Lenovo ThinkPad X1 user reviews

Pros no heat, the best key board- period, long battery life, no preinstalled craplets, etc

Cons a little expensive

Summary other reviewers are full of it. I'm on my 3rd machine, two x61s and an x301 and I'd never use another laptop. Seriously.

Pros Keyboard, no junk pre-installed, light, USB3, good selection for CPUs, HDDs.

Cons Low screen resolution, electrical buzzing when some power settings are changed, rubbery finish collects fingerprint smudges like crazy, headphone jack hidden behind a cover that's a pain to remove every time I want to use headphones.

Summary This laptop came with a 160GB SSD, 8 GB memory and an i7 CPU, so it's quite the powerhouse. It is super fast (boots in 20 seconds from dead, wakes up from sleep in 1 second, starts any program in under 2...), light, and the keyboard is the best laptop keyboard I've typed on so far. One can turn on and off the backlight, and the keys make this soft clicking sound that's just ... perfect. Charging the battery is pretty amazing too - it really goes from 0% to ~80% in half hour, and takes another half hour to get to 100%. At full brightness and CPU utilization (doing tasks like installing software/updates, compiling code, Angry Birds of course) however, the battery goes for about 3.5 hrs (so not bad, but not the advertised 7 hrs). The trackpad is good, but I find that the 2 built in buttons at the bottom are sometimes tricky to use - they don't register if I am touching the trackpad, but I guess it's something I need to get used to. The red nubby joystick thingy is very useful tho, and works great combined with the 2 hard mouse buttons. Speakers are loud and clear, webcam is satisfactory (i'd say average) and the mic works surprisingly well.

Now my biggest hangup about this laptop - the screen. It looks very pretty with it's edge to edge Corning glass... until you turn it on. The default settings are not great and the picture looks too pale, almost washed up, so it needs to be calibrated for brightness, alpha, color... and this is well hidden in "windows settings". And this will bring it to a point where it's quite usable... I don't love that changing the viewing angle changes how colors appear on screen - but this is something I can live with - I usually look at it straight on anyway. Finally, something that I find exceptionally weak with this laptop - the graphics card and screen resolution of 1366x768. I'm not a gamer, but the resolution is really, really low, and on bright images I can see individual pixels. Maybe I'm too picky because I haven't had a resolution this low in years, but if I could change something on this laptop, this would be it. Probably not the end of the world for Word and email and casual web browsing, but I use things like Photoshop and Visual Studio on a regular basis and there's just not enough pixels to show everything I need on one screen. Even Gmail looks better on my old Sony(1440x900).

Overall I'm happy with the purchase so far. If the screen resolution was higher, it would be a no brainer 5 star rating. I I don't think you get more bang for your buck going any other route regardless. A Sony with the same specs costs 50% more, and let me tell you, they are gentle. This things looks like it can survive a nuclear blast... at least a 3 foot drop, and they say it's spill proof, tho I hope I won't be checking that feature soon.

Pros Thin, Light, Powerful, Great Keyboard, Amazing build quality, very good support, Great selection of ports including USB 3.0, very good webcam, beautiful design (obviously subjective)

Cons The screen, while very bright, could have a better contrast ratio, especially for this price

Summary I've had this product for a month now and I am glad I bought it. This product has the great build quality we've come to expect from Thinkpads, has a beautiful design and the technical support is very good. The keyboard is amazing, and beautiful with the backlit keys. The battery life is in fact better than I had expected from reviews I had read. I can use the computer unplugged for 5-6 hours easily even with Wi-Fi on. The screen's brightness easily makes up for the fact that it is glossy however blacks tend to be a little grey and colours don't pop as much as one would expect from such a premium product. Apart from the screen's contrast ratio this computer is truly amaing and very powerful. I would easily recommend it to anyone looking for a powerful, yet portable product.

Pros It was great for 15min until cursor went crazy. ThinkPad Support sent a postage-paid return box right away and I returned the defective ThinkPad to them for repair. ThinkPad Support speaks English well.

Cons My new factory sealed ThinkPad was defective. ThinkPad Repair does not stock the parts required to make any repairs to defective ThinkPads. Board of Directors does not care about customer down-time. If you buy one you must spend time warning others

Summary I purchased a new factory sealed ThinkPad on Tuesday. After fifteen minutes of use the touchpad would not control the cursor. On Wednesday I called ThinkPad Support. They remotely controlled my defective ThinkPad but could not effect a repair. ThinkPad Support sent a next-day postage paid return box for my defective ThinkPad. I shipped the defective ThinkPad to them on Friday. They received the defective ThinkPad on Monday. It is now Wednesday and after not hearing from them regarding the defective ThinkPad, I called ThinkPad Support. I was informed that the replacement keyboard/pad needed to effect the repair might not arrive from their vendor for another week. And that I should expect to receive my then previously defective ThinkPad a week after that.
To say that I am extremely dissatisfied is an understatement. I would love to yell at and curse their board of directors for being unconcerned about the down-time customers suffer because ThinkPad Repair does not keep sufficient parts on hand to effect repairs of defective ThinkPads. The support staff does speak English well. That is good news for anyone who buys a defective ThinkPad. They are not, however, in a hurry to satisfy ThinkPad customers. ThinkPad buyer beware.