Please help - best set up for HD video editing on X220?

Hi everyone,
I need a laptop that is as light as possible but will be able to do HD video editing. I am travelling for long periods of time (3 months) and will be carrying the laptop along with the rest of my stuff in a backpack and I'm a small female. I plan on shooting movies of my travels.

I was originally looking at the new ultrabooks like the Asus Zenbook but people kept recommending the X220.

I've been to the Lenovo website but I'm confused which set up to get. I know the basic consumer concerns when buying a laptop, like ram and hardrive space, and the latest i core processors but I'm basically a noob beyond that.

Can anyone recommend what specs to get based on the options on the Lenovo site?

Also can someone please explain :
What is an IPS screen and do I need it.
What is mSATA vs SSD.
Is it worth paying an extra $80 to get 6GB of ram instead of 4GB or is it easy to buy ram and install it myself?
Is USB 3.0 standard?

Ok, thanks for taking the time to read this. I appreciate any help, especially since they have some good looking Black Friday deals on right now.

 

It's much easier to buy RAM and DIY and USB 3.0 is standard if you get the i7. General consensus is that the cheapest i7 upgrade isn't usually worth it.

Don't quote me on this but from what I've heard it's supposed to offer better color and viewing angles.

 

IPS is a type of LCD with the others being TN and PVA. Each has their pros and cons. Typically, IPS offers the best viewing angles and good contrast. Viewing angles are useful for people working with color. Most notebooks have TN LCDs where the colors invert the more you go off axis. Do you need it? I don't know. The IPS upgrade on the X220 is so cheap, it's a no brainer. Even if you don't need the color fidelity, an IPS LCD will produce a much better image for everything you do.

Most SSDs hard drive are made like regular hard drive and use the same connectors, but a mSATA plugs into a miniPCI slot on the motherboard. If you click on the X220 review link in my signature, there is picture of my mSATA drive. On the X220 it essentially gives two hard drives on a 12" notebook. You have the mSATA drive for speed and a conventional platter based drive for storage. This is quite nice, but if you do get the mSATA drive, you can't have WWAN as they share the same slot.

I would say get the 4GB and see how it goes. You can always upgrade later if need be. It's very easy. There's just two slots to remove on the bottom of the X220 to get access to the memory slots.

USB 3.0 is not standard on the X220. You'd need to get one with the i7 CPU to get USB 3.0. It's pretty much blows, but there's not a lot that can be done about it. As noted you can get a ExpressCard USB 3.0 card. It's probably less than $20 on eBay.

 

Video editing will require as much memory as you can get. I ordered mine with 4GB but will add additional 4GB to make it a total of 8GB.

 

Thanks so much for all the replies!

Is the USB 3.0 ExpressCard something I would have to install in the laptop or is it something that plugs into a port on the laptop. If it's something I have to install, does anyone have a link for one that will fit inside?

Does anyone know of a video tutorial showing how to add more RAM? I'm on a budget so I'd like to try adding the ram myself if it's pretty foolproof.

Can anyone advise, if I get USB 3.0, can I edit with files stored on a portable hard drive and work off the portable hardrive or do I need to transfer them to the hardrive on my laptop.

Also, is getting a quad core an option?

Thanks!

 

Ram upgrade video: Lenovo Thinkpad X220 - How to upgrade RAM and the hard drive - YouTube

The USB 3.0 Express Card is literally a card that you slide into a slot on the side of the laptop. It's much easier than the ram. The only additional thing that you need to do is install the driver software.

This is just one of the USB 3.0 Express Cards: 34/54MM Express to USB 3.0 Card for Notebook - Free Shipping - DealExtreme

You can edit files stored on portable hard drive.

The x220 does not have a quad-core option. It's hard to accommodate cooling in the smaller laptop for a quad core.

 

Since you'll need as much "horsepower" as you can get with video editing, get the i7 option with USB3.0. It's still going to be slower than a desktop but for mobile it's as quick as it gets for its size/weight.

Changing ram only takes 10 mins if you do it very slowly. Just pop-off 2 screws I think?

 

the Dell U2412 is a great E-IPS screen if a full fledged IPS screen is too expensive or you don't need that kind of color accuracy. It's head and shoulders above any TN panel, is lightweight and thin due to an LED backlight, and has great viewing angles and great colors when calibrated. You can find them for less than 300.. especially since it's Black Friday. Shameless plug I know, but check it out it's a lot of monitor for the money!

 

A 24" monitor is not a good option for someone who plans to live out of her backpack 3 months at a time.

 

Thanks for pointing that out. It was clearly and obviously meant as a external solution suggestion for another time, since she doesn't have much experience or firsthand knowledge with IPS screens. Hence the "shameless plug I know" portion...

