X220 Owners Poll

Hello all,

Just thought I'd gather some (sort of) preliminary data on your impressions of this new machine. Please take a moment to vote!

 

I voted 80% but there aren't any laptops I've seen that were 100% perfect and didn't have their own problems.. used to own the very expensive sony Z and I would have voted 80% for that too

 

Item needs to be addressed:

1. Sound is faint unless one makes an adjustment in Sounds with some distortions noted.

[Start > Control panel > Hardware and Sounds > Smart Audio > Click on the Equalizer icon at bottom > Raise most of the bars and the sound will increase a whole lot]

 

1. Low volume
2. Volume/mute buttons need to be pressed harder than would seem (with one type of keyboard at least)
3. Backlight bleed!!!
4. Fan always on
4. Couple of keys on replacement keyboard are crooked and the new keyboard's ThinkVantage plate has flex

Voted 60% (would probably have been 100 or 80 if it wasn't for the backlight bleed as everything else is fixable). Poor quality control

 

The backlight bleed is a problem with faulty IPS screens from LG. iPad2s are getting them also.

 

The only con for me is the FAN....

LENOVO better update the BIOS soon.

 

Just download TPfancontrol if you're not happy with the fan.

 

I am a X220 owner, though I don't have it yet. I can't give any feedback from a practical perspective, but one thing I would have liked to see is the offering of LV or ULV CPUs. Something like the i5-2537M, which runs at 17w, would ensure the machine runs cool and quiet, but can shift into high gear when needed. I personally would have paid more for it. There's nothing worse than having the fan on all the time. Most of the things people do like with their notebooks like Office and Internet aren't very processor intensive. For those situations 1.4GHz is plenty. I mostly run on low power mode so the CPU is mostly downclocked anyway. That was one thing I really liked about my X200t. With the SL9600, the fan almost never came on.

I'd also like to see a slightly higher resolution. With a resolution of 1400x800 and a LV/ULV CPU, it would have been my perfect machine.

 

I voted 40% because I actually did end up returning my X220.

The major problem in my experience was heat. The X220's heatsink is clearly inadequate to cool the 35W CPU and as a result core temperatures on my X220 hit the 90C+ range while gaming which in my opinion is unacceptably high. The worst my T400 ever gets while gaming (even with a discrete GPU) is around 75C.

The clickpad is also a big downside in my opinion, as is fan noise (even with TPFanControl).

The speakers are terrible, but I expected that.

 

I really don't understand why people are bashing the X220's ability to game. Thats like buying a Toyota Prius and complaining that you cant race Grand Prix with it.....

 

Because you should be able to game at low-med settings with the specifications of the computer. Why use the more faster (hence expensive) parts if they can't be used to their full potential?

 

the intel IGP aren't designed for gaming. they're designed for media consumption. What you're trying to say is like taking a Bentley onto a rally track and then complain that because your car cost more than the rally cars it should perform better. If you want to play games, you should've looked into a laptop with a discrete GPU instead of an IGP. Please don't blame the machine when you stress it beyond designed capabilities.

 

I voted 40% and may end up returning. For those that have returned, is there anyway to not get charged the 15% restocking fee? I might just eat it.

I sold my X201 Tablet for this and I wish i hadn't.

PROS:
Screen is nice although the resolution sucks. Everything is huge

CONS:
Heat - What is the deal here? This laptop gets way too hot.
Gaming - Don't tell me some BS about how this isn't a gaming laptop, like we didn't know that. With these specs it should be MORE than capable of playing light games. Why can other similarly speced laptops play starcraft 2 but the x220 can't? Cooling probably. I upgraded my processor because I thought it would help with gaming but turns out with the heat problem I might as well have saved a few hundred dollars. No review said anything about the heat problem. I guess that's what I get for being an early adopter.
Battery Life - somehow with a clean install the WEI number and battery life go down.

 

No. Obviously the Intel IGP is not designed for gaming, but its performance shows that it is sufficient for some gaming on low to medium settings. The problem we have on the x220 is not that the HD3000 can't play games, it's that the system overheats. This is not Intels fault but rather Lenovo. They have essentially thrown in a 35 watt full voltage CPU into an ultra portable but without the necessary cooling to keep the machine running when the CPU+GPU are run at full load. This is like including a 400HP enigne in a car and then saying that if you run it for too long under load, it will overheat and fail. No one expects an ultraportable to be able to game well, but when Lenovo advertises the Sandy Bridge CPU, they had better make sure their design can support the thermal output of the internal devices. Otherwise, we cannot possibly take full advantage of our hardware.

 

I think you are misunderstanding his concern. He is not bashing the X220s graphics performance, but rather he is complaining about the X220s inability to keep the CPU/GPU cool enough for extended use. This is an entirely different matter and it is thoroughly valid to complain about this. We have heard lots of complaints of overheating under load.

