x220 best for me?recommendation welcome

Hey guys,

am looking for a new laptop for mainly work, but sometimes for leisure and travel. For work, surfing the net, reading lots of pdfs (say 5-10 pdfs) whilst typing up in word, some data mining on excel, and running a stats software (sometimes all of them at the same time). Offwork, not a heavy user offwork, just surfing the net, quite a bit of youtube (HD) and facebook..etc. I also travel from time to time, would hate to carry bulky lappies, so portability and long battery life are a must.

About a year ago, I was considering HP DM1z and Lenovo Ideapad 205s, both have roughly 12 inch screens, which is about the right size, but didn't end up buying them as I decided to wait for newer products. Now looking around, I think x220 can be a good choice, but is it my only choice? And if it's a good choice, what kind of CPU should I go for as per my type of usage? (i3, i5, or i7), ram? (4g)

My ideal laptop

-Built: sturdy
-screeen:11 to 12.5 inches, preferably matt screen
-battery life: the longer the better, but say at least 5 hours for just surfing the net will do.
-weight: lilght!around 1.5kg.
-windows 7 with 32bit? (for software compatibility)
- >100gb hard drive
-dvd drive not nessesary
-looking to buy within the next 3 weeks (any new ones to be released soon?)

oh and No budget as for now. (let me know any other non-lenovo brand I should consider)

Thanks in advance

 

i5 CPU should give you a nice balance on power and battery life.

I can do about 9 hours when surfing the net with mine X220 on 9 cells battery (that is with the i7 CPU and platter hdd).

 

My ideal laptop: ThinkPad X220 with IPS screen and i5 CPU

-Built: sturdy - yes
-screeen:11 to 12.5 inches, preferably matt screen - yes
-battery life: the longer the better, but say at least 5 hours for just surfing the net will do - consider the 9-cell battery
-weight: light! around 1.5kg - consider the 6-cell battery
-windows 7 with 32bit? (for software compatibility) - really? which software specifically? Windows 7 64-bit runs mostly 32-bit apps these days, including Word 2007 and Chrome
- >100gb hard drive - your choice
-dvd drive not necessary - X220 doesn't come with one
-looking to buy within the next 3 weeks (any new ones to be released soon?) - always available for purchase; new model won't be available "soon"

 

You might want to look at the new version of the 13" Samsung Series 9. It will cost more than the X220 but has a good 1600 x 900 display (Samsung equivalent of IPS). The extra pixels will help in reading the PDFs.

John

 

I wouldn't consider any non business grade laptops at all. The X220 is one of the best ultraportables you can get for the money. The i3 or i5 with the 6 cell you should be able to easily hit 5 hours. My X220 Tablet with the screen slightly dimmed surfing the web, I can easily hit 5-6 hours on my 6 cell 63 WHr battery.

 

I would suggest unless you're getting WWAN, selecting the 320GB 5400RPM drive, then add a mSATA SSD. mSATA SSDs are small SSDs that plug into the miniPCI slot on the motherboard. It's located under the palm rest on the X220. Once installed, it's seen as another hard drive. The benefit of this set up is you can install the OS on the mSATA for speed and keep the platter drive in the may bay for storage where speed is not as important. I have this setup on my X220i. It's quite slick.

In just my own opinion, the difference between HD and HD+ is so small it hardly merits discussion. Back in the day when you went from XGA to SXGA+ you got a significant bump in resolution, but HD+ only adds a few lines. The place where I want more resolution is browsing. A lot of applications like browsers, office docs and PDFs allow you to control text size, which has a similar effect to getting more resolution.

 

The X220 is a great option. I personally think its the best option. Though I would warn that it has a short palmrest and crap touchpad.

I personally get 8-10 hours web surfing with the 9 cell. Unless you expect to be running something heavy on battery for 5+ hours, the 6 cell should be sufficient, but the 9 cell doesn't make it weigh that much heavier and adds ~50% more battery life.

Other machines to look at would be:
-Latitude E6220. It's heavier than the X220 and gets shorter battery life. No IPS option for screen either. Touchpad is much better and some people think it looks better. There is a larger palmrest, though the keyboard isn't as good as the X220's.
-EliteBook 2560p. Much heavier, but you can mod it to fit a quad core. Depending on how heavy your stats program and data mining is, might help. Has an optical drive, but its removable to save weight.

 

I pretty much agree with everything stated above except that I don't have as much issue with a short palm rest (others do however). Being my first ThinkPad, the x220 has been somewhat of a revelation to me. I would also recommend installing a mSata since it really does add to the performance of laptop without sacrificing storage space.

 

I just got my x220 a few days ago. The thing is amazing and the size is perfect. Personally, the no-button touchpad is sort of annoying, but I like and use the touchpoint much much more. I'd encourage you to go with the i7 solely for the USB3 port, but I think the minor (for me) hit to battery life is worth it. Granted, I do have the slice battery as well.

 

An ExpressCard USB 3.0 card is like $20 or less on eBay. It sits flush with the side of the X220 and is much more cost effective than the i7 if you don't need it.

