ThinkPad X220 (i/T) Owners Thread

I'd like to know what I'll need 60Hz for. Just looked and mine is set to 50Hz with or without PSU. The switching only starts when I set it to 60Hz in battery mode. I can see how this is annoying though.

Best Regards,
Gundy

 

I don't get it ... I have an i7, I run prime for 3 hours, never broke 50C and the fan was near inaudible still ...

 

Were you monitoring CPU clocks while running Prime, and is the 50C for core temps?

(I don't have the fan noise problem either, but I do see temps in the 70s when running at 100% load - with the CPU showing 3.0+ Ghz). I've not run OCCT to try to induce throttling, just using the Real Temp 2.67 test, and monitoring during gaming).

 

Wow, do you live in the Arctic? Was it set to turbo & max performance?

Half hour of wprime my i3 machine reached 68C (20 degree ambient) and i5 machine 82 (23 degree ambient), set to turbo.

 

Someone at lenovo likes muscle cars...

 

Yeah, I had the same image in mind when I wrote the post. Honestly, this i7 x220 is about half as fast as my 3.8ghz overclocked i7 920, which, when I think about that comparison more closely, is quite amazing.

 

Anyone ever try playing the game Victoria 2 on this laptop? That's pretty much the only game I'd play for this ultraportable while I'm out and about, and the game is pretty CPU intensive, which makes me wonder about the performance of the game at 1366x768 with an i7 processor.

 

Ok so I got my x220 from the doorbuster deal yesterday. I have installed my 128 gb c300 ssd and everything is working fine. I installed all the updates from the thinkvantage toolbox and also 1.16 bios update. Is there anything else important missing that I need to install? Also could someone recommend a decent lite desktop computer performance monitor. Thanks

 

Does anyone know what the best adhesive to use on magnesium alloys is? I'm guessing some sort of epoxy? I'm thinking of thickening the piece that broke with epoxy resin after gluing it back to give it more strength...

And if people didn't notice my post, be very careful about the corners of the X220! The bottom left corner is particularly fragile due to the expresscard slot. My X220 took a hit to the corner and snapped one of the magnesium extensions holding the top of the screen together. I wish they kept the one piece lids, but I guess this cuts production cost a bit. At the very least I'd like to see more than 3/8" or so of metal holding it up...

And also, can anyone tell where air is drawn from? I honestly think the fan is completely sealed off or something.

 

Try using some smoke (cigarette? incense?) to track the air flow?

 

Nah none of that around. I used some stickies to cover up cracks and holes around the case, and apparently the major intakes are the slits on the bottom (which are basically blocked off by heatpipes) and the crack between the battery and case...how the hell did they manage to get air flowing?

 

The keyboard could also be a potential vent.

 

Right finally got my x220t after 6 weeks wait. Interestingly it seems to be called an x220i even though being an i7 2620. There appears to be a problem between switching between rotations and applications where as the screen goes dark momentarily there are various multiple vertical coloured lines on the screen...also on startup.. not good. having spoken to some lenovo support I,m required to check it on an external monitor to see whether it appears there as well and is thus something to do with the internal workings of the mainboard or an issue with the screen on itself. Either way it has to go in for a repair. what a pain. Another question, where do I find the bios 1.16 the one on the site appears to be the 1.11 where on my machine it is the 1.12?? and any other recent drivers. And how do I calibrate the pen .. arrrgh. Love the touchscreen though

 

I'll see if I can figure it out a bit when I get mine on Monday...

 

als0 noticed another issue. on powering down and with the machine off the battery and other light on the top of the lid stays on. obviously draining the battery. I eventually managed to get them off by slipping out the battery then reinserting it, and then they stayed off. Is this normal behavior??

 

Ummm, how many milliwatts do you think those tiny led's drain?

 

No lights should be on if you shut the machine down. If this is through using standby, then yes.

 

Yes, I just tested for him too. When shut down, my machine has no lights on, except for the one next to the fingerprint reader.

On Sleep/standby, the crescent led is lit on the front, my power button glows on and off, and the fingerprint reader light is lit.

 

right well they can sort it out next week along with the stripey line fault on the monitor that they reckon is a cable issue from display to board. I had my fingers crossed for not getting any buggy issues like this... milliwatts or not it should turn off properly when turned off for $2000+ dont you think?