And to state something else obvious no one else seems to have... a screen with a vertical res of 768 and Intel HD 3000 graphics will make HD video editing and encoding... interestingly tedious. It will do it, but it's the wrong tool for that job. There are ultra portables with higher resolutions and switchable graphics options that will make it easier if HD editing is truly what you'll be concentrating on during those months of travel use. You should weigh the slight improvements of dimension and weight reduction against their curtailed performance and find something more balanced and task-specific, IMO. Doesn't have to be a ThinkPad.

 

Here's a cheap USB 3.0 expresscard.

USB 2.0 + USB 3.0 Express Card Adapter for Laptop - Free Shipping - DealExtreme

 

Thanks again for all the advice. I really appreciate it

I'm definitely open to other laptop suggestions. It just seemed that when I posted on the main forum for recommendations for ultraportables, I was pointed several times to the Lenovo X220.

I currently have a gaming laptop that does a pretty decent job of editing but it's a beast, Asus G50-VT. It weighs over 8 pounds with the battery and charger. I'm looking for something that's super light for when I travel. When I'm at home, I'll probably use my gaming laptop to edit with.

 

My 2 cents: the IPS screen on the x220, while having excellent gamma tracking, viewing angles and backlight evenness, has a barely acceptable color gamut for critical color work.

the i7 x220 is about half as powerful as a i7 920, overclocked to 3.8ghz. That's quite an accomplishment for a laptop of this size.

I edit video weekly on this machine, with an external monitor, since 1366x768 is neigh impossible to edit on

get 8gb of ram, and throw in like a 300gb SSD, and get the ips screen.

 

Show me a laptop that's better for the same price?

 

You'll probably want dual-channel, faster RAM to aid that integrated chipset. Depends how much your editing software uses the GPU, if it supports the HD3000 at all.

 

The X220 is in my opinion the best ultra portable on the market hands down. And if you wanted only an ultra portable to do basic productivity work and general tasks with I would go with it. But portable video editing, in a slim form factor, is just one of those difficult combo's to find - like an ultra portable gaming machine or something similar.

I'm not familiar with ultra slims with discrete graphics options because I usually don't look for or research discreet graphics options since I have no use for it - but I can say from personal experience that the Vaio S is a great ultraportable that doesn't hurt your wallet as bad as the Vaio Z and it can be configured with an i5 2430 or i7 2640, a 13.3" 1600x900 display, and AMD/ATI Radeon 6630M/1GB gpu. It's pricey, but most machines that fill out two often opposing tasks (portability and power) often are. My dad just picked one up for about 1200 as configured, with a few extra options.

I never had an Asus Laptop but was/am a big fan of EeePC's; none the less if you're comfortable with Asus, the the Asus ZenBook UX31E also has a higher res screen in 13.3" size, a decent battery life, but no discrete graphics. It also comes standard with an SSD and USB 3.0.

I suggest you prioritize Screen Size/Resolution, Battery Life, and discrete graphics, while also paying attention to weight. As long as you stick to a 14 inch screen or smaller, dimensions should be unimportant - most of those laptops will fit into a backpack or something of the sort easily - weight is where it hurts, especially when you're walking! Try to keep under 5 lbs/2.4 kg. Go through the various manufacturers and brands, NBR has a nice list, and you'll find there are numerous alternatives; Asus, Acer, MSI, Sony, Samsung, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Panasonic, Dell/HP - although their business class offerings will be similar to Lenovo.

Check it out!

 

I would argue it's the best notebook being sold right now when you consider all the factors. It's light and portable. It's durable. It's got a great screen and keyboard. It can have two hard drives with one being a speedy SSD for the boot drive. Probably the one downside is the touchpad. If you're a stick person it's a no brainer, but if you don't like the stick, it could be problematic.

Some might wish for a bit more resolution, but I would argue the difference between HD and HD+ is so small, it's hardly worth mentioning. Most of the extra space is on the sides, which has less value. You'd have to go up to SXGA or SXGA+ before I'd be more interested. You won't see it on a sun 15" notebook outside of the Z, which costs 3x as much.

 

As an X220T owner, I REALLY wish they went with a 16:10 screen. Even for video editing, it would be helpful to have controls visible with the video.

 

Agree but I think this would call for a 13in machine. The X220 or X220T is perfect besides the screen size which is difficult to control since portability is of concern. Edited**-The touchpad is horrible but anyone who owns a thinkpad probably never uses the touchpad anyways.

 

Do you happen to have a link to that list? Thanks!

Is the concern over screen resolution just that a higher resolution will show me more windows and editing options? Because I don't really care too much about color. The laptop is for field use. I can always attach it to an external monitor if/when I need to color correct and things like that.

