X210Ai Info & Review Thread

[astral]

Only other note after over a month of daily driving the X210Ai is that the headphone jacks they used are clearly a weak design. Headphone jack is already loose and requires me to hold it a certain way or I lose one channel. I did accidentally jostle it a bit maybe twice, but not hard enough for me to expect the jack to fail. (for reference, I've never broken a laptop's headphone jack in my life).
I'm not too concerned about this though, as I could probably fix or replace the jack myself if it were to fully fail.

Issue got worse, opened it up to investigate, yikes. Headphone jack is surface-mounted to the board with no reinforcement, no through-hole anchoring pin, just six SMD pads. Said pads were all lifting off the board... toast. Definitely not something that should happen in a month of use and one or two minor bumps. I would highly recommend that anyone with an X210Ai immediately reinforce the headphone jacks with epoxy to make it so that all the strain is no longer being put on those pads. I'll certainly be doing so myself if/when I can get a new daughtercard sent. This is a pretty major issue because when the jack fails, the internal speakers also don't work because it thinks it has headphones plugged in.

[shrimpboyho2]

Can anyone confirm if thunderbolt multi-monitor support is working on Windows or Linux?

On Fedora 43, I am able to connect and the system recognizes my Thinkpad Thunderbolt 4 Dock, but only the peripheral usb ports work. None of the dedicated display ports (2 DP, 1 HDMI) seem to function. However, when I connect a display to the downstream TB port on the dock with a thunderbolt-displayport cable, that seems to work...

[balcanquhal]

It's not working for me on Linux. I plugged it into such a dock in the office and only one display worked. I'm using Debian Trixie with Gnome Shell, so pretty recent.

[shrimpboyho2]

It's not working for me on Linux. I plugged it into such a dock in the office and only one display worked. I'm using Debian Trixie with Gnome Shell, so pretty recent.

Yeah, I did some further testing and it seems only one monitor works through the dedicated TB4 port. The other USB-C port does support multiple displays out, but you are limited by the low bandwidth since it is not thunderbolt. Hopefully a firmware update can be pushed to resolve this issue.

[Medessec]

Issue got worse, opened it up to investigate, yikes. Headphone jack is surface-mounted to the board with no reinforcement, no through-hole anchoring pin, just six SMD pads. Said pads were all lifting off the board... toast. Definitely not something that should happen in a month of use and one or two minor bumps. I would highly recommend that anyone with an X210Ai immediately reinforce the headphone jacks with epoxy to make it so that all the strain is no longer being put on those pads. I'll certainly be doing so myself if/when I can get a new daughtercard sent. This is a pretty major issue because when the jack fails, the internal speakers also don't work because it thinks it has headphones plugged in.

I haven't really used my headphone jacks much at all, I had a look at mine and... darn. Yeah. It doesn't really look very sturdy. I know we discussed it on Discord and mentioned epoxy, but what I might see about doing is just using a bunch of flux and stick it with the fattest solder blobs. If it still seems like the traces to the headphone jacks flex too much, then yeah... epoxy it'll have to be.

[astral]

In my case, the solder pads all ripped up rather than the pins breaking away, so I don't think adding more solder would help.

[jamesfawcett]

Yeah, I did some further testing and it seems only one monitor works through the dedicated TB4 port. The other USB-C port does support multiple displays out, but you are limited by the low bandwidth since it is not thunderbolt. Hopefully a firmware update can be pushed to resolve this issue.

Do you know if a 5120×1440 super-ultrawide display will work over USB-C? In theory it should, but I’m not sure if X210Ai supports it?
Would it also charge over USB-C at the same time as sending the display signal, so it only needs one cable?

One more question: does sleep work reliably in Linux, or are there just sleep issues in Windows?

[NonesensE]

Do you know if a 5120×1440 super-ultrawide display will work over USB-C? In theory it should, but I’m not sure if X210Ai supports it?
Would it also charge over USB-C at the same time as sending the display signal, so it only needs one cable?

Can't speak on the ultrawide monitor and thunderbolt topics, but my 4K display with USB-C power delivery and DP alt-mode works on both ports with just one cable, including charging. I had one occasion where the laptop wouldn't charge, but issues like that occurred from time to time on my HP laptop from work, too.

[jamesfawcett]

Thank you @NonesensE - I've just placed my order!

[shrimpboyho2]

Do you know if a 5120×1440 super-ultrawide display will work over USB-C? In theory it should, but I’m not sure if X210Ai supports it?
Would it also charge over USB-C at the same time as sending the display signal, so it only needs one cable?

One more question: does sleep work reliably in Linux, or are there just sleep issues in Windows?

USB-C monitors work fine off the thunderbolt port, and it also does 100w charging. Sleep seems to work fine from my experience, although I have not tried windows so I can't compare it to that.

[surfbro]

I also have my battery troubles sorted out now - got myself a rebuilt 6-cell pack from Medessec which has been working well so far.

Hey I googled Medessec for batteries and nothing came up, is that a shop or a person refurbing batteries?

[RealBlackStuff]

Medessec is the username of a Forum member.