Lenovo X300 vs. Macbook Air

This is not going to be a review, bur rather a brief comparison between the Lenovo X300 and the Macbook Air. I bought the Air 1 hour after Jobs announcement and was pretty happy with it. I use it as my third computer (desktop, Macbook Pro beeing my long hours workhorses) and as a ultra light companion, the Air has pretty everything you need. Well, allmost. There were still some things missing, and when the X300 was available, I was ready to order again. The number of USBs was less my problem. During my months with the Air I noticed that I hardly needed more then one at a time. Instead, I needed UMTS in the case ( I use a USB stick but you can't stick it in directly if you have your Air on the table and is rather awkward to have a stick plus a cable sticking out of something that slick). Battery time was also rather bad with the Air. I usually get 2-3 hours which simply means I have to carry the power adaptor with me. The higher resolution of the Lenovo was also intriguing for me. I am a resolution freak. I can allways make things look bigger on the screen, but I can't make things look finer if I don't have the resolution for that. So give me more resolution and I'll buy it! Also, with LED backlight this Lenovo promised to be the first one with really bright display. I like to sit in may garden or in a beach club with my laptop. There were no Lenovo prior to that to deliver the brightness needed for that.
So I ordered the X300 with 3 cell, DVD, Slot Battery and UMTS.

Comparison :

Looks: No competition here. The X300 looks like a Thinkpad. You don't even notice how thin it is. The Air on the other side is a beauty. It screams design. 8 Months after presentation, there are still people stopping me daily to have a look at it. X300? Noone asks. The lid ist not that bad, but I don't like the hinges coming out of it. The case texture is not bad, but you leave marks. Not so on the aluminium of the Air.

Performance: I am somehow dissapointed that the SSD doesn't deliver much more than a normal HD. Boot times with Vista are OK, but not stellar. Copy jobs are so so. Wake up from standby is fast. From hybernate NOT. I have the 80GB HD in the Air, and there is no much difference. At least not feeled. I use the Air with OS-X, and the X300 with Vista, so I have no benchmarks for that, but I've been using both OS at the same time for years(my desktop is Vista, my first Laptop is the Macbook Pro), so I have a feeling for that.

Noise: Both are quiet (again, not much gain from the SSD) until the fans come on, after that, it's not that agreable to work. The Lenovo is louder but not by much.

Battery Time: showtime for Lenovo! I get 5-6 hours with both batteries. It means for me one day at work with no power! Like I said before, one weak point of the Air.

Wireless: UMTS big plus on the Lenovo, however they decided to go with the old Sierra chip which ist HDSPA but not HSUPA (which brings 7,2MBS Down and higher UPs also). It's the same chip I have in my 3 years old Fujitsu Q2010. For one fully new designed laptop, to include an 4 years old chip is something I can't understand!

Screen: you would think from previous tests, at least a draw. Unfortunately, the Lenovo screen is at least 1 class BELOW the Air. Yes, it has more resolution, yes it has LED. But it is less bright, the angles are bad and the colours are dull. Even for a business screen bad, because black ist not that deep. When you read or write something, big difference. And when you watch movies, the Air is completely in another class! That was my biggest dissapointement, and something I didn't read in any review. People calling this screen very good, haven't seen or worked with the MBA. I showed the laptop to someone in love with lenovos but owning a Sony S5 and he had big problems adjusting the screen to his liking. He ended asking my why a laptop that new has a screen way below his 3 years old Sony. Couldn't give him a good reason...

Keyboard: Lenovo better, but not by a large margin. The Air has a very good one too.

Conclusion: I decided for me that I will sell my X300. It has some advantages, UMTS is a big plus, but I don't like the screen, the lid, the looks. It's by no means a bad laptop, but owning a Macbook Air for some time makes you pretty demanding. I'll take a look on the new Sony Z, seems to me like a winner. I have owned several Sony SZs and they were near perfect. And Vista vs. OS-X is no discussion for me. I have both and can switch to my liking.

 

The 64GB SSD in the Air is not so fast. The 128GB SSD is a lot better.

And booting vista is not something that SSDs are much faster than HDDs at. It's launching applications where SSDs shine.

I agree. The Z including 6 cell battery and DVD drive weighs just a little more than X300 or Air, but the Z has way more features and performance.

 

The Air's glossy screen isn't that great you know.

 

In my opinion it's one of the best notebook screens ever. Notebookcheck and Notebookjournal confirm it has industry leading contrast and brightness.

