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.

[eqan]

So, I bought the X210Ai way back in February, and today it has arrived! I'll be creating a longer review in the future, once I've been using it for a while, but here's my day 1 thoughts.

First, my specs:
- Core Ultra 7 165H
- 32GB Crucial DDR5-5600 RAM (2x16GB)
- 4TB Samsung 990 Evo Plus PCI Gen 5 SSD
- 13.4-inch 165hz IPS LCD @2560x1600
- New-old-Stock NMB keyboard
- OEM 9-cell extended battery, professionally rebuilt with Panasonic cells.
- Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021. It will soon be multi-booted with Kubuntu Linux and Windows 11 (in case I ever need it for something)

This thing certainly performs up to spec. It is extremely fast - keeping in mind, I was coming from a T480 and an 8th-gen ASUS gaming laptop. The ASUS still has the edge on graphics performance of course, but the CPU and general performance is much better on the X210Ai. That is, when I'm running on AC power. The current version of the X210Ai's EC has a number of known issues, mostly related to battery power management. It's by no means slow on battery, but it doesn't seem to be able to get above 25% or so utilization before hitting the TDP limit. This should be fixed once the updated EC firmware is out sometime soon. Other EC-related issues include that the browser forward/back keys do not work, the battery meter isn't fully accurate, and it doesn't like going into sleep mode. This again should be sorted out with the updated EC firmware, according to Franck at tpart.net. I can't say much on battery life yet as I haven't done a full rundown, but word is it will be 3-5 hours. I assume this will improve with the updated EC. This will also vary greatly depending on what battery you use, as aftermarket packs can be very inconsistent.

The display quality is excellent - love that high refresh rate, and the bezels are extremely thin with the 13.4-inch panel. I've heard reports that the TrackPoint can leave an imprint on the panel, that's probably unavoidable.

Overall fit and finish is fairly good, keeping in mind that it's built from used parts. All of the original Lenovo parts are in excellent condition with only very minor signs of wear. The keyboard it shipped with looked practically brand new (I just happened to have a NOS one to swap in anyway). It did ship with an NMB keyboard as well, not the Chicony. This will all vary order to order though. My order was placed pretty early on, so it may have gotten better condition parts than the later ones.
The worst wear area on my unit is around the custom port inserts - they actually CNC'd them out of spare display housings, rather than 3D printing, which is really cool. There's some roughness around the edges of them, but it's very minor.

Functionally, everything has been going well (knock on wood). The only problem I had was finding a functional UltraNav driver in order to get gestures and all that working. The winner ended up being the May 2021 Ultranav driver from Lenovo, which I had to force install in device manager. The procedure is the same as on the older X210/X2100: https://www.xyte.ch/support/51nb-x210-x ... e-support/


That's about all I have to say for day 1 - overall I am very very pleased! The team behind the X210Ai has really done a good job. I'll update this thread soon with photos.

Hows the laptop holding up so far?

[astral]

Typing on it right now! It's been working great. The only two issues I've had are the headphone jack problem I mentioned before (just had the replacement daughtercard shipped), and the other thing is that the display bezel has formed cracks in the bottom two corners. The cracking is probably inevitable due to the age of the plastics and the fact that there is less material there after the modifications for the larger LCD. Should only be a cosmetic problem.

[TPFanatic]

I have an “X330” and the lower bezel also cracked around the screws, i want to blame overtightening and just not being intended to bear all that load. Compare to t420 and t430 which are screwless designs, the thick bezel is structural.

[astral]

Yeah the cracked bezels are just a chronic ThinkPad problem in general. I've seen it a bunch in the early 2000s era systems, but it's always just cosmetic at least. Wasn't surprised to see it pop up here.

[flyingfishfinger]

Got mine. First impressions so far are decent, but I'm having a lot of trouble getting Windows 10 drivers for everything - specifically chipset and ME still have unknown devices shown. I see that astral also mentioned Windows 10 as his OS, maybe we can get suggestions of known-working drivers?

Thunderbolt on Windows isn't working yet either. I suspect the missing drivers as the culprit...

Power: The Thunderbolt port doesn't play nice with my TB3 dock. It seems as though this port wants to draw a lot of startup current, even if the battery is charged and the laptop is on. The result is that the port cycles on and off probably because of overcurrent on the dock. There are two interesting observations: 1) The USB-C port does NOT have the cycling issue and charges just fine as low as 30W, but obviously the dock then doesn't work. 2) TB3 port DOES work with the dock if I connect a separate charger to the USB-C port. I hope this behavour gets fixed with an EC update.

