x301 REVIEW (64 gb samsung mlc ssd 4 GB RAM)

[ssd_thinkpad]

LOOK AND FEEL
This high-end thinkpad x301 looks nice and is incredibly LIGHTWEIGHT and SLIM with its enhanced 6 cell battery. It LOOKS also expensive and FEELS very great. The BEZELS are not making the notebook look bad in any way. The keyboard is great, much better than the one of the x4 and x6 series, though FLEXING in upper left area. Because of the keyboard alone, you will notice the x301 is really more feeling like a notebook than a subnotebook instead of the x4 / x6 thinkpads where you all the time notice the inferior keyboard. Vistas serial number sticker was behind the battery which is great for keeping it private. The power brick should be small quoting some reviews, I did not notice it to be so small.

SOFTWARE
Vista was preinstalled and microsoft office, too. I LOVE this and you can even activate microsoft office by just typing in your serial number. This can save a system administrator much time deploying multiple notebooks. Whats bad is that it seems recovery system can not redeploy a standard installation with custom settings where you disable unneded lenovo tools. So the preinstalled system is somewhat blown up but you can delete this in vista software delete applications setup.

SPEED
It is also very SLOW compared to a few years old desktop system, it also does not feel any faster than a thinkpad x60 mostly due to its inferior slow mlc ssd. After booting up the first time the system hanged sometimes a few minutes and I had to hard-reset it two times. 4 GB of RAM seem not to help.

DISPLAY
This display is BRIGHT. I noticed to move my head when reading different parts of screen as the VIEWING ANGLES are that low. The display viewing angles are very inferior as you can notice them by just being in front of the display! Biggest point here for me. The right eye does not see what the left eye sees is a bit too much but you get the idea. You can increase the low CONTRAST by change settings in display settings > intel control panel. I just put gamma and brighness to lowest level for all colors and did not changed contrast level. It increased the low contrast somewhat. Not usuable for hours of use. I'd value the x40 and x60 displays not higher than the display of this x301. The BEZELS give you inferior vertical space you could need for surfing the web or working with microsoft office but this is something everyone knows.

LOUDNESS
You start your x301 your fan is having a party. It goes around and around and is NOT playing it SILENT in any way. Even the old PULSING of giving a higher noise every few seconds is back. I installed tpfancontrol and noticed that the system is very COOL but its fan is running on higher levels anyway. You can set up level 1 in tpfancontrol and on this level the fan is near absolut silentness. I disabled the fan and the system heat does not increase in any way! The system is very cool, just the bios settings for this fan need some improvements because the fan usually never stays in ear silent step 1 for long time before going up step 2 which is loud. While writing this and not disabled the fan I have to come to the conclusion.

CONCLUSION
As a road warrior I need a lightweight notebook but also need a display to work with. The speed of the notebook is slow but I do not need speed anyway. It is incredibly lightweight. Is has incredibly high build quality. The display contrast you can only slightly increase by changing intels display values and the fan you can turn off using software tools. The viewing angles are bad. The much inferior display and loud fan want me to bring it BACK.

[Marin85]

Interesting review! I was actually surprised in two points: the fan loudness and the performance of the SSD. From your review the first one seems to be fixable. The second one could be probably improved by doing a fresh install of Vista. I also wonder if there are some "undiscovered" tweaks for this Samsung MLC SSD. Anyway, this point is also a reminder that the SSD technology (at least the MLC platform) is by far not that mature.
Apart from this, judging by your entire review, I don´t think that X301 justifies its price as of now...

Thanks,

Marin

[ssd_thinkpad]

I had most modern bios installed and as far as I know the bios controls fan speed and its loudness. Not sure if fan control software will work fine for newer os like windows 7 and for me this notebook is only ergonomically usable with this fan control software. I am working here with a some years old Vista 1 GB RAM desktop system and 32 GB LSC samsung SSD and it is very fast. Seems to be the mlc technology that makes the thinkpad slow. But I give the x301 back because of its far inferior screen. Can not justify giving that much money away for looking on this display. Looking forward to go the thinkpad-with-good-display road and will post questions in flexview display threads again

[Nubulin]

I jut got mine this week and I noticed it did speed up after a few hours. I have the intel 80GB, so it may be different (although still MLC). The initial studders seemed to go away. I am equally disappointed in the display and may sell it on eBay this weekend. The X301 is really solid and high quality, but suffers from marginal display quality and mid range performance.

I am stil trying to force myself to like it. Otherwise it is going on eBay this weekend.

[beaker]

If a X301 customer has to spend over $2K or whatever it is to get a lousy to average screen, how much more will she/he have to spend to get an above average screen?

