Well got a x300 in my grubby hands on a Lenovo ThinkPad X300 P/N: 6477-1UU and have been playing with it all morning! It runs great and is super quiet other than the fan but is still quieter and feels lighter than a X61.



One thing I noticed is the Panasonic DVD-RW drive is removable and there are pins that look like the bay supports a extended battery like the T's but it would have to be much thinner. I don't think a HDD tray would work as the slot is too thin.




The SSD drive is a 64 GB Samsung model. It has S-ATA connectors.


The Battery is a Sanyo 10.8V@4.0 AH 43.2WH



Let me know if you have any questions!

Thanks for these pix! I expected a much smaller battery. It's impressive that despite this big battery, the laptop still weighs so little.

Those are great pics - thanks!

And thanks for following the Rules and putting a pic warning as well as keeping the sizes reasonable, too.

Great pics. Thanks for posting, that SSD is sweet!

Fantastic pics, thanks for posting them. Can you give us some information on the LCD quality?

The LCD is beatuiful. It is very bright and crisp, color and backlight is very uniform. With the backlight all the way down it is very dim which is great. All other Thinkpads I have owned even on the dimmest setting they were too bright in a dark room or on a plane. It seems like the viewing angle is slightly less than the T/X61's I am used to working on.

That's excellent news. I too often work in dimly lit environments and my current laptops are a tad too bright even at the dimmest intensities.

One thing I just realized is there is no port on the bottom or sides of the X300 for a docking station or media dock. I wonder if the "port replicator" option if there is one will be USB.

The point to be worried about most is the touch of the keyboard.
For thinness, are not you bad?

The keyboard feels and looks exactly like my T61.

The X300 didn't come with a WWAN card built in. I took a internal Verizon WWAN card from a T61 and it works great in the X300.

If a keyboard is good, X300 is perfect.

Can you take comparison shots of this next to your other Thinkpads so we can get a relative size comparison? Thanks!

Nice machine!

Great Pics, can you confirm the CPU speed and type?

Love how the VGA, LAN and power connectors are back at the rear, I've always hated having a spider on my desk.

looks great, thanks!   i just might have to get my hands on one of these.

Any comment on the battery life?

Wow, you are very lucky. Is the HDD easily accessible, almost looks like there's a release slot in your picture or am I seeing things?

I wander what the screen is like for movies (colour reproduction and viewing angles).

Glad to hear the keyboard is sterling still. Battery life would be my next enquiry.

Thank-you so much for the pics, couldn't be more excited about this product.

Is there a ThinkLight?

Sweet! Thanks for the pics, I hope it will come in a non-ssd version thats more affordable.

Hello,

Could you possibly run the hard drive benchmark HDTach on it to see what kind of speeds the ssd gets? That's the single biggest feature for me and a lot of other folks, and if it performs on par with the Mtron drives, I am sold.

Thanks for sharing the pictures with all of us. It makes me hunger for more! Can you also share pictures of the side view (ports?) so we can see how thin it actually is? Perhaps, place it next to a X61 for comparison?

Hi Moore101,
can you confirm that the X300 has an ExpressCard slot?

Did the model you reviewed have HSDPA/UMTS?

Also, what's the story concerning WiMax connectivity on the X300? Was there any mention of this in any documentation you had with the machine?

nice pix..

@ moore101

Promising to read that the LCD is very bright, something former thinkpads mostly lacked of. The keyboard seems to be also very good like your T61 which obviously means no flex. My concern is the fan noise. Of course, the SSD is a big plus since it apparently produces no noise, at least as far as I know. So here is my question concerning the other remaining source of noise, the CPU fan. If you work with office tools like word, excel or access in normal use, is the cpu fan often on? I know that this issue is not easy because the perception of fan noise is very individual. But maybe you could give some advice to fan noise sensible notebook users. Thanks

Let me join the jealous chorus and throw a couple questions your way. I'm also interested in the placement/effectiveness of the ThinkLight and if the blue LED in the thinkvantage button can be turned off (if photos seen on Flickr were accurate).

What I am most interested in you probably can't answer - if there will be a non-SSD option and what the GPS option is - but that's only because you already answered the LCD and keyboard questions... thanks!

Thanks for posting the pics. As someone else also asked, please can you run some hard drive benchmarks?

I'm keen to know whether the Samsung SSD is the new higher performance model (~120MB/s reads, ~100MB/s writes) that has recently gone into mass production. I've got high hopes that it is as the drive in your pics says "SATA 3.0 Gbps", i.e SATA II and the articles about the updated Samsung SSDs say that one of the differences is that the drive is now SATA II vs. SATA I on the lower performance drives that have been available up till now.

There is no GSM WWAN option in the skus I have seen, it is Verizon only. It does look like there is a GSM SIM slot under the battery so I am sure it is just a matter of time.

There is a blue Thinklight.

I have not seen a true dock option, there is a USB port rep that looked interesting.

I'm not going to ask how you were able to get your hands on a product that hasn't been released yet, let alone the legal ramifications involved (that's what happens when you marry an attorney).

Great pics, BTW...

CJ

I read that the release to resellers date was January 4th. That may be part of the explaination.

The keyboard does look good! I'm glad they finally got rid of the silver buttons and put back the red-blue-red stripes. I wonder if the X300 feels as solid as other ThinkPads? (quality of plastics, hinges.. any flex?)

It's interesting to see a USB dock for X300. Hopefully it'll be compatible with older TPs.

Thanks for sharing the pictures! It seems the public release date is sometime soon.