X32 review and comparison with T40

[bigscreen]

I have used a T40 for the last two years and was very satisfied with the machine. Having a Compaq laptop before that, it was a huge improvement in terms of mobility and usability. However, I travel a lot and the T40 still weighs over 2.4kg. That's not much for a desktop replacement but for a mobile machine, it shows after a while. I wanted to reduce the size and weight while not giving up on performance. X41 was no alternative, because (a) slow CPU, (b) slow and small HD and (c) not compatible with the standard dock. When in the office, I use a dock II with an external widescreen monitor, connected via DVI. The X32 was not perfect in this regard, because it doesn't support the DVI port on the dock. But an external PCI graphics card is at least an alternative. So I went for the latest X32...

T40p, 14" SXGA+, 1.6GHz (2nd level cache 1MB), 1GB RAM, HD 60GB with 7200rpm (Hitachi), GPU Radeon 9000 FireGL 64 MB
X32, 12" XGA, 2.0GHz (2nd level cache 2MB), 1.5GB RAM, HD 60GB with 5400rpm (Hitachi), GPU Radeon 16 MB

General:

The quality impression is the same for both machines: high quality machines with a solid, sturdy design. The T40 isn't really a brick but directly compared to the X32, it's big and heavy. The X32 is 0.8kg lighter and has a smaller footprint, especially compared with the sticking-out large battery of the T40. When you have both in front of you and think of which one to carry around with you for the next couple of days, you go for the X32, no doubt. Due to the small footprint, the X32 appears to be even more rugged, since it is less vulnerable to any twists and skews that may happen to your laptop when carring it around.

I cloned the original harddisk of the T40 to have the very same software configuration, so that the tests don't compare apples and oranges. For the battery tests, wireless and bluetooth was switched off.

Performance:

The X32 when running on full speed is of course faster than the 1.6GHz T40. Even if it ran at the same speed, it would probably exceed the T40 due to the larger 2nd level cache. In practice, however, the difference is not noticable. Perhaps when firing up Photoshop, it is. But I really can't tell.

I expected the old 7200rpm hard drive to be faster than then new 5400rpm in the X32. But the difference is not as big as I thought. Both harddisks have the very same content (I cloned it to have a 100% match for comparison) and have around 40% free space. I cannot really feel any speed difference and the following tests proved my impression right. Boot times until Windows login are 30 seconds for the X32 and 34 seconds for the T40. I assume the X32 boots with a CPU speed of 2GHz and throttles the speed after the login, when the IBM Power Manager is loaded. After the logon, the T40 wins the remaining boot race by a second. The 5400rpm drive is more quiet, but the noise of the 7200rpm drive in the T40 was no issue, either. Both disks had a temperature of between 30 and 40C. For power consumption, see below ("battery life").

HDTune Test:
T40 (7200rpm): min 17.7, max 38.5, average 29.6 MB/sec, access time: 14.4, burst rate 78.4 MB/sec
X32 (5400rpm): min 18.3, max 35.5, average 28.4 MB/sec, access time: 16.4, burst rate 77.8 MB/sec

File copy test:
3.1 GB monolith file copied from one location on the disk to another:
T40 (7200rpm): 4 min 40 sec
X32 (5400rpm): 5 min 10 sec

I doubt that a 7200rpm harddrive in the X32 makes a significant difference to the already built-in 5400rpm drive. However, the extra 100GB 7200rpm Hitachi drive is already ordered and may arrive next week. So I will find out soon and if it was worth it, I'll post an update.

Heat and fan noise:

The X32 gets hot, very hot! Even when running on battery at 600 MHz only, the temperature doesn't go below 45C (T40 on 600 MHz is as low as 36C). The average temperature difference between those two is 10 to 15C. When the X32 runs at full speed and under heavy load, the temperature quickly hits 80C and the fan gets noticeably loud. Even when idle (full speed), the fan never turns off. Although the fan is not annoying and very silent when running idle, it's noticeable in absolutely quiet conditions (my docking station is fanless and I work in very quiet conditions, so I did notice). After setting the power scheme for AC mode to "Adaptive CPU speed", the heat and noise issues were gone. The X32 is still significantly hotter than the T40 but when idle (and idle it is, even when answering emails or coding software), the fan turns off completely most of the time (or, if not turned off, it's so quiet that I don't hear it).

Screen:

The viewing angle is relatively bad on both displays, but the screen of the X32 is significantly brighter than the T40 display. When you turn down the brightness to the lowest level, the T40 screen is hardly readable at daylight conditions, the X32 is still OK. At full brightness, the X32's display shows white as almost white, whereas white on the T40 display looks like dirty linnen. I don't think that the age of the T40 display is an issue, because most of the time I am using the laptop docked with an external display. The T40 display is still quite new. Pixel defects: zero on both displays. The reduced screen real estate of the X32 is something of personal preference. When on the road, I rarely do much programming (that's when I really appreciate a big screen), so for me it's ok.

