Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Review (with battery slice 39+)

We have yet to review a machine which offers such a huge array of settings when configuring the battery life.

Today, we are testing both with, and without the optional '29+' battery slice, which is said by Lenovo to double the operational time of the machine.

To test today, we are putting the machine through a variety of ‘real world' situations, mirroring the real world usage of a potential customer. One as a media movie lover on the move (wearing headphones), a person wanting to watch high definition media on a train journey or bus with two thirds screen brightness. Second as a businessman, with screen brightness around half way. Wireless and BlueTooth were enabled. A mixture of checking, answering emails using Microsoft Office and editing pictures in Adobe Photoshop.

Lastly as a gamer, playing Left4Dead at settings highlighted earlier in the review.

Before we do this however we wanted to highlight some of the software settings.

Lenovo, cleverly offer settings to enhance the battery health, which also includes an optimisation process. The user can also set a custom charge threshold, so the machine isn't continually charging the batteries, lowering the life span. Lenovo claim their batteries will last 3 times as long as a standard battery, so there is some benefit in the system they use.

With two batteries installed, the dedicated software allows for separate diagnosis and feedback. Incredibly we found the Lenovo claims of ‘fast charging' to be true. The internal battery charged from flat to 80% power in 28 minutes, and 100% power in 42 minutes. The battery slice was similar, with a 80% power charge achieved in 29 minutes and 100% power reached in 40 minutes. This is vastly superior to any other machine we have tested on Kitguru.

There is even an option called ‘battery stretch' which can eek a little more life out of the battery in emergency situations. We found that it worked quite well, allowing for an extra 5-15 minutes depending on the situation and settings.

Very good results with 2 batteries, and even with a single battery we found the results fairly good. With the external battery installed we achieved more than double the life. Depending on the environmental lighting , the panel can be used right down to a brightness setting of 5 (out of 15).

By lowering the brightness to 2, and using the lowest performance setting, we actually achieved a battery life of almost 11 hours and 30 minutes. We disabled wireless and bluetooth and used the battery stretch mode.

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