Thoughts on the X200s as a new ultraportable option?

I am in the market for a new ultraportable to supplement my T500 and my HP 8440W. The T500 stays on a dock in my office and the HP stays at home; however, I take a laptop with me to all of my lectures so that I can display powerpoints and youtube clips to my students. It has gotten too cumbersome to lug the T500, so I am looking for something that is easy to transport. That has brought to the X200(s/t) and X201i options (and to the HP 2540p/2730p).

On paper the 200s has such an astonishingly small footprint, I am really interested in it. However, I know that it is one of the slower options processor wise (that I am looking at) and I have heard that some have had trouble getting SSDs to function to their full potential in the 200s.

I have read a lot of positive reviews on the 200s but most all of them are dated and I wondered in today's market-do you see the X200s as a good option for an ultraportable that would be taken to several different locations on a daily basis, travel to conferences, and be used for some statistical analyses when both of the other two computers are also in use.?

 

X200/X200s series are lighter/smaller than a HP 2540P. See HP 2540p vs Lenovo X201s

X201 series would be perfect for your portable requirements. Could even do a NVidia Optimus DIY ViDock if need accelerated graphics. The setup could replace your T500 and 8440W. Consider waiting for the Sandy Bridge refresh of the X201 which will have a significantly faster IGP, USB 3.0 and pci-e 3.0 expresscard slot.

Smaller/thinner than a X201 are a 12" Dell E4200 or 11.6" Macbook Air 11.6". Both of which use a SSD card rather than a 2.5" HDD.

 

The x200s and x201s can be optioned with 1440x900 screen. Yes they can be optioned with the low voltage or ultra low voltage processors, so you can achieve extra long battery time. If you are worried about CPU capability you can always get the x200 or 201, but they are not as slow some think they are.

If you are in USA you can try outlet.lenovo.com to see whether there is any on sale.

 

Those are some good options. My T500 is provided by the University and is mine for another 4 years. The 8440W I really like for home. The i7 works well and I would want to keep it.

The main reason for the interest in the 200(s/t) is that I am thinking I can catch a good deal and not break the bank; although, Sand Bridge will undoubtedly bring significant improvements...and hopefully, a drop in the price of other legacy models.

Ideally, I'd be spend $850 or so...realistically, I'd keep everything under 1K.

 

I've never ever had processor speed issues with my X200, no matter what. I use it as my road warrior/travel laptop and it serves me well in that role. It's been all over the world with me and has been great. I've had no issues getting my SSD to work on it either. To me, the combination of a SSD in the X200 as a road warrior machine is about perfect.

 

I commute to school with a x200s everyday and it's a great laptop. You don't need to baby it like you may have to do with plastic ultra portables (Acer, Asus, Dell, HP). I have mine in a thin neoprene case in my bookbag and that's it. I regularly toss my entire bookbag into the passenger seat of my car or lean up against a wall with my weight against the x200s. It hasn't had any problems dealing with pretty rough usage.

9 Cell battery life is also a big perk, never need to bring the power adapter. As for power, plays Hulu 480p and Youtube 720p flawlessly. Chugs on 1080p, new flash beta helps a little bit, makes it almost smooth.

Haven't had any problems using an SSD in mine either, boot time was ~30 seconds after fresh install (has degenerated a bit since then)

 

Absolutely!

 

The marginal value of Sandy Bridge is very small if any for most uses. If you're just going on the Internet, typing up the occasional office document or listening to music, those things don't push the CPU enough to where you'd notice a difference. Any dual core laptop would suffice for those, even some Pentium Ms. Hard drive speed is much more likely to produce a noticeable difference in performance.

The other issue for the X202 or whatever it's called is the fact the tea leaves are pointing to it going 16:9 LCD. You'll gain some resolution on the sides, but lose some vertical resolution. Vertical resolution is more useful.

Personally I'd pick up a X200 or X200s unless you've got a need to run CPU intensive apps. For typical notebooks usage those will offer plenty of performance. I'd actually lean toward the X200s with the LV or ULV CPUs, which run cooler. That's unless you've got to have a trackpad, in which case you can get it with a X201.

 

This is some great feedback. What processor specifically should I be looking for in the 200s? It gets a little confusing with some of the different options.

In other words, which ones would provide the best balance of speed and battery life?

 

I have the SL9600 in my X200t. It runs at 18w. It's a pretty cool performer. I used to run my X200 in low power mode to keep a lid on the fan noise, but I run the SL9600 in adaptive mode to get better performance out of my SSD. It runs pretty quiet in adaptive mode. The X200s is also offered with the ultra low voltage SU9400, which runs at 1.4GHz. If you're just doing normal stuff either would probably do. I've not seen the X200s myself. erik, one of the other lenovo mods had a X301, which also has the SU9400. He said it seemed about the same for typical usage. I guess it would depend on your needs. Battery life will probably be a bit better on the ULV CPUs, but it won't be twice as much. Typically, the CPU uses about 10% of the power on a laptop while the screen uses about a third.