Keyboard:

Despite having a "full-size" keyboard, the X32 keyboard is more narrow than that of the T40. The keyboard is excellent and the smaller size did not prove to be a problem. I am a touch typer and the Thinkpad keyboards were one of the reasons to buy one. Physical feedback of the X32 keyboard is the same as on the T40 and after a while, one gets used to the smaller keys (at the first try, I regularly missed some keys, especially the smaller CTRL and backspace keys). Trackpoint is the same on both computers and since I turned off the trackpad on the T40 anyway, there's no difference at all. But trackpoint vs. touchpad is again a personal preference.

Power consumption:

The X32 is about 20% better than the T40. The discharge rate when on battery and running idle is between 9 and 11w on the T40 and between 7.5 and 9w on the X32. The screen on the T40, however, is barely readable when set to the darkest position. To match the X32 at the lowest setting, you need to turn up screen brightness on the T40 two or three notches. Which results in a power consumption of about 10w when idle, as compared to 8w of the X32.

X32 when idle (screen dimmed to lowest brightness): less than 8w
T40 when idle (screen dimmed to position 2): around 10w

X32 when idle (screen at full brightness): around 10w
T40 when idle (screen at full brightness): around 12.5w

The most surpising detail was how much the harddisk affected the power consumption: next to zero. Either MobMeter doesn't display it correctly or modern disks have an idle mode at which they consume almost no power. On both computers, I set the harddisks to turn off after 3 minutes and they did. However, there was not significant drop in the power consumption when the disks stopped spinning. When started again for doing a file search, the power consumption slightly increased on the X32 (5400rpm) and temporarily increased on the T40 (7200rpm) by 2W, just to drop 1W a few seconds later. My conclusion: don't let your harddisks switch off too quickly, the gain of battery life is very small, but accelerating the rotors every time when switching on costs a lot of power.

Battery life:

Lenovo claims the X32 has a battery lifetime of up to 5.9 hours. That's certainly exaggerated, but 3 to 4 hours seems reasonable. That's what I had on the T40, too. The X32 comes with a standard 6 cell battery with a capacity of 4.8AH. The T40 has two batteries: a smaller 6 cell with 4.4AH and a large 9 cell battery with 6.6AH. To be fair, you need to compare the X32 to the T40 with the large battery. The X32 battery has 28% less capacity than the 9 cell battery of the T40. However, given the lower power consumption, the X32 comes close to the T40 and exceeds the run-time of the T40 with the small battery by far.

Graphics:

Oh my dear! The ancient Radeon on the X32 could not be slower! I was used to the performance of the Radeon 9000 FireGL with 64 MB on the T40 and this was really a huuuuuuge step back. Forget about Windows XP with themes, forget about menus with shadows and showing full windows content while dragging them. It's simply too slow for that. I have turned off everything that could slow down the graphics and now it's ok to work with. Windows Vista with the Avalon graphics system on the X32? Never ever. Well, it'll probably refuse to install in the first place... Even the Radeon 9250 with 128 MB RAM which is installed in the docking station to run the external widescreen monitor, is far superior, despite beeing slow due to the PCI bus (the T40 ran the external monitor without requiring a second graphics card and was still a lot faster).

Summary:

I am happy with the purchase. The X series is significantly smaller and lighter than the T series and the smaller keyboard and display are a compromise I can live with. Some people may miss a built-in optical drive. When I bought the T40 two years ago, I thought I could not live without that. But in fact, I rarely used it and never needed it when on the road.

I bought the 2.0 GHz model because it had BT and wireless a/b/g built-in. But those are available as an option. While I don't want to return the laptop, I should have bought the slower model with 1.7GHz. The 2GHz gets very hot (coupled with fan noise when running on full speed) and was probably a waste of money, because the performance differences are not significant for everyday work (and for gamers, the graphics adapter is much too slow anyway).

Which leads to the only item on my wish-list: Lenovo, add a better graphics card! The built-in 16 MB Radeon urgently needs an upgrade.

[Deckard]

That's what I always wondered. Why does Lenovo/IBM insist on the 16MB video RAM on the X series? Cost? Size? Battery time?

[nolifer]

However, the extra 100GB 7200rpm Hitachi drive is already ordered and may arrive next week. So I will find out soon and if it was worth it, I'll post an update.

I'd like to hear about that I'm planning to buy 80GB/100GB 7200rpm drive to my X31.

[joprodse]

I just bought the very same machine and overall I think you're quite close to my own opinion. Although I don't think the GPU is THAT bad... It's works fine for my usual officework and I guess thats what it's intended for. I haven't actually tried any performance GPU's so I might not have the experience you have in that area but 16mb graphic memory sure works for me as long as I don't hook it up to my external TFT

[bhtooefr]

Hmm... anything will be better than the GPU in my X21: ATI Rage Mobility M, 4MB VRAM

At least yours CAN do a little 3D acceleration without running out of VRAM...