[ssd_thinkpad]

Nubulin, exactly my thoughts. The x301 was brought back yesterday and I am looking forward to buy a x60s WWAN for portability uses. I do not want to say that the x60s screen is so much better, but as being not widescreen, at least I can look at the display completely without moving my head. Bad viewing angles are not that bad for non-widescreen notebooks on which you are sitting in front of.

beaker, exactly. I am going to get a not-so-lightweight Flexview notebook for longer works. I'd pay much $$$ to get a decent panel in my x301 but of course I do not want to first pay 3.000 $ for the x301 and then put 1.000 $ on top for a decent display, which build-in hurts my warranty. x301 buyers usually do not want something good for nothing, they pay a premium price but at least want an average product.

Hope lenovo will work on the x300 series. The overall design, look & feel, weight, upgrading choice of bay battery, battery time, build quality is so extremely good in this x301.

[dr_st]

Vistas serial number sticker was behind the battery which is great for keeping it private.

It is actually great for another thing. From some reason, since a few years ago, the COA stickers are no longer laminated, which causes them to wear out very fast. Granted, the product key stays (must have used special ink), but everything else (including the OS type) smears and just looks bad. I put clear tape over my COA stickers to keep them from becoming totally ruined.

x301 buyers usually do not want something good for nothing, they pay a premium price but at least want an average product.

Hope lenovo will work on the x300 series. The overall design, look & feel, weight, upgrading choice of bay battery, battery time, build quality is so extremely good in this x301.

This is my main problem with the X30x series. For a premium product with a hefty price it sure has an unusually high number of flaws and limitations (alongside some totaly kickass qualities).

[perplex]

Yeah, it really is a shame about the screen even though I love the resolution. Maybe there'll be a same resolution high quality screen in the future. I wouldn't mind spending a little bit to upgrade the screen in a year or so when my X300 has been further amortised. .

Is there any excuse for the screen? From what I've read it seems Thinkpad screens are amongst the worst in the industry. Apart from the screen I absolutely love this machine, it's just so close to perfect for my use.

[ssd_thinkpad]

Thinkpads 15 inch non-xga displays, called flexview, on the other hand seem to be one of the best screens that were ever in notebooks. So there is definitely some decision maker in lenovo who likes good displays.

[ComputerMinder]

I have an X61s (ultralight screen), X301 and X200s. The X301 has a very bright display (300 nits) I didn't compare the screen viewing angles with the X61s but I suspect they should be the same.

I don't see any problem at all with the X301 display. In fact it's very clear and bright. If some are complaining about the screen it could only be due to the viewing angles, but since I am working on this computer where it's infront of me I don't see any problem at all with the screen. Maybe for slideshows it may not prove optimal though.

[blackomegax]

I think the only modern thinkpads with IPS displays are the tablets.

I may be wrong if some of the T or W series does too but i've not seen any press either way.

[Marin85]

I think the only modern thinkpads with IPS displays are the tablets.

I may be wrong if some of the T or W series does too but i've not seen any press either way.

No, you are actually correct that from the current Thinkpads only the tablets have IPS panels.

[ssd_thinkpad]

Great review on lenovo blogs about the x301, its power and widescreen and how it compares to the T61:

http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=208

[chsu74]

I bought 2 refurbed X301s recently with 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD. It seems to run better on Vista Business 32 than the XP I loaded last night. However, I will continue to play with it for a while and see of the SSD will burn in with XP and run smoother after sometime.

I didn't really time the boot up but it was around 1.5 to 2 min. It is an improvement from my Z60T which this X301 is replacing so I am happy.

[Marin85]

IMO 1.5-2 min for such a SSD is a bit too long

[ssd_thinkpad]

After researching in the lenovo specifications about all actuall used thinkpads tabook.pdf the x200,x300 and x301 panels have the worst contrast of only 250:1. In any other thinkpad actually sold from lenovo a panel with better contrast ratio is installed. Really wonder how lenovo could put the worst contrast ratio display in their said "top of the line thinkpad".

In the old ltwbook.pdf where withdrawn thinkpads are shown, some T4x and T6x XGA panels have 200:1 contrast.

[YW-Slayer]

That I can believe. Over the course of my Easter in Tokyo I found that the X301's panel is really quite bad, in that the colours are almost always either rather washed out or dim (depending on the brightness setting). It's not a total deal-breaker for me as I don't intend to do any photo work on it so it's not really a problem, but it would be if anyone were planning to use it for even light colour-editing.

It's fine for watching movies etc. though. I may also try using my Spyder3 on it to see if things improve.