 

ZaZ has a good point, the extra money for the slightly faster i7 isn't really worth it for the USB 3.0. In reality it just has slightly higher turbo speeds, and slightly more cache. Plus USB 3.0 isn't native to the chipset, not until Ivy Bridge.

 

Thanks guys, I think I will stick to Lenovo for now, and looks like we've more or less agreed on a x220, i5, 6 cell battery and 4g ram. But a couple more questions when I was looking at the vendor's website..

a. The x220 model comes with different i5 CPU (e.g. i5-2430, i5-2450..etc). What are the differences between these CPUs? Does the higher code infer higher quality? How do I choose among them?

b. A couple of you mentioned about IPS screens. What's an IPS screen? Don't all x220 have IPS screens?

Here are the models listed on the vendor's website.
X220-4DV, i5-2430M,4GB,320G(7200),win7 Pro.
X220-A17, i5-2520M,4GB,320G(7200),win7 Pro, IPS,
X220-A89, i5-2450M, 4GB,500G,Win7 Pro,IPS
X220-A18, i5-2540M,4GB,320G (7200),win7 Pro,IPS

 

The 24xx i5 CPUs were introduced in Q1 2012, and the 25xx i5 CPUs were introduced in Q1 2011. They have very similar specs over all....

The IPS screen is a given

 

Get the one with the lowest price.

Not all X220's come with IPS screens, although a local store may offer only X220's with IPS screens. Anyway, if you do have a choice, pick the IPS option.

IPS is a flat-panel display technology that is capable of showing images with better contrast and color reproduction, in addition to providing wider viewing angles.

 

If you need top CPU performance, the i7 may merit consideration, but for a typical users the i3 offers plenty of performance. I've been plenty happy with mine. Upgrading to a SSD is far more likely to make your system seem faster.

 

i7's performance isn't that much greater then the i5.

If it wasn't for the fact that my i5 to i7 upgrade cost only 27 dollars, i would have stuck to the i5.

 

Lot of discussion about mSATA SSDs in this forum (and I've contributed to that...).

If you can live with 160GB for O/S, apps and storage (and connect USB 3.0 drives, USB flash drives, etc.), I would forget about the mSATA SSD and get the SSD optional drive. My Intel SSD (that came with my X220) is faster than my mSATA -- the difference is not significant but I would like my O/S on faster SSD...

Also, I have a 1TB USB 3.0 drive connected most of the time; have 64GB USB 3.0 for traveling (plus other USB 2.0 drives). Finding I really don't need all this storage availability on my laptop -- my desktop has 3TB.

 

LOL I'm currently using Lenovo 3000 N100 (Intel (R) CPU T1300 @1.66GHz,
2.49 GB Ram,70GB harddrive), purchased in 2006. It took an average of 2-3 minutes to start up.. and I'm getting by just OK without the SSDs.

I think either i3 or i5 will be a luxery for me then..but would i3 be OK, considering it's slightly cheaper..?

 

For most normal use (internet surfing, Youtube, emails, Word) the i3 is overkill.

 

If the difference is not significant, why do you care?

 

I don't care as the difference is negligible. I was just stating a fact.

I guess my point was not clear. If you buy the X220 with SSD option, you really don't need a mSATA expense too -- assuming you can live with USB 3.0 (or USB 2.0) for additional storage as needed.

 

Indeed, an i3 will handle all normal tasks with plenty of oomph left. You won't be limited by the CPU.

 

Alright then

Does the x220 integrated webcam come with a sliding lid?

 

No it doesn't, applies to Tablet and normal X220.

 

Something like this? Nope, no Thinkpad laptop has that; the feature is only on a few of the ThinkCenter AIO desktop PCs. Personally, I think it would be pretty nice to have on Thinkpads, though!

 

seriously?! I would hate to be spied on by hackers! what on earth were they thinking when they design the laptop! now i'm reallyy really dissapointed....

 

Well, to be fair, very few laptops have a physical cover for the webcam. There is, however, an LED to let you know when the webcam is on. As far as I know, it's hardwired to the webcam board, so whenever the webcam's on, the light is on... so you'd notice if someone's spying in you

 

I think cheaper models like EEE pc have camera lids..And you know the hackers must have been doing it wrong if they turn on the leds

 

that is why i choose laptop without cameras.

 

I'm pretty sure that the LED is wired so its on when the webcam is in use.

Anyways, I don't like the cover way of disabling the webcam. I would prefer a hardware switch that cuts power to the webcam. More elegant imho.

 

+1 to that.

sata ssd will be faster and will have more space for storage than a msata ssd - it means:
-OS and those apps that would fit on msata will be sligtly faster
-other apps + data that would be stored on the platter hdd will be even more faster

 

The benefit of the mSATA drive is it allows you to keep the platter drive in the main bay for storage where speed is not as important. It's the latency, not the throughput, that makes SSDs seem fast. Since they're all .1ms, the difference between a mSATA SSD and standard SSD is not worth measuring.