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The laptop arrives in a plain brown box sealed with ‘ThinkPad X1' tape. The box weighs 3.2 kg in total.
Inside, the X1 is protected between two thick green pieces of plastic. It is wrapped in a clear plastic bag, to help prevent marking during shipping.
The bundle is spartan, with some literature on the product, warranty information and a Lenovo branded power supply.
The ThinkPad X1 maintains the classy boxy shape, but Lenovo have brought it screaming and kicking into the new century by modernising the shape a little. It measures 13.3 x 9.1 x 0.84 inches and weighs 1.7kg. It isn't quite as thin as the Macbook Air, but we like the businesslike appearance.
After opening, we were immediately greeted with the familiar red controller which resides in the center of the keyboard. The 13.3 inch screen (1366 x 768) has a coating, called ‘Gorilla Glass' which offers extra protection from damage (scratch resistant). It is a solid slab of a laptop, feeling weighty in the hand, yet easily portable.
There is a HD camera at the top of the screen and the unit also includes microphone and noise/echo cancellation capabilities. The camera is pretty good, especially in low light conditions, but there is a fair amount of grain.
It measures only 16.5 mm at the thinnest point, which is much improved when compared against the older super portable Thinkpad designs. The X1 has a Carbon Fibre RollCage construction and is fully covered by a business level 3 year warranty. It achieves MILSPEC-level rugged status.
Lenovo claim that the magnesium rollcage is ‘on par with the impact technology that can be found in an F1 car'.
The rear of the machine is home to most of the connectivity. There is a power connector here, beside an eSATA/USB hybrid port. There is a mini display port, HDMI port and USB 3.0 port with a GB lan connector at the opposite side. There is also a covered SIM slot for optional 3G connectivity.
Due to the slim dimensions, there is no optical drive included, and some of the ports are hidden behind a protective rubber cover, as shown above. The other side has a wifi button to disable networking and an integrated 3G mobile broadband option.
Underneath the keyboard is a fingerprint reader, which can be configured for added security. We used this over the course of a week and it worked flawlessly. It saves having to type in a password on boot up and for other authorisation procedures. I never liked this system before as they would often fail to work, requiring multiple scans. The one included the X1 laptop didn't cause a single problem. Across the top at the side of the keyboard is a row of buttons for volume, mute, bios access and power on/off. All in a very accessible position.
The keyboard on the ThinkPad is without a doubt one of the best we have used on a laptop, surpassing our previous favourite, the one found on a previous generation 17 inch MacBook Pro. It is both responsive, and tactile, offering a great deal of user response. There are also two levels of blue LED keyboard backlighting (off-low-medium), accessible by pressing the FN key and spacebar together. An added bonus is the double height return key.
The keys are an enlarged contoured surface design which really helps ensure you are typing at maximum speed. I measured my rate and I was achieving the same speed as when using my trusty full size desktop DAS keyboard. The first time ever that a laptop oriented keyboard has scored so high in my tests.
The keyboard is also classed as ‘waterproof' although we didn't test this. According to documentation, the spilt liquid should run through two specially designed holes at the bottom (left and right) of the keyboard area. Obviously if orange juice or coffee is split, then the keyboard itself will assuredly still be damaged, but it should protect the important internals underneath. Replacing the keyboard is not a complex procedure.
The screen quality is very good, although not excellent, as the saturation is a little ‘flat' – the viewing angles aren't bad, especially for a TN model. It is a reasonably reflective screen, but not the worst we have seen this year.
By manually tweaking the Intel driver software and increasing Saturation by '10', the colours looked less washed out, while still remaining fairly accurate.
On a positive note, the screen brightness and contrast was superb (rated to 350 nit), and we normally used the panel at '13' out of a maximum '15', dropping to '11' in darker lit rooms. We often have to use many laptops at full settings to get the best overall image. The machine earns an extra bonus point for this.
The ThinkPad X1 panel is also usable in mid day daylight at maximum setting '15', although hard to read in direct sunlight.
The IBM ThinkPad was always famous for the ‘red joystick' as seen positioned in the middle of the keyboard. There are two buttons underneath it, just above the trackpad, which can be used for left and right buttons. In practice it takes a little getting used to, but for people who hate trackpads, it is a viable alternative.
The trackpad on this machine is one of the best we have used, offering great feedback and smooth movement.
The screen opens to a full 180 degree angle, which is exceptional. It also feels reassuringly strong and durable, unlike many we have tested in previous months. This gives it an almost tablet like usability in certain environments.
The rear of the laptop is very different from the usual laptop design, because it is not meant to be easily accessible to the user. The only thing easily accessible is the hard drive, on the side of the machine. To remove memory and to get access to the core internals, the keyboard needs to be removed from the front, which is a slightly negative point. There are a few reasons for this, one being the battery slice, which we will look at shortly.
On board audio is supported by Dolby Home Theatre, offering a vast array of configuration settings. The onboard speakers are actually quite loud and although they lack in bass response, we were pleasantly surprised by the volume output from such a small chassis. When paired up with a high quality pair of headphones, the audio quality is extremely impressive. We used the Audeze LCD2 (without a dedicated amplifier) and were very happy with the amount of detail that the ThinkPad X1 was able to resolve.
