Lenovo ThinkPad X100e: When Build Quality Matters Most
by Dustin Sklavos on September 3, 2010 6:40 PM ESTSame Crappy Lenovo Screen Though
We should be thankful Lenovo continues to use matte screens on their ThinkPad line, because a glossy screen would've pretty much sealed the deal here. Lenovo employs an 11.6" matte 768p screen in the ThinkPad X100e, and it's a powerhouse of mediocrity salvaged only by the small dot pitch that comes with fitting a 768p screen in an 11.6" frame. Truthfully it can actually feel a bit small and difficult to read, but at least it's a higher resolution than you typically see on netbooks—and it's also usable outdoors.
What's really frustrating is how poor the brightness feels on the X100e's screen, which is caused by the bad contrast ratio. What's more, on most screens our 100nit brightness setting is somewhere on the low end of the "brightness" scale, but on the X100e it's near the top. Drop brightness a couple clicks and you go from 239nits all the way to 100nits. We would have prefered more granularity. Also worth mention is that at lower brightness levels, contrast tends to wash out even more.
The LCD isn't a dealbreaker, and if you're mainly using the notebook just to handle writing tasks and surf the internet it shouldn't be a major problem. Still, a better quality screen would've suited the higher standards of quality found elsewhere in the X100e.
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fire400 - Monday, September 6, 2010 - link
msi wind u230 is garbage compared to the lenovo x100eFishyFish - Monday, September 6, 2010 - link
I agree with allasm. The refurb X60s and X61s are basically identical to the X100e in size and weight, yet they are cheaper and faster. The X60s also lasts longer than the X61s: nearly 6 hours on a charge (8 cell). There's no webcam, but there's a fingerprint reader *and* a keyboard light...cosmotic - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
Eating your own dog food is a reference to using the products you make. I'm pretty sure that has nothing to do with this article or Anandtech's core business of reviewing tech products..GMan123 - Tuesday, September 7, 2010 - link
I've bought my L625 model about 6 weeks ago. They had a deal where you get 2GB of RAM (1 DIMM), 320 GB hard-drive, WIfi and BT for about $530 shipped. I re-installed Win 7 Pro 64bit (comes with 32bit) and added another 2GB of RAM.As for my impressions, I was upgrading from an ASUS 1000H and the difference is huge. First off (as noted in the review) is the keyboard. It is one of the best! The next difference is the screen resolution - moving from 1024x600 to 1366x768 is terrific. I did have issues with contrast and colors, but playing around with the ATI settings, it looks a lot better (and now I can distinguish the lighter grays from white). You really need to play with those settings - I can post my settings if there is any interest.
Overall speed is better than the Atom, but I occasionally get the Win 7 spinning wheel of delay (not sure if this is a generic Win7 problem or not). Once I get this, I can really do anything on the machine until it stops. Really annoying, but maybe its the hard drive (there is no drive activity light!) so moving to an SSD may help. Outside the spinning wheel, I can do most productivity related tasks without issue or concern. Have not played any games on it yet, but Hulu and Netflix streaming is much, much smoother.
One issue that I did come across is some weirdness with the "sleep on lid close" setting. I think this is generic to Windows 7 and not to this laptop, but occasionally once I wake the computer, the brightness cannot be changed! The shortcut keys or control panel cannot change the brightness. Outside of a reboot, the only solution was to change the setting from "sleep on lid close" to "do nothing on lid close". Then close the lid and reopen it. Now you can change your brightness.