 

That's debatable. I'd say the X220 was designed primary as a corporate travel notebook, with gaming being far afield. I think most X220 will live out their lives out doing email, office, media and internet. None of those are going to really stress the system. While it can game a bit, that's not its intended purpose. The closer you live to the edge, the more likely you are to fall over.

 

Sony Vaio Z series, Meant to be an ultra-portable travel notebook w/o game play or should users put that 330m to good use?

Just saying, an Intel HD 3000 can play games. I think any manufacturer who puts in high end parts in their system, consumers should be able to use the maximum power available, as they paid for it.
Sure its not mean to be your main gaming pc, but if the company is going to advertise that the graphics are xX faster than the previous generation, then that's just asking to be put to the test!

Sony figured out a way to keep the Z cool, I feel Lenovo didn't.

I could've bought a x201 and been happy but when I found out the x220 and what the HD 3000 was capable of, I held off and waited for this machine.

 

If we're not supposed to stress the system then I guess I should have bought an x120 and saved $700.

I bought this laptop because it had an intel HD 3000 graphics chip. I'm sorry, I expected it to act like other laptops with the same chip.

 

I gave it 80%
I wish it had a higher resolution but I knew what I was getting so no surprise.
The battery life is not what I expected but it's actually improving since the last OS reinstall.

I have no heat problems, I wanted to see what people are talking a bout so I put in a copy of COD and it played ok and the temps never went above 73 and even then the notebook felt cool.. is there another game I can try that puts load on the processor, and its free to download or try?

 

I would hardly define an Intel GPU as high end. Who said you can't use the maximum power? You'll of course be left with a toasty machine.

 

Or, in extreme cases, a toasted machine!

 

80% here.

- Touchpad sucks big time. Had to disable it.
- Even though Linux support on Thinkpad is considered best (at least to me) comparing to other manufacturers, Lenovo/Intel should have released tweaks that would allow Linux desktop to conserve power as good as stock Windows 7.

 

fingerprint reader doesn't work with uhci (or whatever) enabled in the bios. shows up in device manager, but TP software doesn't recognize it.

fan runs too high, but the freeware program addresses it.

 

Considerably high end for a ultra portable...fixed

I'm fine with a toasty machine when playing games, as long as it won't do any harm ; )

 

The Intel GPU may not be high end, but a full voltage Sandy Bridge CPU sure is, especially in a ultra portable. Even the HD3000 is a fairly respectable GPU for such a light weight and compact machine.

The machine not only gets toasty, but it can throttle, that should not be happening. It's not like these machines are being run in an extremely warm environment.

 

Wish I have my X220 right now (ordered 4/29, still in process). I'll optimize the heck out of Windows, put AC on the CPU and GPU, control the fan with tpfancontrol, reduce Wifi performance to further reduce heat, and then run PS2 emulator to see how hot it can get.

 

This is exactly why my X220 went back to Lenovo. I know that the HD 3000 isn't fast but it is plenty to play games like WoW and even StarCraft II (on low to medium). Considering that those are the two games I play frequently on the go with my T400 (which actually has a slower GPU) I thought that the X220 would be fine.

Unfortunately, that's not the case. 95C is what I regularly noticed while gaming - with the laptop sitting on a flat hard table, with the back elevated by the battery, in 72F ambient temperature. If it's 95C in those conditions imagine what the temperature will be if I tried to game with it on my lap.

It's not just gaming. Heavily-threaded applications will do the same thing.

Lots of laptops have this problem when you run stress tests. Prime95 + FurMark will make my T400 throttle. But there's a big difference between throttling on stress tests (which are worst-case scenarios that you're unlikely to see with real programs) and throttling on common activities like gaming.

You can't sell a laptop with a 35W CPU and an inadequate cooling system and pretend that it's not an issue because no one will actually push it.

 

This is quite worrying for me, as I would use the X220 in a very similar way to how you envisaged using it.

What ultraportable alternative would you go for instead?

Petrov.

 

So the screen is actually 'faulty'?

Whilst the physical limit of how loud the speakers can go may not be that high, the fact that we can get more gain by increasing the equaliser frequencies means that the gain is set lower than it needs to be.

How do we go about addressing it to Lenovo?

Same here with vol mute and mic mute. Have to press buttons 2/3 times in order to work and they respond erratically.

 

I wonder how do you guys measure temperature, by software or a actual thermometer. How is the heat subjectively, i.e does the keyboard fell warm.

 

Exactly.

Running wPrime/Furmark will push CPU/GPU to 100%. Running a game is hardly pushing the system to the (quoting ZaZ) "limit". If we were talking about 95 C on running furmark burn test and wPrime, it wouldn't be a big deal. That happening running a game errrr..... yeah that's not good.

 

Well, this says it all, although I understand that some people had urgent reasons to buy the X220 right away.

