April 22nd, 2008New Lenovo X300 Notebooks
Lenovo recently announced the X300, claimed to be in the center of the world’s thinnest high-performance laptops and a direct competitor to the Mac book Air. Ever since that declaration we’ve been looking forward to getting our voracious hands on it. We were able to spend a few quality hours with the X300, and here is what we think of this laptop.
At first glance the X300 does not come into view to be anywhere as slim as the Macbook Air. However, a closer look at its dimensions of 12.5 x 9.1 x 0.73 inches compared to the Macbook Air’s 12.8 x 8.94 x 0.7 inches reveals a different story. They are virtually similar in size, shape, and weight, with the Macbook Air edging out the X300 with its virtually Frisbee like profile. The X300 in comparison resembles a normal notebook, albeit with a slimmer profile.
In a throwback to the ThinkPad days, the X300 retains the familiar trademark black boxy body with the magnesium construction. The lid however is different from other ThinkPads; it has a silky smooth matte finish that feels very good to touch. The same finish has been used around the keyboard area and gives the laptop a sexy plea in spite of the monotonous all-black color.
We’ve seen that the X300 is pretty slim, but the question is: how secure is its body? The answer is “quite hardy”. Since it retains the magnesium construction build of its precursor, it’s got a tight finish all over that does not squeak and gives the appearance that it will weather well over time.
Moving on to the keyboard, one is impressed again. The keyboard on the X300 is much superior to the Macbook Air’s in terms of user soothe, with its soft keys recessed keys. Typing on this keyboard is similar to using a Logitech G15 keyboard in many ways and this makes working long hours a breeze.
As for the mouse, Logitech has gone for its typical dual-pointer approach, and the X300 has both a touchpad and a track-point. Using either is easy; the only nuisance is the awful location of the touchpad. It’s located at an odd angle which makes using the track-point kind of hard as the user’s hand will keep brushing next to the touchpad, making the cursor wander all over the screen.
The screen of the X300 is similar to that of the Macbook Air (13.3 inch). However, it offers a larger resolution of 1440 x 900 as compared to the Air’s 1280 x 800 and this gives a significantly enhanced working area. However in other regards, the X300’s screen is rather average. It has a non-glossy finish which makes working with it easier, but offers only average levels of brightness and contrast. The color tones are none too impressive. Its viewing angles are also not that great, with a complete loss of focus if one moves yet slightly to the side.
Connectivity-wise the X300 simply blows away the Macbook Air. As opposed to the Air’s approach of external-everything units, the X300 packs in 3 USB ports, a gigabit-ready Ethernet slot, audio/mic jacks and, highly, an included ODD. Factor in the well-performing 802.11n support and you have a clear winner here.
In keeping with its lightweight status, the X300 has been equipped with a power-saving CPU. It utilizes an Intel 1.20GHz Core 2 Duo L7100 processor, has 2GB of RAM, 64GB SSD, and an Intel X3100 graphics chipset. This system out any forms of gaming, but does go away it perfectly positioned as a business computing laptop.
The PCMark score of the X300 was quite healthy at 3743. The battery life was simply phenomenal and this can be directly attributed to the CPU. On a full charge it easily delivered 4 hours and 15 minutes of battery life on four separate runs, and even under full load lasted well over 3½ hrs.
The audio subsystem of the X300 deserves a special mention. Thanks to the clever positioning of its nicely designed speakers, the sound output is really good. It delivers rich, clear sound with reasonably well-defined highs. We tested it with a variety of HD content and were surprised at its performance.
Another pleasing factor was the performance of the 64 GB SSD. Thanks to this, OS boot-up times were a good deal faster than in standard HDD solutions. Though storage is of course limited, this can be alleviated partly by the use of an external drive, as the laptop offers no less than three USB slots.
The X300 is everything that the Macbook Air could have been. While the Air certainly looks better, the X300 equals or surpasses it with its solid construction, great battery life, and overall incredible sound. Even if it’s priced at Rs 1.45 lakh, we feel the X300 is an incredibly good buy. That’s if you are in the market for a high-performance ultraslim portable and have deep pockets.
