Lenovo ThinkPad X301

Lenovo ThinkPad X301 Review

It is a pleasure to review for you the newest model in Lenovo's X300 series, the X301. If you're looking for portability without sacrificing resolution or power, you've found it. On the one hand, a 13.3" screen size and a weight of only 3.3lbs. On the other hand, a 1440x900 resolution, an Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 1.4GHz, 2GB of RAM, and almost 4 hours of battery life without even trying to extend it. Such an excellent combination of power and size doesn't come cheap, but if you're looking for a top of the line ultra-portable, the Lenovo ThinkPad X301 is the notebook for you.

Design:

The look shouldn't surprise you much if you've seen a ThinkPad before. Although Lenovo has done the unthinkable and given its SL400 a glossy finish, you won't find such major deviations from standard ThinkPad decor on the X301. You will find some minor improvements though. There is a comfortable soft matte finish on the wrist rest and the lid, and above the keyboard the blue of the ThinkVantage button is joined by the white of the power button and the red of the mute button (when mute is on). Aside from the silver ThinkPad logo emblazoned across the corner of the wrist rest, the wrist rest design stays sleekly black, even the speakers located at the corners are painted black and add to the look. Similarly, aside from a few informational lights, the lid features only the ThinkPad logo and a black, embossed Lenovo logo which blends in nicely. Even with a slightly tapered front we're still black and boxy, but the X301 manages to project its lightweight and sleekly stylish self at the same time.

Size & Weight




You won't hear many complaints here. With dimensions of 12.5 x 9.1 x 0.7 inches and a weight of 3.3lbs, you'll barely notice the X301 whether it's slung across your shoulder or being clutched between your thumb and forefinger as you reposition it on your lap. Better yet, there is an option to remove the optical drive and replace it with a 3-cell battery, allowing you to remove the heavier 6-cell unit and bring the overall weight down to a miniscule 2.93lbs. That, by the way, is just a shade lighter than the ultra-portable Lenovo X200, a 12.1" model (although it's only fair to note the X200 gets you this weight a lot less expensively).

Keyboard

The keyboard on the X301 is one of the nicest keyboards we've ever seen on a laptop. The keys are responsive and quiet, making the journey of your fingers across the keyboard both silent and effortless. The wrist rest has a rubberized matte finish which is perfectly comfortable in use over an extended period and does not heat up. The keyboard is full sized and space is used efficiently. There are nice features like volume control above the keyboard next to the standard ThinkVantage and power buttons, and smart design aspects like making the keyboard light feature a combination of the bottom left and top right key on your keyboard, allowing easy discovery even in the dark. The X301 also features both a track pad as well as the TrackPoint "nub", impressively fitting both in such a small laptop with just enough space for good usability.

Display Quality




The TFT has a maximum resolution of 1440x900, which is nothing short of impressive on a unit this small. It is LED backlit and with the brightness turned on high it's completely visible from all virtually angles, even in the sun. In testing there was a little washout in the screen when viewed from certain vertical angles, but the vast majority of the spectrum was clear, and the side angles were nearly perfect. Glare is not a problem, and even with the brightness reduced to a power saving level we were able to comfortably watch a movie as long as we were sitting directly in front of the laptop.

Connectivity:

The X301 has a decent amount of connectivity ease, and certainly a good amount for its class. Of particular note is the DisplayPort, located in the back of the unit.

The left side of the unit features your standard headphone/microphone jacks, as well as 2 USB ports and the exhaust.

The right side of the unit is pretty bare - all we have here is the optical drive, or potentially nothing if you've taken it out or exchanged it for the extra battery.

The back of the unit houses the DisplayPort, the wireless off/on switch, an Ethernet port, another USB port, the VGA-out and the power jack.

Upgrading If you're looking to upgrade beyond our model, there are a couple of options. Our system came with 2GB of RAM but you can upgrade as high as 4GB, although you should keep in mind that a 32-bit OS can only utilize 3GB. You can also double the size of the hard drive from 64GB to 128GB, but remember that we're talking SSD here and not HDD, and it's going to cost you $400 to make this upgrade.

Features

In addition to simply being small and powerful, the X301 comes with some useful features. Some of the more standard features include an integrated fingerprint reader and webcam, as well as the ThinkVantage button which allows for easy access to network connections, multimedia management, wireless radio, and more. Lenovo is also offering an optional WWAN on this unit for those to whom WLAN 802.11 a/b/g/n isn't enough.

Featured is the optional port replicator, which adds 5 USB ports, VGA, and headphone/microphone jacks to your repertoire.

