X301 first impressions

Well, my new X301 arrived today.
I must say, the X301 is worlds better then my T61. In both looks and feel in general. They keyboard is MUCH better then my T61's. I thought my current T61's keyboard was great, but this one is far better. When you type it as a rubbery feel to it, and you hear NO "clicking" of the keys. I have the NMB (or whatever it's called, with the blue felt under the keys) on my T61 and thought it was great. The X301 has a super keyboard.
The body construction of the X301 is fantastic. There is NO FLEX anywhere in the machine. It also has the same rubber feel that is on the back of the screen all over the laptop as well. Very nice feel. It's also light a feather. The speaker audio also seems louder then the speakers on the T61 as well. It was BLASTING, and I went to lower the volume, and it was only at 30% ! I just unpacked it about 30 minutes ago, so no I have to download all my data/songs over to the X301. I noticed that when you originally start Windows 7, there is no Icons a ALL on the desktop (like when I first started my T61 there was an Internet Explorer Icon, a DVD Icon, etc. on the X301, there was TWO icons total).
If anyone is on the edge of getting a VERY portable super lightweight and ultra durable machine, this is IT. Very quite as well.
Oh, and this shipped with Windows 7 Professional, so I have to get used to a new Operating System as well. I will NOT miss Vista (although Vista has been good to me, I hear Windows 7 is worlds better).
Mike

 

Congrats on the machine. There's been some chatter about the screen quality on the X30x machines. What do you think and got any pics? Thanks for posting.

 

Thank you ! The screen is SUPER bright. I have the brightness turned a little more then half way. All the way up is almost blinding if your in a semi-lit room. The colors blend in very well, and the LED screen is of much better quality then the one on my 15.4 inch T61. I took some unboxing pictures real quick with my IPhone, but for some reason I cannot upload them to this thread. (When I attach, it says the images are too large, and I have NO idea how to re-size an image using Windows Photo Gallery. I looked around on how to re-size pictures, and I found you have to go to "file", then hit re-size, but there is no re-size option under "file" when you select the picture. Oh well.

 

-- Off-topic alert --

I recommend taking the gimp for a spin.

-- End of alert, and message --

 

Congratulations! I too would love to see pictures of your X301, especially the screen.

You can upload it to TinyPic (which does not have this forum's size restrictions) and then embed thumbnails in your post that link to the larger picture.

 

the screen is rated at 400 nits. Nuff said

And as with the others, im curious to see what the x301's screen is like

 

Cool, thanks for the recommendation. Again, these are just very quick, crappy IPhone pictures I took when I unboxed it. The screen is truly amazing. Unfortunately I don't have a good quality camera to take decent photos of the screen with the brightness turned all the way up (in these pictures, the brightness is set to about 55%). So far so good. This laptop is simply amazing. This is my first sub 15" laptop. I think I may start buying ultra portables (IE, below 14") more often. Can't wait to see how she handles in an airplane !

 

I'm glad that you like it and I agree with everything you said except your comments about the screen. In the next to last picture, the pic should be black, not grey with light bleeding. This doesn't really come into play when you're viewing your email, but I continue to maintain that as online video becomes the new tv and we become more accustomed to watching video on our laptops, screen quality becomes more important. When I watched hulu on my x301 I could not ever find a sweet spot. So in other words, I was entirely unimpressed with the screen. Compared to my mbp there was no contest, but maybe therein lies the problem; I'd seen a good screen and I didn't want to go back to a bad one anymore. And you better believe that the price point of the notebook played a large factor in me being upset with the caliber of the screen that they put in the x301.

 

The screen is 300 nits. There's been a lot of chatter about the quality of the X30x screens. I take it you don't see it that way? A contractor had a X300 at work. It seemed about average to me.

 

400 nit? My screen isn't even half that bright.

 

Congrats on your new machine. I also went from a 15.4" machine to a ultra portable(x200). I find that the X series seem to be even tougher and better designed than the T series but I liked my T61p's screen way better than my X200's. I love my X200 in all ways except the screen.

 

Thank you again everyone for the congrats ! I haven't had much experience with many laptops to compare this screen with "good" screens, such as those in the MBP, Sony, etc. To me, the screen is very good. The thing that keeps impressing me though is the keyboard. I'm typing on it now, and it is truly very impressive. Each key feels unique, and has a very soft, very quite, yet very firm press. On my 3 cell battery, so far I'm managing to get about 3 hours with WIFI on, streaming music, with the screen on about 1/2 way. Very impressed. I'll eventually break down and pay the $150 and get the full 6 cell battery though. 2.5-3 hours simply will not cut it while enduring 5+ hour flights from time to time. The screen resolution is also very good as well. I feared it would be too small. I've never used a screen with a resolution smaller than 1280X800 before, and this smaller screen with smaller resolution seems very well related. Also, the volume/mute buttons are different then those on the t series as well, and the power button actually lights up bright.

 

I didn't know they were rated at 400 NIT..

 

What resolution did you get?

 

There's only one option(1440x900) for the x301.

 

"400 nits" is totally a meaningless claim.

First Lenovo and all other manufacturers basically lie about the specs of their screen. When they claim 400 Nits and contrast ratio of 250:1 , the 3rd party studies show those numbers are more like half that much

In any case, you only need about 250real nits to have a good versatile screen. Possibly even less indoors.

What really matters is black levels, contrast ration, colour and viewing angles. On those measures, the screen in this unit is unfortunately just not up to par.

 

you mean 400nits = good? coz it isn't

 

400 nits is wrong. The x301 screen is rated at 300 nits, and next to my macbook pro (300 nits), it's a bit dimmer but not by much. It is plenty bright. It's the quality that I was not happy with. Check that--extremely unhappy with. Lower the price by 50% and then I could deal with it.

 

Correct, the X301 has a 300nit screen. The only Thinkpad that I know of that has a 400nit screen option is the W700 (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). All I noticed is that it is MUCH brighter then my T61's screen. I have NO idea how many nits are in my T61's (standard screen, 1280X800 resolution) screen. I'll take a guess and say 200nits or maybe even 150 ??

 

The T61 has a CCFL screen that would not have been all that bright to begin with maybe 20 nits, and then because it is CCFL would have dimmed to probably two thirds or half orginal brightness by now.

 

A few (very few) models of the x200 Tablet also have a 400 nit screen option.

They're also not common models, and none of them are top sellers.
But here they are:
ThinkPad® X200 Tablet (7450) - September 2009
7450-67U
7450-69U
7450-6BU
7450-6CU

ThinkPad® X200 Tablet (7453) - Onsite (September 2009)
7453-69U
7453-6BU

There is also the option of setting getting one on the lenovo website, but strangely enough all the US processors are actually a 1.84 GHz max compared to the models that are actually listed as having the 400 nit "Outdoor Viewable" screen.

 

And I thought that they had installed a better screen in them now compared to the older ones I had seen. The older ones I had seen looked like they had a pretty shabby screen.