I have been waiting quite a while for reviews on the X220, and already there are way too many problems with this laptop to justify paying so much money for it. Some may be fixed in the BIOS in the future, but others can not. It is a shame, because it would have had a lot of good things going for it, some features not available by any other manufacturer. I am going back to looking at 13" ultra-portables from other suppliers. ASUS and Toshiba, in particular, have better reliability track records than Lenovo. If ASUS comes out with an ultra-portable with a matte display, it is pretty much a done deal (After checking reviews again of course). I may even consider changing the screen myself, as others have done, because they are not very expensive. I have many ASUS products and have been very happy with their quality.

 

I gave the X220 an 80%

My only complaint is the sound, I know its the limit of the form factor.

I haven't had the same heat issues, although I do plan on taking mine apart and replacing the thermal paste with some high grade stuff.

If I can save 4-5 celcius off the temperature its worth the time and effort.

 

Except for the tiny speakers, I really like this notebook. I did the background research on this X220 and knew it was for business/school and not for games. If I wanted to play games, I would have gone with a system with dedicated video. Too bad others do not understand the dedicated/Integrated capabilities.

My system does not get hot, only slightly warm (Not too warm that one cannot touch it for a good while) near the vent area. I do not hear the fans unless I put my ear to the fan area. Perhaps others have better hearing than I do or the fan is defective in some way.

X220 has a solid feel to it. Its light and the keyboard is a joy to use. Lenovo systems I guess were not meant for the general public, but to the business sector and students. For games ? Go for another system. :wink:

 

Yes, we know it's not designed for playing games but it should still be able to do that without over-heating. That's the point being made.

 

I'm not sure this is quite balanced, although I understand where you're coming from, of course. No-one has suggested it's a gaming laptop, nor that it has been marketed as such. It has been reviewed as being a gaming-competent laptop, particularly for an ultra portable. This was a selling point for me - to be able to play relatively undemanding games at sensible settings.

The frustration for me would be if, for some reason, the X220's gaming performance does not live up to that suggested by reviews and synthetic benchmarks, either because it throttles too quickly or because the hardware or drivers are in some way, gimped.

Petrov.

 

Mine is not over heating at least with Video/Youtube/music for a fair amount of time. I'll try a simple game to check out the temps. Mind you all, the ambient temps is at 80 degrees in my room. Plays a roll

 

SR45, could you post a screenshot of Realtemp with the CPU @ 100% load for a period of time (~15 minutes or more)? I would really appreciate it

 

I would also like to see this. Although it's been said by some that we should not expect the X220 to provide video editing capability and other such "luxuries", I would beg to differ. A machine is designed with particular parts which the user should expect to be able to take advantage of, especially if he/she is paying a premium for them. In my case, I opted for the i7, quite confident in my choice because I had read (in multiple reviews) that the machine remains cool and that it can be used even for high-end video editing. If this isn't the case, I will most certainly be sending mine back, and I will not be paying a 15% restocking fee.

 

Likely the same here, except I stayed with the base model i5. I don't need the extra power of the i7, but I do expect it to do a competent job with video conversion/DVD ripping and perhaps some Photoshop work as well. If I have to do CPU-intensive tasks at a desk, that isn't a problem, but I do expect it to do them fine.

 

Played a simple game (flight sim) for 20 minutes only..On battery, max settings in power manager with screen at 15. CPU close to 100%. Just got back here and didn't see your requests. Will try later when time permits. Hope this little bit helps.

Game played well but its an old game. "Apache Air Assault"

 

Thank you. Those results are good, but some 100% load results whenever you're plugged in and have time would be fantastic

 

Will do.

 

System Plugged in..

System performance set to Maximum Turbo

Fan set to Max Performance

Screen display brightness set at 15 (Max)

Multi Media setting set to Optimize Video Quality

System cooling set to Active

Game played for about 15 minutes only

Room Ambient temps: 80 degree




Game ran smooth, no lag, no distorted images.

 

From your results, it seems that the overheating issues were wildly overblown....

 

Unless their systems fans are defective in some way. Not sure. Maybe the game and game settings may have had some thing to do with it ????

We need more input from those with the system.

 

I am warming up my X220 with wPrime at maximal settings. After an hour or so I will post my results.

 

Much appreciated guys.

And thanks to everyone who has participated so far in the poll.

 

I just maxed my X220 @ 100% across all 4 "cpus" (2 cores x 2 Hyperthreads) and my CPU temp rose to 92 degrees Celsius and stayed there until I quit the process about 50 minutes later.

The bottom of the laptop got fairly warm but it was nowhere as hot as my MBP gets when only moderately stressed in comparison. I'm content with the results as I rarely max out all cores for that length of time.

Edit: I was using a program called "stress" running on Ubuntu 11.04.

 

Seems your X220 arrived in Sweden finally? Any thoughts on doing business with lapstars?