Lenovo ThinkPad X1: Thin, Sturdy, and Fast…Until the Battery Dies

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

• Very solid building
• Thin and comparatively light

Cons

• poor battery sprightliness
• glossy shield

Our Verdict

If the battery lasted a couple of hours longer, this would be the moldiness-have business traveler's laptop.

The technology press has lumped Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 into a healthy category of Macbook Air competitors, but now that I've used one for for a while, I can tell you it doesn't really belong there. Though the X1 is the thinnest ThinkPad ever, it is still well thicker and heavier than Apple's razor-pale laptop computer. This isn't to allege that it's chummy or heavy (it isn't) or that it is inferior to the Broadcast Oregon other superslim laptops like the Samsung Series 9. Information technology's just a different mathematical product for a different market: lin travelers who like to travel light.

Lenovo says that the ThinkPad X1 is 0.65 inches thick and 3.8 pounds. Our measurements show it's a little thicker than that at its thickest. Compare those numbers to the 2.3 pounds and tapered designing of the Air that is 0.68 inches chummy at its thickest and a mere 0.11 inches at the advanced edge. Just filling ahead the X1 and you'll directly recognize the difference. Lenovo's laptop computer is thin and comparatively light (for a ThinkPad), merely let's not get carried departed.

Lenovo packs a lot of good stuff into this compact package. The unanimous system of rules is exceedingly rugged, resisting our attempts to deform or bend information technology. The backlit island-style keyboard is not just a gladden to type on, it's fall-proof as intimately. In an interesting flex, Lenovo has equipped the X1 with a clickpad instead of a trackpad with discrete buttons. It's a good compromise to pose a big touch area, and the texture and tracking of the digs is top-pass. For those that can't give it up, you'll still find the little eraser-kernel pointer control between the G and H keys and a put back of physical buttons between the clickpad and the spacebar. The free-base constellation includes a Center i3 central processing unit, 4GB of RAM, and a 320GB, 7200-rev Winchester drive for $1199. Our test model came with a Core i5-2520M CPU, raising the price to $1304. This configuration attained a good score of 124 on WorldBench 6, putt it near the top of the ultraportables category. SSD drive options are also available, though costly.

At premiere glance, the ThinkPad X1 seems to equal missing a lot of connectivity options, as you'll just find a headset jack and a USB port under a smaller cover connected the left edge in and a card reader connected the right edge. That's because to the highest degree of the ports are tucked forth on the back of the laptop. There you'll find a jazz band eSATA/USB port, a DisplayPort, an HDMI 1.4a left, a porthole for USB 3.0, and a covered SIM wit slot for 3G connectivity. The 1366 by 768 display is shiny and doesn't shift too much as you change your viewing Angle, but it is a little disappointing to go through Lenovo prefer for a glossy drinking glass handle rather of the anti-reflective matte finish found on most ThinkPads. The well-stacked-in high-def Webcam functions amazingly well in low light, and the audio is a distribute louder and clearer than you'd expect from a laptop this small. Credit that to Lenovo's licensing of Dolby Home Theater technology.

The Achilles' heel of this slick business ultraportable is its blood disorder battery life. Apparently, the one affair Lenovo couldn't really swot up into this attractive black slab is a broad enough battery. The nonremovable Li polymer assault and battery lasted only 3 hours, 41 minutes in our tests. You can double that with an outside slice battery, but that's a dangerous compromise. It adds nearly a pound, makes the organisation quite a bit thicker (natural covering the back incomplete of the bottom of the system), and raises the price aside $150. What's the point of a spindly and bioluminescent laptop if you receive to make information technology emphatically not thin and not light to get more than 4 hours of use out of it? At least it doesn't involve long to charge. Lenovo is proud of how quickly its battery charges, and rightly and so. You can croak from drained to 80 percent of full charge in around fractional an hour, and the system is smart enough to excite the intramural battery first, and to drain the slice battery first.

There's very much to love about the ThinkPad X1, even if it isn't quite an thin or light enough to rightly junction the ranks of Macbook Air competitors. It looks and feels great, is a joy to work happening, boots immoral, remains responsive even when multitasking, and has a really nice presentation. The audio quality and the Webcam are a cut higher up mediocre, American Samoa substantially. If you don't want all-day battery living, information technology's an excellent choice. IT's exactly the kind of thing a frequent-flier businessman would want to stuff into his gestate-connected bag, provided he'll use it for less than 4 hours at a time. For users that call for all-day battery life, the external battery slice effectively eliminates the sleek size and weight that makes the system such an attractive prospect in the eldest place.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/491842/lenovo_thinkpad_x1.html

Posted by: harrisonourch1959.blogspot.com

Share this post