now baby" look which ages out really really fast. In some ways this was not Apples finest design era. Newton, I'm looking at you. The orginal "too soon" device.
I still have one of those. Sadly I lost the dock ~20 years ago. Last time I tried to turn the machine on (I think 5 years ago) it worked like a charm. Has photoshop installed. It’s fun how slow some of the filters (obviously) are