*Lenovo Thinkpad x100e User Review*

Recently I got a x100e for classes and thought I would give some feedback on it. Any thoughts and criticism welcome.

Specs: AMD Turion Neo X2 Dual-Core L625, 2 GB PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz SODIMM Memory (1 DIMM), 250GB Hard drive 5400rpm, 6 cell battery, Windows 7 Home Premium 32 bit.

Build quality: Overall I have been impressed on how well built this laptop is. I was expecting the build quality to be similar to an Ideapad, but it is more comparable to my old T61. The chassis has no flex to mention and the keyboard is solid, even with heavy typing. The only real flex was with the screen. I don’t see why someone would be holding or handling the laptop by the screen, but if you do then you will notice that there is some flex with it.


Keyboard and screen: As said the keyboard area has no flex whatsoever. It has one of these chiclet style keyboards and it is great to type on. It makes the keyboard feel a lot larger than how small it really is. It has the classic red trackpoint and a generous trackpad pad below it. The screen is mediocre but does have a 1336x768 resolution that some other netbooks lack. I do wish the colors would be more vibrant and sadly the ATI CCC has few options to help with color improvement.


Battery life: Battery life with this laptop is hard to compare. I don’t know if to compare it to a Netbook or normal laptop. Light web surfing and Microsoft Word should yield a battery life of 4 to 5 hours. If you compare this to a netbook or CULV notebook, it falls hours short. Granted, the x100e is more powerful than some Netbooks and CULV’s, it still should have better battery life.


Performance and Heat: This part is a bit a mixed bag. When doing simple tasks that don’t chew up the CPU or GPU heat is fine and everything runs fluently. The chassis stays cool and fan noise is quite, but not silent. If you want to watch High Definition video or a demanding program while in Power Saver mode, good luck. It is either high performance and high heat, or low performance and low heat. When in High Performance mode and watching High Definition video, the CPU gets up to 80C. The chassis get rather warm and the fan starts to be become easily noticeable. IMO, the heat is unacceptable for how weak the performance is. Maybe an Intel would have solved this problem? Edit: HWMonitor was lying to me. The temps were actually ~20C cooler than what I had originally thought. That said, idle should be about 40C and youtube video are ~60C. This is very acceptable although more power would still be welcomed.


Conclusion: I think this makes a great, low cost secondary laptop for those who are seeking an inexpensive, tough, slightly powerful and decent battery life Netbook. The heat is rather unwelcomed when the system is under stress and system performance is lacking compared to a x201 or t410. Overall I have been surprised by the system. I know this and the Edge don’t get much love from this forum, but I think that at least the x100e shouldn’t get such a bad rep. Granted, I wouldn’t use it as a primary machine, but for $500 it’s not a bad deal.

Pictures

 

What are the specifications on your model? Dual-core or single-core?

 

^^^The idiot who wrote it forgot the specs. Thanks.^^^

 

Nice review and thanks for posting the feedback. I had a chance to use the X100e and echo your sentiment of "wish it had an Intel ULV", but the build is great and it certainly has the best keyboard of any netbook out there.

 

I'm wondering about getting one of these. I like the price and can live with the specs. My only concern is if I should wait for the next cpu upgrade before I buy.

 

I think X100e would be lot better with a Intel CULV in it, rather than the AMD CPUs.

 

It depends on your needs and expectations. If you are just using it for simple tasks like word and internet, then the AMD L635 is just fine.

Agreed, 100%. I don't know what the cost difference would be, but I would happily pay up to $100 more just for a similar performing Intel chip.

 

I just played around with a X100e that my friend got, the construction and fit and finish is pretty good, which surprised me.

But the single core AMD cpu is real pain in the rear, and the X100e heats up like the X61 that i had.... which is what drove me to sell the X61, which was in A1 condition and kept the X60 which is really beaten up.

A good machine ruined by a bad CPU choice.

 

Word, internet (many taps open) and occasionally photoshop, and to play 1080 movies in the bedroom. I haven't seen any intelbased 11" laptops in the pricerange that can do the same as this one. I guess that the Turion x2 and hardware accelerated 264 is fine for that.

 

Isn't the problem that Intel does not have a competing chip in this price/performance range? The atoms are underpowered and the bigger cpus are too expensive.

 

Hence why Intel was pushing laptop manufacturer to dump AMD as their alternative CPU supplier.... maybe Intel should contract out their chip manufacturing to external fabs, so that they can better manage the pricing on their CPU for cheap mobile products.

 

Any chance of this getting a Intel CPU?

For college this year I don't want to lug around my Asus G50VT-x1, and I don't want to put down $1500+ on a new laptop till 22nm Intel processors come out. I like the X100e, but I want the Intel iX-XXXum processor on it if I am going to pay that much. I really like the style however, I hope all thinkpads eventually adopt this style.

 

Let me clarify by saying that the AMD isn't terrible as long as you don't want to game, do heavy Photoshop, and do heavy video editing. The only huge loss in my eyes is battery life. You could gains hours of battery life with a CPU and GPU that are just as powerful. Ditto on the style of it. It still looks professional but yet stands out a little more than other Thinkpads without being flashy.(Expect the Red one) I don't know what purist think of it though(Style wise).....

 

I want to edit photos that I took with my SLR, and going on the web, plus Office 2010. Would this suffice?

 

I wish Lenovo could have kept the full size 7-row keyboard layout in the X100e, although I suppose that probably would've resulted in a much smaller touchpad.

If I were to get a netbook, this machine would definitely be high on my list. Ultimately, though, for me, I feel like power should be secondary to battery life in such a machine: I would likely instead opt for an Atom device with a much better battery life. If the battery life of this machine could be extended to something like 7-8 hours, then it would be a much, much more attractive machine to me.

