Lenovo ThinkPad X100e: When Build Quality Matters Most
by Dustin Sklavos on September 3, 2010 6:40 PM ESTBut Is the Battery Life Improved?
Battery life is a notorious Achilles' heel in AMD's Congo platform, and word on the street (and by the street I mean the internet) is that Nile improves it dramatically. But the strangely rarefied Turion Neo X2 processor in the ThinkPad X100e does have a trick up its sleeve, able to dynamically reduce its voltage to lower specs than Athlon Neo MV-40 was able to hit. AMD's spec site is unhelpful in trying to determine any details, and Wikipedia is questionable, but other reputable sites have reported substantially improved battery life with the Turion Neo X2.
The other wrinkle is the testing with the SSD. There's a myth that SSDs improve battery life—period—and that's not true; certain ones like the otherwise excellent Kingston SSDNow! V2 post power consumption on par with 2.5" hard disk drives. But the Intel X25-V 40GB SSD is well known for having extremely low power consumption characteristics under both load and idle, so we can take this opportunity to measure both the allegedly improved power consumption of the Turion Neo X2 and the potential improvements from adding a low-wattage SSD.
My first reaction is to joke about how the Fujitsu hard drive must not be drawing much power because it doesn't actually work very hard, but nonetheless there is a minor but measurable improvement in power consumption with the SSD, and a more substantial one (nearly an hour) in our internet test.
Taken in context with our other Congo-based notebooks, the Turion Neo X2 L625 produces superior relative battery life in every instance. It still loses to the Nile-based notebook (and nearly anything with the word "Intel" on it), but at least we're getting decent running time out of the X100e overall. Its closest competitor thus far has been the MSI Wind U230, but in every instance we get at least twenty more minutes of running time and in the idle test we get nearly an hour more. Once you account for the slightly larger screen in the MSI (11.6" vs. 12.1") it starts to feel like more of a wash.
Add the extra RAM and switch to an SSD, and several scores are nipping at the heels of Nile; in fact, we actually get better relative battery life in the Internet test. Obviously, we could make the same low-power SSD upgrade to the other laptops and boost their battery life, but it is noteworthy just how much the SSD helps in certain scenarios.
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Dustin Sklavos - Saturday, September 4, 2010 - link
That's true and it's an oversight I was somewhat conscious of during the review. In the end I went the direction I did because while more RAM can improve system responsiveness a bit during multitasking, the SSD shores up the whole package.Rick83 - Saturday, September 4, 2010 - link
Well, with modern Windows you also get lot of caching going on, further reducing the IO-load, and thus saving some more power.I think that actually the RAM-upgrade makes just as much a difference, as the SSD.
Did the same upgrade to an old thinkpad x60 tablet early this year, and the usability boost was huge (Also going from XP to 7 to have trim around..)
Megadunder - Thursday, October 28, 2010 - link
Did you do a SSD upgrade also? I have a x60 with 2GB ram and I'm thinking about a ram upgrade aswell as a SSD upgrade...allasm - Saturday, September 4, 2010 - link
When I needed a small portable laptop I bought a used Thinkpad X61s for about $500. It is a 12" unit (with matte and relatively low-res 1024x768 screen) and a low-voltage Core2Duo @1.6 (old tech 65nm though). Mine has 4GB DDR2 as well, and I got an intel 80GB SSD for it.The keyboard is excellent, and for me lower res on a screen 12" big is just right. Despite being older and 12" (and not 11") it weights the same 3.3lbs with the standard 4-cell battery, which is enough for about 3.5 hrs with a properly set up OS. It is a bit heavier with a larger 8cell battery, but then it is good for about 6-7hrs of internet surfing.
(on a side note, I'm amazed when netbooks which are 3 years younger with a smaller 10" screen and a much slower atom CPUs - and about the same battery life for 3-cell units - weight about the same as this X61s! Of ocurse, it used to cell for almost $2K, but hey, 3 years is a lot!)
Core2 @1.6 is more than enough for internet (including flash), and is good enough for some visual studio emergency development on the road as well. I never tried running any modern games though.
Of course YMMV when buying a used laptop, but I think the X61 line is still a good alternative if you need a small laptop more powerful than a netbook and don't mind (or want) a lower-res screen & good keyboard. Oh, did I mention it is very solid, and can live undamaged through a few drops as well (unfortunately, that was tested, heh)
Edgar_Wibeau - Saturday, September 4, 2010 - link
yuhong: I guess we won't see a Nile successor of the x100e because Ontario/Zacate aka Fusion is too close already. Don't know if IBM started developing a Nile based one and cancelled it for it's tiny time frame, I VERY STRONGLY hope that they'll have an x110e based on Ontario/Zacate soon in Q1 2011 though.I've virtually bought it already! :)
Decent review btw!
Edgar_Wibeau - Saturday, September 4, 2010 - link
Damnit, confused code names in my subject. Not Thuban but Ontario/Zacate of course :-/Zak - Saturday, September 4, 2010 - link
I had my hands on few Lenovo laptops recently, setting them up for the users, and they definitely feel more solid than Dell, HP or Toshiba. And they don't look hideous like most of the recent Toshiba and HP monstrosities. If I'm ever on a market for a laptop I would definitely look at the Thinkpads.LoneWolf15 - Saturday, September 4, 2010 - link
Don't count out Dell, or HP. The key is to look at their business-class lines, not their consumer models. Dell's Latitude line, and HP's Business Notebook line are good contenders.That said, I'm using my second ThinkPad , a T400 (my SO has my first, a T61, and loves it). They are very well built, and I can't do without a TrackPoint (though you can get those on Dell/HP business models as well). The keyboards are topnotch, too. The T-series and X-Series ThinkPads are great choices; the W-series is good too if you need a workstation-class powerhouse.
Yangorang - Sunday, September 5, 2010 - link
Did you experience any sort of hanging or freezing issues with your review unit? Because my x100e is hanging and freezing every now and then under Windows 7 x86 and x64. It works with XP quite fine though...kizzmequik - Sunday, September 5, 2010 - link
My girlfriend has one, and she's complained about some hanging when she first got it. A round of software updates apparently solved it. Or at least, she hasn't complained of any in a while.Unfortunately, those updates also included a wi-fi driver update that broke the wi-fi. I had to reinstall the original drivers, and it seems fine now.
Except that the Fn+F7 command (to extend display) sporadically pops out of nowhere to annoy the hell out of her. And me. Mostly me. Probably I should roll back the drivers and software for that, too.