Display: I have the 3000x2000 display. Replacing the cable was a bit of a pain, since my bezel is slightly damaged and taking it off risks more cracks.

Bluetooth / webcam: I put a USB-based webcam in the lid where the Bluetooth module used to go. I was told that this was still supported via the original screen cable assembly that runs the indicator LEDs as well, but so far it's not picked up. I'm unsure if it's my lid or the mainboard not implementing this port, will need to dig some more.

Linux (Ubuntu) power: This could probably use some tweaking, but I don't really know enough about where to start. If I turn off WiFi and BLE, run nothing and turn the screen brightness to the minimum, I get about 5W used.. This is pretty good, but CPU-wise, I get nothing lower than PC2 (!) in any situation- which tells me there could be a large improvement possible. With reasonable brightness and some browsing, I get about 12W used.

I'll update this post as I learn more...

[NonesensE]

Power: The Thunderbolt port doesn't play nice with my TB3 dock. It seems as though this port wants to draw a lot of startup current, even if the battery is charged and the laptop is on. The result is that the port cycles on and off probably because of overcurrent on the dock. There are two interesting observations: 1) The USB-C port does NOT have the cycling issue and charges just fine as low as 30W, but obviously the dock then doesn't work. 2) TB3 port DOES work with the dock if I connect a separate charger to the USB-C port. I hope this behavour gets fixed with an EC update.

I had the same issue, power switching on and off, a few times with my USB-C monitor (with PD and DP alt-mode), on both ports. Charging only (with an USB-C power supply) works fine on both ports. The issue is mostly mitigated when I plug in the USB-C cable and wait until the AC and battery symbols light up before starting the laptop. Sometimes the lights don't come up, this is when my monitor doesn't wake up. Switching it to display port and back to USB-C usually does the trick.

Linux (Ubuntu) power: This could probably use some tweaking, but I don't really know enough about where to start. If I turn off WiFi and BLE, run nothing and turn the screen brightness to the minimum, I get about 5W used.. This is pretty good, but CPU-wise, I get nothing lower than PC2 (!) in any situation- which tells me there could be a large improvement possible. With reasonable brightness and some browsing, I get about 12W used.

As written earlier: With a fresh install of CachyOS, I got only PC2, too, but with powertop autotune, it went all the way to PC10 immediately. I haven't been able to get anything better than PC2 in Windows 11, though.

[flyingfishfinger]

As written earlier: With a fresh install of CachyOS, I got only PC2, too, but with powertop autotune, it went all the way to PC10 immediately. I haven't been able to get anything better than PC2 in Windows 11, though.

I've never been able to get --auto-tune to work. Even after enough calibration measurements, it still gives the following errors and quits, also still stays in PC2:

Code: Select all

modprobe cpufreq_stats failed
583 old Measurements loaded
RAPL device for cpu 0
RAPL device for cpu 0
Devfreq not enabled
glob returned GLOB_ABORTED

I can't get my backlight to draw less than 5W on the minimum setting either, for what it's worth.

[NonesensE]

As written earlier: With a fresh install of CachyOS, I got only PC2, too, but with powertop autotune, it went all the way to PC10 immediately. I haven't been able to get anything better than PC2 in Windows 11, though.

I've never been able to get --auto-tune to work. Even after enough calibration measurements, it still gives the following errors and quits, also still stays in PC2:

Code: Select all

modprobe cpufreq_stats failed
583 old Measurements loaded
RAPL device for cpu 0
RAPL device for cpu 0
Devfreq not enabled
glob returned GLOB_ABORTED

I can't get my backlight to draw less than 5W on the minimum setting either, for what it's worth.

Sorry, I have no idea where the issue with your Ubuntu lies and I don't have an installation of that at hand (let alone the in-depth knowledge). Might give it a try from USB, to see if I can reproduce it.

Just for comparison, I fired up my old fedora installation from the X62 in the X201Ai. Opened powertop, system seemed stuck at pc2. Optimised all optimisable settings, still max. pc2. Waited a minute or so, suddenly got pc10. Total battery discharge rate idling at minimum brightness as reported by powertop is approx. 3.5W.

[astral]

Re: Windows 10 drivers

The driver pack provided on the tpart website covers everything except for the ultranav.

[Medessec]

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?

I can rebuild most batteries for this era of Thinkpads, but it's just a side thing I do for community members and fellow enthusiasts, nothing official. If you need batteries rebuilt you can DM me and we can discuss it further, but keep in mind I can only ship bare batteries within the US.