 

It would be if the resolution wasn't so low.

 

There are different markers of quality . But, ya I would never consider the mac book air to be all that useful EXCEPT for that 3rd computer. However, a desktop and a single laptop makes the most sense to me <.<.

Vista is slow in general, but imagine how slow it would be without an ssd . The amazing feat of ssd's is in xp, heh. But it definitely helps with application loading as someone mentioned earlier.

 

@virtuoso88: resolution on the Air is besides X300 and Sony Z series the industry wide standard. And for that resolution standard, the quality is outstanding.
@jaredy: i think the problem is rather the SSD itself. So far, the only SSD I would trust is the Intel. Sad Intel has to step in to show all others what's possible.

 

the intel SSD in my Aspire ONE is slow as hell. i know it says 7 mb/second but its more lke 200K a second under heavy load and lots of small files/writes (torrents, database stuff etc)

so im definitely considering the air with the 128g ssd as i need something that can handle real work.

 

The best thing about the X300/X301 is that is comes with EVERYTHING you need.
3 USB2.0 ports, VGA and DisplayPort(X301), microphone input, line in, speaker... and even a DVD-RW is you want it!
contrary to the macbook air, 1 USB, speaker out, mini-DVI (adaptor required), no microphone in, no cd reader....etc

As for the screen, did you calibrate the screen? All screens suck without calibration. However, in terms of colour reproduction, the X300 should be better because of the anti-glare screen.

 

Seems coders/bloggers make the use of these laptops and not graphics professional so I'd value resolution over brightness/contrast levels although I hear the X301 is better than the X300 in those areas.

As far as Vista being slow, just install linux!

If the new air with 128GB SSD came with a higher res screen I'd be all over that.

 

I was doing a similar comparison before purchase, and I have to warn you about the Sony Z battery problem in which the battery drains rapidly while the power is off. The forums are rife with info, so I won't bother to go into detail.

Thanks for the info on the X300 screen. Lenovo's poor tech support is what caused me to decide not to go with them in the end.

 

How do you calibrate the screen of a laptop properly? I played with the color settings on my X300 but I was unable to come up with an improvement over the factory settings which are horrid.

 

You are right there is a problem but maybe you see it a bit too strong.

Every laptop battery will loose power over time. It just happens to be so that most Sony Vaio's loose more than normal. I believe it's about 8% over night.

A simple way to avoid it is to physically remove the battery. Which is a good thing to do for any laptop brand because it will prolongue battery life span.

 

I wouldn't describe removing the battery as a good thing to do for every user. It's simply an option to consider depending on whether you value your battery life span over instant mobility and loss of data.

I never remove the battery. I view the battery in my notebook as a consumable just as I do the batteries in my flashlights and in my car. Eventually it will need to be replaced, but in the meantime I can stand up and walk from my den into another room by just pulling the plug from the back of the notebook. And I never have to be concerned about the power flickering or going out completely while I'm in the middle of something.

 

also, doesn't the time reset if you leave the battery out for long enough? (the mobo has a small battery, but its hard to replace)

 

I never had that problem.

 

try doing this on a older laptop, 1-2years... by that time, the battery inside the pc has run out(it looks like a watch battery, the flat silver one )
Since the t400 I ordered is taking so long, I've been forced to take notes on my 5-6years old Acer Ferrari 3400, the problem is, the battery life on that is about 1:35h since the battery wore out so much. So I ussualy bring it down all the way to 0%, and even another 5-10 mins past that until it shuts down. When I boot it back up on AC, the time/date is ALWAYS reset, and its set to 2003

 

+rep to the 'rabbit. Let's not forget what this post was about... While everyone may have their personal favorite/ opinion, it is a real service to the community to do an item-by-item comparison of pros and cons. By giving technically competent detail, the post allows you to form your own opinions, and make more informed purchasing decisions

 

I agree, it's a great screen

 

watchrabbit,

Thanks for your comparison! Could you tell us if your screen on the x300 is a Samsung or a TMD?

Thanks!

Andrei

 

If you are rich (which you probably are), get yourself a colourvision spyder or blue eye 2. If not then you can use software like monitor calibration wizard or something else. (there are many of these)

 

i can tell you one thing that has everything:
the no-compromise ultraportable

 

OK, i downloaded PC Wizzard. It says : Monitor: LTD133EQ1B. So I guess I have the Toshiba Matsu****a which all say are very good. I don't say the are bad, I just say they have bad viewing angles. And are somehow flat. A liitle bleeding also.