 

I ordered the Renice 120GB msata drive for my X220T i7 today... will be running that with the 320GB 7.2k drive as a secondary work files drive. I've been spoiled by my C300 in my VAIO SR, and it's hard going back to a physical system drive.

Would have probably used the Intel drive, but the supply of these is just a trickle as most of us here know. Whether that's by design or not seems to be a good question...

There have been questions about whether the same image of Renice drive test results seen on a few forums is salesmanship, so I'll try to post results after I install and clone the thing.

 

I plan on posting some benchmarks too depending, of course, if my X220 can detect the drive to begin with, which seems to be an issue with recent batches of X220s out of Lenovo lately.

 

Nope I pulled the keyboard out; The entire keyboard is covered with some plastic thing on the bottom that seals it off completely. Presumably for spill protection. The edges sit flush with the keyboard bezel.

Either tomorrow or Monday I'm going to attach a little piece of steel and epoxy the screen lid cover thing back together...I REALLY hope this works.

 

Should the new i7 2620 cpu on my x220t really only rate subscore 3.4 WEI when my wifes rubbish $300 dell with a 1.85 GHZ cpu have a subscore of 4.8? surely something wrong?

 

is your battery in or are you just running on AC power?

 

i,m plugged into the mains with the 6 cell in. The other readings are all 5.8+ so its surprising the 2.27 GHz. doesn't give more than 3.4 WEI

 

My X220T w/ i7 2620 has a 7.1 for it's WEI subscore... 65w adapter w/ battery in...
Maybe a newer bios needed for you? 1.16?

 

wow yes thats more like I was expecting. What are your other scores.? and your overall score? my bios is 1.12 but the lenovo tech support guy I spoke to said not to touch the bios, not that I can find where to download the 1.16 anyway... Would an updated Bios really make such a difference? this is a brand new machine

 

I would definitely update to 1.16, the link is in this thread about a week or so back...
My scores from top to bottom -
7.1
5.9
4.7
6.1
5.9

This is a stock 4298U tablet, I have an SSD and more memory on the way.

 

mine is a 4294 8 gb ram standard sata 7500 350gb.
hd, All my other readings are pretty similar to yours except the low cpu reading.I,ll wait till the tech guys have had a look at it, the banding to the monitor, the not turning off properly and occasional lack of touch function. Maybe its all down to the bios.

 

There are plenty of quirks that seem to be related in some way to power management -
Abysmal download speeds through wireless (haven't tested LAN)

Missing pointer after switching from tablet (I address this by Fn+F8... surely default is not for the pointer to disappear?)

Fan rpm and noise (resolved in some part by 1.16)

List will go on...

 

did anyone customize or fix the volume/mute biuttons?

do you know if we can use customized mouse drivers on the x220?
or if there is a macbook type of touch pad driver?

Does anyone know how to get rid of the grpahics such as the caps lock symbol when watching a movie or doing something else wihtout having to un-capslock the machine?

I left the comp on for aobut 2 weeks now, i get some slow downs when i minimize things and go into my computer and browsing around, is this normal?

 

Just got mine home now. Confirming the wireless was as ordered woohoo. Not sure about the bluetooth though - how can i check that or toggle it on?

Im taking some photos and videos of it to put up, are there any things others would like to see or cover.

Going to reboot to update the bios from 1.12 to 1.16 shortly, but seems quiet enough for me as is at the moment...

And 4.7 in the cpu scores, this is the i7 version.

*edit fn + f5, after quick search on here, thanks does have it.

 

Here's a use of it's usb3 port - HDMI Capture of an iPad2!
YouTube - ‪iPad 2 hdmi capture with a Lenovo X220 Laptop using an Intensity Shuttle‬‏

 

thanks for doing this test! Awesome! I'm now curious about the expresscard slot.

 

Just bought a X220T online..waiting for it to arrive.

Got a few questions, do all X220Ts have IPS screens?

And, am I right to say, there are only 2 types of screens, infinity glass and gorilla glass. Only the infinity glass supports multi-touch?

 

Do you mean 7.4 cpu score? 4.7 would be a serious problem.