Thank you for the review, AboutThreeFitty!

 

Maybe I don't know better, but 5 hours for 6 cells sounds nice to me.

 

I'm using Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 for basic editing and currently using Microsoft Office 2007 and both work flawless. Web browsing is just fine and 1080p videos on Youtube run fine. I'm not sure how well higher end programs like CS4 or Sony Vegas would run.

You're welcome.

 

I fully disagree with this statement. Talking Intel CULVs,which are mainly paired with Intel IGPs, AMD CPUs paired with ATI IGPs will outdo Intel in gaming any day.

Also,i dont think anyone buying a 11 inch laptop is planning on doing any video editing or high demanding apps as such, or they just made a poor product choice.

I love my X100e, beats out an Intel netbook anyway. The AMD chips make a good price to performance point, something Intel cannot do, which is why the x20x and x300s are so expensive.

I cant complain about the battery life on this thing at all. The only downside,like others have said,is the heat. Running on battery at half speed, it definitely dosent generate as much heat as running on AC power doing something intensive, thats for sure.

The only other downside, I wish it had HDMI out instead of VGA, that was the dumbest decision they made (I stand by their decision to use AMD over Intel any day for this particular product), other than that,its not too bad.

I wouldnt mind seeing a 9-cell battery made for this.

Btw, the multitouch trackpadis nice as well,this is my first laptop with one in it.

 

X100e isn't that cheap anyway... AMD dual core is definitely a must for X100e, and if it did not run this hot under full load, then it would be an awesome CPU for that price.

 

Question... does your x100e come with Office 2010 Starter?

 

Gaming on this netbook is possible.

YouTube - Street Fighter 4 - Lenovo Thinkpad x100e.

 

Yes it did.

 

Nice write up there. I was thinking about this netbook for a while. Just wondering does it have that rubber shell like other thinkpads?

 

For a full-size laptop such as the T410 or T510, that would be very good. For the segment that the X100e is competing in, though, that's at best average.

 

Rubber shell? I don't quite understand what you are talking about......

 

He's probably referring to the soft, peach-skin finish.

 

Gotcha. No it doesn't. Compared to my T61 it is smooth hard plastic.

 

we should petition Lenovo to put the intel CULV into the X100e...

 

Yup that what i meant, just didnt know how to describe it TBH, thank you

Thanks for the reply

 

Yeah my current laptop is a Asus G50vt-x1 with 6 cells I will be lucky if I get 2 hours and 10 minutes.

Right now I am thinking about getting a X200 from the Lenovo outlet, and having it shipped to a family member and then having it shipped to Canada, last time I did this I paid $900us for my Asus G50vt-x1 (at the time the Canadian dollar was weaker it was 1.25 for every American, now it is 1.04), and I also paid nearly $250 Canadian for shipping and brokerage and tax, this time I will have my family member take the laptop apart take the Ram out and take the hard drive and ship it separately cause then it is Computer parts not a complete computer, might not end up paying brokerage fees and not having it wait at customs for 4 weeks like last time. Like I said earlier I do not want to pay to much as I am going to wait for the ivy bridge comes out then I am going to pay $1500 plus, for now I want to keep it under $850 as much as possible. I do not want to buy this laptop and end up having to pay brokerage fees, as these increase the price quite a bit. Last time even with the brokerage fees my G50vt-x1 was cheaper then the ones sold in Canada by almost $500, but they had better screens longer warranties (which would have been put to good use on account of the terrible Seagate that failed). I will not have to go through all this trouble if Lenovo makes a CULV x100e.

 

Or if AMD could make a chip that didn't run so hot.

 

Hopefully can come to the table with better mobile CPU, since they are really lagging behind Intel on that front, due to the smaller R&D budget, lack of marketing power as compared to Intel and smaller revenue from the laptop CPU market.

But it is probably easier for Lenovo to put in the intel CULV then to wait for AMD to invent something better at a unknown timeline.

X100e is a great product concept, but the execution in terms of the AMD CPU is slightly flawed. Larger Thinkpad can deal with the heat issue better than a X100e, yet Thinkpad Edge model is available with CULV...

Hopefully there is a mid life update on this product, which brings the CULV into the product mix. I mean Lenovo can't let Acer have all the fun in the lower price segment of netbook/ultraportable market.

Many people in Australia, especially in Uni where students cringe at the thought of forking out anything more than 600 dollars for a portable laptop/netbook, but yet at the same time complaining about the lack of GPU and CPU power of the ATOM cpu based laptops (many of these students use it as docked laptop at home to watch FHD movies)...

 

If you use the CULV you're getting too close to the X201 price wise, which is why I'm guessing they went with AMD.

 

in America that maybe true, but in Australia there is still some price differences between the two.

 

Well, I'm in America. That's what I know.

 

The fully loaded x100e CULV model would probably cost as much as the base x201.

 

I don't know if anyone has seen, but the latest Acer netbooks ($400 - ish) are all AMD powered. Because AMD has a pretty competitive product to atom, but also comes with much better graphics built into the chipset. Acer decided to sacrifice the 8 hour battery life of atom for 4-5 hours from the AMD solution, but decidedly better CPU horsepower and much better graphics.

 

That runs hotter too.

 

Acer makes cheap machine, the only thing they care about is cost, nothing else, and this is how they are rising so quickly in the tier one computer market. One thing that i hated about the X61 was the heat from the T7xxx CPU, and the X100e with AMD CPU runs as hot as these X61, which is not great.

If you ever used AMD laptop CPU have always ran hot as compared to their Intel counterpart (except the P4 marketed by Intel, which was a real flop that Intel quickly rectified with the Pentium M model).