The ThinkPad X100e is an 11-inch ultraportable laptop equipped with an AMD dual-core processor and an ATI graphics chip. Such a tandem looks more promising than a typical netbook equipped with an Intel Atom processor and integrated Intel GMA3150 graphics, while the ThinkPad X100e is equipped with everything a business user needs. Let's take a closer look at this little worker and see what level of performance the new dual-core processor from AMD has to offer.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X100e test laptop had the following specifications:
Processor - 1.6GHz AMD Turion Neo X2 L625 Dual Core Mobile Processor (800MHz FSB, 1MB L2 Cache)
System Memory - 2GB PC2-5300 DDR2 (667MHz)
Operating system - Windows 7 Professional 32bit
Display - 11.6-inch, WXGA HD (1366x768) anti-glare LED-backlit display
Hard Drive - 250GB 5400RPM SATA Standard
Graphics - ATI Radeon 3200 Integrated Graphics
Network communications - Wi-Fi 802.11b / g / n, Gigabit LAN
Other equipment - card reader - 4-in-1, webcam 0.3 megapixel
Battery - 6-cell lithium-ion battery
Construction and design
Lenovo's ThinkPad line of business notebooks is well known in many countries. Laptops of this series have won the trust of consumers, primarily due to the extremely durable case, high build quality, comfortable and practical keyboard, the presence of the additional Track Point manipulator and fantastic warranty obligations, which were established by the previous owner of the trademark - IBM. The Lenovo ThinkPad X100e netbook continues this glorious tradition and is one of the best ultraportables on the market.
Weighing 1.33 kilograms, the ThinkPad X100e has a slightly austere design, the body of the netbook is made of black plastic; Lenovo engineers have tried to maintain all the strengths of the ThinkPad series at the lowest budget price. Lenovo admits that buyers have been expecting a ThinkPad netbook for years, but there has been a long debate within the company over whether a reliable, rugged, ultraportable business laptop can be built that fits within the netbook price range.
The company decided not to call the new model a netbook, but to refer it to a series of "affordable ultraportable notebooks" at a netbook price. Thus, the engineers had to develop a portable laptop for business users, which would not be inferior in terms of reliability, practicality, comfort of use, a set of various communications and warranty obligations to the older models of the ThinkPad series, and at the same time the laptop had to have the lowest possible price. ...
At first glance, the ThinkPad X100e netbook looks a lot like the rest of the ThinkPad line. Indeed, the 11-inch X100e borrows a lot from the older model, the 12-inch ThinkPad X200. The consumer has several design options for the netbook, such as jet black and bright red, like the new ThinkPad Edge models.
Those who are already familiar with previous generations of ThinkPads will surely notice the significant changes that have come to the ThinkPad X100e keyboard. The laptop now features a Chiclet-style or island-style keyboard, which offers plenty of space between the keys despite the netbook's small size. This keyboard has excellent rigidity and has many similarities to the ThinkPad Edge series. Lenovo has introduced a new key shape to create the keyboard that should allow them to last significantly longer, thus maintaining the reputation of the ThinkPad series.
Display and speakers
Model ThinkPad X100e features an 11.6-inch LED-backlit display that shares the same specs as most 1366x768 displays on budget laptops. The main advantage of the display over other ultraportable notebooks such as the Alienware M11x or Dell Inspiron 11z is the matte finish. Unlike the glossy displays found in most consumer notebooks, the matte surface of the X100e does not reflect foreign objects or light sources. It will be equally convenient for the user to work at the monitor at any level of illumination - whether in a park on a sunny day, or in a dimly lit office space. Horizontal viewing angles are good enough at around 120 degrees; if you look at the screen from a large angle, the distortion of the color palette becomes noticeable, its inversion. Vertical viewing angles, like most laptop displays, are small at around 30 degrees.
The quality of the speakers is very good, their volume will be enough to fill a large room with sound. At maximum volume, slight distortion of sound will be noticeable, the low frequency range is poorly represented, but in general the speakers make a very good impression, their quality is acceptable for holding a video conference or listening to music from the Internet. The speakers are located on the bottom cover of the laptop, so when listening to music or watching a movie, in order to keep the sound from drowning out, you need to place the laptop on a flat, hard surface.
Keyboard and touchpad
As mentioned above, one of the radical changes in the laptop's design is the new "Chiclet" style keyboard, which is completely different from the typical ThinkPad keyboard. Despite the changes, the keyboard retained the level of performance, which is very important for a business model. One of the main benefits of the new Chiclet design is the increased space between the keys, especially given the laptop's small footprint. This means that while working, the user will make fewer typos than on a laptop with a classic type of keys. The surface of the X100e keys is slightly concave; when pressed, the keys are slightly springy. The noise during work is minimal, so you can work on your laptop in the library, at a lecture at the university or in a meeting. The place for the wrists is too small for the palm of an adult, but it does its job well - it is very convenient to work with a laptop.
It is difficult to say something bad about this keyboard, as it is made of very high quality, but the lack of backlighting can be attributed to a small drawback. An increasing number of business laptops are equipped with keyboard backlighting, because on the road, for example, on an airplane or bus, it is not always possible to use an external light source, and if there is a backlight, the user can always use a laptop.