 

is 2 GB of ram good enough? or when would u need more than 2?

 

4.7..? my i7 shows 3.4 WEI.... I guess I was right to be concerned. My wifes dell with 1.8 ghz cpu and 3gbs ram is faster then my 2 day old i7 8gbram x220t

 

My WEI for X220T i7 -

'click image'

 

And here is my i5-2520M score.

 

I don't get why your graphics would be higher than his? The graphics clock on your i5 isn't going to be higher than the i7

 

Its the ram making it higher

 

Have you added aftermarket memory? Mine is still stock 4GB, have a new 8GB kit and msata on order.

I've been on the fence about keeping mine... there seems to be quite a few bugs to work through software-wise.

I've had a VAIO SR for a couple of years that I've been very happy with, and I was debating on holding out for the new VAIO Z. The tablet part of my decision was simply because I could... I used tablets back in the Motion Computing M1200 days with custom MiCo forms.

I may still opt for the Z when it comes out and put this X220T in the bullpen. I expect the Z to have a better dock than the SR (and this Ultrabase 3).

 

Is it the power settings? I know my CPU spends all its time at 0.8V, 8x multiplier or something when it's on power save mode. Slow as crap. Turn to max performance and it's really fast though.

 

Yes I have 8GB of DDR3-1333.

 

The rams been mentioned of making it much better with the higher bandwidth rate the ones that are popular.

One thing I've just realised is I'm worried the sound and microphone isn't working. I've done an update using the lenovo experience software. Currently I see nothing in the panel for recording options except the microphone (it'd be nice if I could enable stereo mix), and speaking does not raise the sound level bar. When I record there is nothing as well.

I can't seem to play back music either.... Hrm :/

*edit* if I try to play a test tone, I get an error:
http://i.imgur.com/065UM.jpg

Edit2 - I had it resolved by downloading the optional Conexant Audio functionality update, in the Lenovo Drives and update menu. I've got a cracker of a video coming up using the x220 and hdmi capture coming up!

 

ive been told i have to pay a 15% restocking fee if i return mine, which seems to be a little unfair condsidering how many features arent working properly.



I've been on the fence about keeping mine... there seems to be quite a few bugs to work through software-wise.

 

What kind of bugs, steffee?

I'm still running 1.12 and don't mind the fan noise, it seems quiet enough so far. I couldn't find an easy link to do 1.16 so havn't tried yet.

But i've been busy trying it out - check out this video using the x220, where I used it on batterys to check if it had enough grunt to record an iPad2 and composit it with a webcam woot:
X220 laptop recording HDMI output of iPad2 on Vimeo

 

Well probably more than bugs. The computer doesn't shut down, as soon as it is off and the lid is closed all the battery lights and the sleep light comes on until you remove the battery. The display has an issue probably with the cable, where when the screen rotates it goes black, flashes up bright vertical lines like it's about to die before the new orientation shows up, also at startup. I,m also spectacularly unimpressed with the battery life, I have the 6 cell and the slice, so far I,ve only had it two days and it seems to last 3-4 hours at a time and draw very fast and all I,ve been doing is using multiple browser windows so far. So much for the all day battery, unles I am supposed to be using this with the moniter lit up so dark I need a torch. I also had the touch sensativity go a couple of times for no reason, then I put the lid down where apon it wouldnt resume from sleep. Oh and my i7 2.7 GHz gets a 3.4 WEI score, shows up on the power manager as working at 100-125% with a couple of browser windows open. Although the CPu meter I have shows something much more realistic of 6% at that same time so there realy is something major going on. Other than all that it seems to work fine I,m using it constantly at the moment to try and identify as many issues as I can before it goes off to the lenovo tech workshop tomorrow, so far its been on recharge 50% of the time. Ironically I havent really heard the fan until I put on turboboost and then it becomes audible. Thats only probably because I,m used to an old dell which sounds like a jumbo jet taking off

 

another bug just ocurred, the brightness became stuck, simple tap showed brightness at 0 whereas it was stuck at about 12. Had to reboot to make it function again. As it stands I have a 6 cell battery and a battery slice charged at 98% with no windows open, nothing running and its showing 7.41 hours of battery life at brightness 11, no turbo enabled and 3/4 power setting is that to be expected?