I've lived with a very heavy laptop for 3 years so I'm probably biased but for me, one of the biggest usability issues I have is portability, especially if I'm going to be carrying it for 3 months.

Thanks again!

 

This is critical though. It does not seem like the OP is a regular Thinkpad user... so she will have to learn the trackpoint or deal with a crappy touchpad.

 

Cant you disable left and right click on touch pad and use it as one big pad and use track point buttons for clicking?

 

You're right. I've never used a Thinkpad before. Is the touchpad really that different than a regular laptop? Can I move the mouse around by sliding my finger on the pad or do I have to use the little red nobby thing?

 

The most obvious concerns are that the touchpad is small and it's a clickpad (which takes a few days to get used to).

I don't use it, so I don't really know more about it. I can only imagine that it will annoy users coming from a Mac though... since Macs dedicate quite a bit more real estate to their trackpad.

 

oh ok. I'm a pc user. What do you mean by "clickpad". My touchpad on my current laptop has a large pad where I can tap to left click. If I want to right click there's a button on the bottom of the touchpad for left and right clicks. The thinkpad looks similar except the buttons are on the top of the pad. Can I still tap anywhere on the pad to left click?

 

Those buttons on the top are for the TrackPoint stick, the touchpad is indeed a "click pad" but not entirely. The buttons are still at the bottom, they're just not marked or physically separate from the pad (like the click pad, just not the ENTIRE surface area of the pad is clickable". So in short no you can't click anywhere, but you can tap to left click anywhere, that's a commonly available feature though, nothing unusual.

 

The clickpad works exactly like any other touchpad... but to use the buttons, you actually press down on the bottom left or right of the touchpad and it will click, as if it were a real button. They are basically hidden buttons, that function exactly like a normal touchpad left and right click.

Tapping for left click still works. Alternatively, you can use the buttons on top of the touchpad, but those are intended for use with the stick.

 

As a new user to the Thinkpad models its easy to grow custom to using the "red Nobby thing" with relative ease. I find it very easy to pick up quickly and use. I never use the touchpad when using my system.

 

I can't argue with that, but I would say everyone is different nor do all take to it right away.

 

Well I'm leaning even more to the Lenovo now. I went into a store yesterday and handled the Asus Zenbook. OMG, that thing has the worst keyboard I've ever felt on a laptop. Typing felt absolutely horrible on it. I don't know why they would spend all that time and money to make such a nice looking laptop and then fail so badly on the keyboard.

 

Lenovo Thinkpads always get praised for having great keyboards. In fact, the one on the X220 has been praised the best of the best.

HOWEVER, I personally liked the Thinkpad X120e Keyboard better (Also used on the X1). But I'm clearly in the minority.

 

Many people, who dont own ThinkPads themselves but have had a chance to use them say that the keyboard is really good

 

Would this one need to use a power cable/ spare USB socket or would the expresscard slot provide enough power

 

Keyboard preference is a bit of a personal thing. It also depends greatly which manufacturer you get in the keyboard lottery. Some prefer one over the other.

From experience,
T400 NMB/Chicony keyboard > X100e (ALPS?) keyboard > T400 ALPS keyboard.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Expresscard-E...3INC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322653866&sr=8-1

Regarding the above AKE card, does anybody know if the X220 expresscard slot provides enough power or will I need to use an extra power cable into a usb slot? Thanks

 

I've read a lot of quotes from people saying that this is the only ultrabook that uses a full powered CPU and that the rest of them use about half the power. Can someone please tell me where in the specs I could find this number? I'd like to be able to compare this when I'm looking at other ultrabooks?

Also, does anyone know how this laptop fares to a Macbook Air for power? I was looking at the 11" Macbook air recently. I've never used a Mac before but I thought I should be thorough in my considerations.

Thanks!

 

This website shows the performance of CPUs: PassMark - CPU Benchmarks - List of Benchmarked CPUs

Macbook Air i5 CPU: Intel Core i5-2467M @ 1.60GHz 2308
X220 i5 CPU: Intel Core i5-2520M @ 2.50GHz 3600

The x220 has a few i5 offerings, but the difference is less than 5% among them.

You can immediately see that the Macbook Air's CPU is clocked at 1.6Ghz (visible on the apple site), while the X220 is clocked at 2.5Ghz. This is often enough to go off of when comparing similar CPUs (i5 vs i5). The site above gives actual performance difference if you need that level of detail.

I don't know if Lenovo markets the X220 at an ultrabook, but I would hardly consider it an ultrabook. The only Thinkpad that I would consider an ultrabook is the X1. Which is worth considering, btw. It's got a bigger screen, but is much thinner. It also lacks an IPS screen.

 

Sorry for the late reply. Thanks to everyone for you help!