The touchpad by Synaptics and the Track-point mini-joystick provide a high level of comfort. If you are used to working with a large touchpad like MacBook or 17-inch notebooks, the X100e's touchpad may seem too small for you. However, compared to the size of the touchpad on most netbooks, the X100e's touchpad has a larger work surface. As usual, there are three buttons for the mini-joystick, including the traditional middle button, as in most ThinkPad laptops. Both the touchpad and the mini-joystick are very easy to use and have fast response times. The touchpad and joystick sensitivity was excellent, and no further adjustments were required to operate. The touchpad accepts several multi-gestures, including zoom and rotation. The surface texture of the touchpad is smooth and pleasant to the touch. The touchpad buttons have shallow travel compared to other ThinkPad notebooks, but they still win any comparison with the touchpad buttons on most netbooks.
Ports and other equipment
The port selection is good enough for an ultraportable laptop. In fact, the X100e has the same port layout as most of the larger consumer notebooks. It is worth noting that most modern ultraportable laptops equipped with Intel processors have HDMI-out, and since the ATI Radeon 3200 video chip supports the HDMI standard, it remains unclear why Lenovo did not equip this laptop with an HDMI-out. Since the laptop is aimed at a business audience, I would like to see either an eSATA or USB 3.0 port for connecting high-performance devices.
Front view: indication lamps
Back side: power connector, battery, VGA-out
Left side: Cooling fan grill, two USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, audio combo
Right side: 4-in-1 card reader, USB 2.0 port, Kensington lock slot
Performance
The previous generation ThinkPad X100e single-core laptop was all good, except for one thing - it did not have enough CPU performance. How will the new model, equipped with a dual-core processor, show itself? Let's see.
The single-core processor in the X100e laptop was the AMD Athlon Neo MV-40, which was also used in the HP Pavilion dv2 laptop. A year or two ago, its performance would have been sufficient for most common tasks, and at the same time it did not have enough competitors, but now there are quite a lot of dual-core processors on the market. The new ThinkPad X100e is equipped with a dual-core AMD Turion Neo X2 L625 processor, and despite the low core frequency of 1.6GHz, this processor has very good performance for a budget ultraportable laptop.
The AMD Turion Neo X2 processor is more than twice as fast as the older Athlon Neo processor and is a worthy competitor to the Intel SU4100 processor, which runs at reduced voltage. When tested in Windows 7, the new processor outperforms the Athlon Neo by more than three times.
When using the laptop for ordinary tasks - surfing the Internet or working in office programs, the new processor did not reveal the lags or pauses inherent in single-core AMD Athlon Neo or Intel Atom processors. After turning on the power, the laptop boots up quickly, switching between applications is also easy. HD video playback in both 720P and 1080P was very smooth, which is not the case for Intel-based netbooks. The main merit here belongs to the ATI Radeon 3200 video chip, which takes over a significant part of the video decoding load, thereby unloading the central processor. Thus, you can simultaneously work in an office program, and at the same time run a movie in a separate window, and this will not affect the laptop's performance and usability.
Summing up the section, we can say that thanks to the new dual-core processor, the ultraportable ThinkPad X100e has become not only a worthy competitor to a netbook, but also can compete with a full-size laptop with a processor running at reduced voltage.
Wprime CPU performance score (the lower the score, the higher the performance):
PCMark05 measures the overall system performance (the higher the score, the better the performance):
3DMark06 measures performance in games (the higher the score, the better the performance):
CrystalDiskMark measures hard drive performance:
Heat dissipation and noise
When using the laptop in everyday tasks (office programs and the Internet), the noise level was average, the fan speed of the cooling system was low. Even with an increased load on the processor and video card, the noise level increased insignificantly during games or watching videos. Unfortunately, there is also a downside to the coin - the quiet cooling system is the reason for the slight heating of the laptop case.So, the bottom cover warms up at some points up to 42 degrees Celsius, the surface of the keyboard - up to 35 degrees Celsius, and the touchpad - up to 32 degrees Celsius. At the same time, we should pay tribute to the energy efficiency of the new processor - its heat dissipation is slightly less than that of its single-core predecessor. For the sake of fairness, it should be noted that some netbooks have much worse temperatures.
Standalone operation
The dual-core ThinkPad X100e comes as an unexpected surprise. The X100e laptop with the AMD Turion Neo X2 processor was able to work for 4 hours and 34 minutes, while during the test the screen brightness was set to 70%, Wi-Fi was turned on, the web page was refreshed every 2-3 minutes, and the Windows operating system 7 is set to "balanced" mode. This is almost an hour more than the previous generation X100e single-core model showed. Obviously, AMD has made some optimizations in terms of processor power consumption.
Of course, there are netbooks on the market based on Intel Atom processors that have a battery life of more than 10 hours, but there are also netbooks based on the same Intel Atom processors that have a battery life of less than 4 hours. The battery life of the X100e is roughly on par with most ultraportable notebooks powered by Intel Core 2 Duo processors running at reduced voltage and Core i series processors. Thus, the X100e performed well in the battery life test.
Conclusion
The Lenovo ThinkPad X100e with AMD Turion Neo X2 dual-core processor takes a big step up from its predecessor. The only drawback of the previous generation was a slow processor, and the new X100e has completely remedied this drawback. In this configuration, the ThinkPad X100e can be used in many areas - from working in office programs, to watching HD movies and playing games 2-3 years ago.
If you are looking for a reliable 11-inch ultraportable laptop with great performance for under $ 500, you can buy the ThinkPad X100e without hesitation. Of course, for that kind of money, you can now buy a full-size laptop with a diagonal of 15.6 inches, but if the critical parameters for you are the small dimensions of the laptop, reliability and low price, then the model ThinkPad X100eis definitely the "golden" mean.
Benefits:
High performance
Long battery life
Excellent build quality
Disadvantages:
Slight heating of the case
Lack of keyboard backlighting
No HDMI output