Another nice but costly feature is the SSD hard drive. SSD hard drives are quieter and faster than standard HDD drives, in addition to being much less fragile.Some of the more interesting features are the special additions to the X301 that have helped to make it both light and capable. The DisplayPort is one of these. DisplayPorts are growing steadily in popularity and are designed as a compact replacement for DVI and to be compatible with HDMI. This computer is also one of the first to integrate Intel's ULV, or Ultra Low Voltage processors, which is a large part of what allows this notebook to be as powerful as it is and still have a battery life worth talking about. Speaking of batteries, the option to remove the optical drive and replace it with a battery allows the user to choose between making this laptop even lighter... with the removal of the 6-cell or else keeping it roughly the same weight while extending the battery life by 50%. It's clear that a lot of thought went into making this unit as efficient as it is.

Performance & Conclusion

Performance It's time to find out just how much power this ULV chip really has. Coupled with 2GB of RAM we expect this unit to reach or surpass the power of most other ultra-portables, although with integrated graphics it will hardly be a gaming unit. You can find more information about our testing methodology

Windows Vista Experience Score

This is about what we expected. The SSD hard disk pulls down an exceptional score, and the RAM and processor both score well too. Unfortunately the graphics portion of the testing brings the overall score down, but that score is still high enough to accommodate most business needs.

PCMark Vantage
The X301 fares reasonably well here, well ahead of the Dv5z and well behind the hulking M15x. Interestingly, the older X300 actually scored slightly higher here.

3DMark 06




The X300 doesn't hold a candle to the X301 here, although it's clear that any computer with a dedicated GPU is still going to blast the X301 out of the water.

WorldBench 6





This score is actually a little disappointing. The X301 trails everything here, although it's at least competitive with the Dv5z. This could be the fault of the ULV processor, which is designed to save power rather than process with blazing speed. Still, that score is certainly lower than we expected.

Battery Performance

The battery lasted 106 minutes before we received a warning and the DVD stopped playing. After manually resuming the DVD we were able to squeeze another 11 minutes before the computer put itself to sleep. It's not quite the SL400, but the DVD playback time is enough to watch most feature length films from start to finish.

On the balanced power setting, doing everything from visiting websites to viewing movies (albeit on the default reduced brightness), we were able to get nearly 4 hours of battery life on just the 6-cell. With the 3-cell battery bay installed, life would probably jump up to nearly 6 hours, which is exceptional since we weren't even trying to extend the life here by using the power saving mode or the battery stretch feature. 6+ hours would also be a fairer number to compare to the X200 and SL400, both of which were tested with a 9-cell battery installed.

Recharge time: 135

Recharging at first seemed like it would take much less than two hours, but it dragged a little at the end. Still, that's quick enough that you don't necessarily have to leave it plugged in overnight to get a full charge.

Real-Life Usage

The real life usage of this machine is very comfortable. The unit is super lightweight and produces virtually no heat or noise, making it perfectly comfortable to leave on your lap or keep running while you sleep. The unit is also extremely small, making it easy to slip into any kind of carrying case or to tuck under your shoulder for a quick getaway. This is all thanks to the ULV chip, the SSD drive, and some intelligent engineering from Lenovo. And did we mention we love typing on this keyboard? The only gripe we had the whole time we were testing was that during DVD playback the X301 surrenders keyboard volume control to the media player, meaning that when you try to increase the sound via keyboard it tries to do it though the media player software. With WinDVD this worked fine, but we initially tested with VLC media player, which doesn't seem to fully support that, and the result was that we could not use the keyboard volume controls unless we were watching in full screen. That's how far we had to go to find a complaint during our use of the X301, and the fault probably lies with VLC anyway and not with Lenovo.

Conclusion

The Lenovo ThinkPad X301 is a fully featured and fully portable unit, all for a fully painful price. While everything from word processing to surfing the internet to viewing movies on this notebook was a joy, we're still not sure that we're interested in spending $3000 on a laptop. This is no knock against the features, which are plentiful, and particularly not against the size and weight, which are downright exceptional. The X301 is a custom tailored machine designed to be portable without sacrificing comfortable use or even much power. From the ULV Intel Core 2 Duo SU9400 1.4GHz to the 64GB SSD to the 1440x900 LED backlit resolution, this is an ultra-portable that has been engineered beautifully.

Bottom line: The Lenovo ThinkPad X301, if you can afford it, is a laptop you'll love to carry around and enjoy using for anything but 3D gaming. But if you can't afford it, you can probably get something just a little heavier or just a little slower for quite a bit less.