Why doesn't Lenovo put decent speakers in their smaller laptops??

These days one can buy a small cellphone that has better speakers in it when compared to a higher end laptop computer. I don't know about others but people who travel often buy these smaller laptops and those that travel usually use SKYPE or some other VOIP to call friends, home or make business calls. They also may want to listen to some music in their hotel rooms.

Is is really too much to ask for the manufacturers to install some decent speakers in these new laptops?? Even Apple's new Macbook Pro13" comes with crappy speakers in them and they are supposed to be a higher end laptop that comes with Itunes to where they want you to download and buy music,videos and movies. The speakers on my 15" Macbook Pro are very nice but I seriously doubt it is that difficult to get some decent speakers in the 12",13" and 14" Notebook computers out there. I checked out the sound quality on the speakers from the X200,X301 and a couple of other Lenovo laptops and found them to be quite poor.

Could they not at least allow people to configure better speakers as an option when ordering??

 

I completely agree with you. The speakers on these Lenovo laptops is not great. I think it is an area that they are trying to save money in. And I don't agree that since Thinkpads are business laptops they don't need good speakers. Those days are over. Like you said people are using skype and so many other things that require good speakers.

 

The speakers on the X300 and X301 are actually quite good. I mean they're not perfect, but you can't expect that in an ultraportable, much less any other laptop.

I don't know what you were comparing them to, but they're definitely quite a bit better than many other laptops I've had (most of them being larger in size).

 

The x200 Tablet also has decent (stereo) speakers as well. They could be louder, but other than that they are fairly nice. Although, I will readily admit the x200 and x200s speaker leaves a lot to be desired.

 

I don't think people can expect the speakers to be phenomenal and have amazing bass reproduction, but they can for one thing move the speaker to the top of all the machines so that the sound isn't muffled by your leg or table, give each machine at least 2 speakers and allow the speakers to play louder so you can actually hear something. The speakers on my T61p sound ok(what I would expect on a laptop speaker) but you can just barely hear them at max volume and a pretty quite room. With a noisy room forget about it. Even if a speaker doesn't sound great, the most annoying thing is not being to hear something.

 

For voice use and simple videos I find the x200 to be adequate. If anything the placement limits it more because it gets muffled.

For business use they are just fine. If I really need better quality I will just plug in my Etymotic ER-4p with my Pico DAC/AMP .

 

That's why the X300 speakers are on the palmrest.

 

Just so you all know they are generally on the bottom for a design reason. If you were to use the machine with the lid closed (e.g. docked with an external display, or in slate mode on my tablet) you would muffle speakers on the palmrest.

 

I don't know about other docks, but my Ultrabase for the X200 has speakers of it's own. Are you talking about other docks?

 

I had a "multimedia" lappy equipped with Altec Lansing speakers. I was impressed when I first heard it. But of course, that was when the typical lappy speaker was an afterthought.

The mono speaker of my X61 is surprisingly as loud if not louder than the Altec Lansing lappy speakers at full blast.

But I wouldn't mind ThinkPads having HiFi quality speakers. The per unit cost should just a bit more since Lenovo buys on volume purchase.