ThinkPad laptops are generally perceived as one of the more robust and durable machines for business use, and it is not a surprising to see businessmen toting them in their bags or typing away on ThinkPads in cafes. But, Lenovo is hardly resting on their laurels and continues to improve the user performance, battery life, security encryption and quality of its Lenovo ThinkPads. As a note-worthy ThinkPad that had tongues wagging long before its release, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 created a lot of attention and anticipation with its impressive specifications and enhanced user experience. ThinkPads are no longer just the business range of laptops but have entertainment capabilities and content creation abilities to suit even the lifestyle and casual user. Lenovo’s skilled engineering team has crafted an all-rounder with the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 and with its ergonomic design and enhanced user-friendliness, there is now infinitely more to the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 than meets the eye.
Low-fat, please
As the slimmest ThinkPad yet, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is a beauty with a sleek body and a rubbery feel to it which means it won’t slip out of your hands in case of sweaty palms. As much as a skinny body is what most users prefer, this means that there is no optical drive. Some may feel that an optical drive is unnecessary as files can be transferred via USB flash drives or downloaded straight from cloud storage services but sometimes when you need to install boxed software or a game that you bought off of the shelves, it can be a negative thing.
Nevertheless, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1’s design is sexy enough to justify the lack of the optical drive. Built to resist accidental slips with its solid architecture, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 was claimed to be able to withstand drops from at most 1.6m. We did not put this theory to the test, suitably trusting Lenovo’s claim. At about 1.4 kg, it is light for a full-fledged laptop so no sore shoulders or back problems when you bring it to the next appointment with your client.
Working It
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is still at its core, a business laptop so the first thing we needed to try out was how much it improves our workflow and productivity. Using the basic office suite was satisfactory as there is no lag and the keyboard is exceptionally comfortable to use. Lenovo has designed the perfect keyboard with a natural contour for your fingertips as you type with just the right amount of space in between the keys for travel. Typing out a word document is easier and faster; even with long periods of use there is no tiredness or wrist discomfort.
It has a nice tactile feedback and with the backlit function, working in the dark is no problem. No ThinkPad is complete without the red nipple and it was used more regularly than the touchpad. If you have larger fingers, using the right-click on the touchpad will result with a response from the left-click instead so the red nipple provided a better solution. The ThinkPad X1’s touchpad multi-touch scrolling was alright but it did not glide as well as the touchpad in other laptops. Of course as a business laptop, security is top priority as some company data are private and confidential and Lenovo takes pride in its fingerprint recognition technology as well as software-based security services.
Pushing It To the Limit
Performance of a laptop can make or break your productivity especially when you are rushing for a deadline or want to do some minor editing/gaming during your free time. To find out how much the X1 can handle, we installed Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit to test out if it is capable of gaming as well. Although not cut out for gaming, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 performed well with full specifications, the textures were in high resolution and the viewing angle was amazing.
Photo editing and movie clip tweaking was responsive and speedy even while using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Pinnacle. Photos did not take long to load and the rendering of videos is sufficient enough for a business laptop. As for multimedia capabilities, the volume buttons on the right side of the keyboard presented the convenience needed to crank it up or turn it down. Volume on this sleek beast is loud and crystal clear and putting it on full blast is enough to feel a slight pain on the eardrums. Having said that, the bass is practically non-existent and playing music in low tones tend to be tinny even though it uses Dolby Home Theatre HD v4 technology. Then again, the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 is more of a corporate-centric lifestyle laptop and the multimedia capabilities are just add-ons.
For you techies who love benchmark scores, we got a PassMark performance score of 1184.7
Need a Juice Boost
The X1 performs ok with average business use e.g Word document creation, a PowerPoint presentation and number crunching on Excel. If you regularly open more programs and use beyond that, battery life is about three hours maximum which is nice but not particularly spectacular.
Verdict
Great performance, compact form factor and sufficient battery life makes the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 an ideal business laptop with extra functionality
