Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Review (with battery slice 39+)

1. Introduction2. Lenovo ThinkPad X13. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 (Battery Slice 39+)4. Lenovo ThinkPad X1 (Super High Res Gallery)5. Testing Methodology & Configuration6. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra 20117. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit8. Synthetic: PCMark 79. Synthetic: CrystalDiskMark10. Synthetic: ATTO Benchmark11. Real World: BluRay Playback with PowerDVD 1112. Real World: MKV 1080p Playback13. Real World: Media Encoding with Cyberlink Media Espresso14. Gaming: Resident Evil 515. Gaming: Call Of Duty: Black Ops16. Gaming: Left4Dead217. Technical: Upgrading with SSD drive18. Technical: Battery Life19. Technical: Acoustics Performance20. Technical: Thermal Performance21. Closing Thoughts22. View All Pages

Strangely enough, CPUz wouldn't give the system a ‘validation' even though it was running at default speeds and configuration with no problems. You can see it over here as it lists all the hardware anyway.

This Thinkpad X1 is using the Core i5 2520M, a capable processor which runs at 2.5ghz, and can turbo to 3.2ghz. It is built on 32nm architecture and is a two physical/two logical core design. There is 3MB of shared level 3 cache between the cores.

The X1 can accept up to 8GB of ram, however to access the single slot, you need to remove the keyboard at the front. Our sample shipped with 4GB, which is more than enough.

The memory installed is Samsung PC3-10700, running at 1333mhz (9-9-9-24-1T timings). As there is only one module in the X1, it runs in single channel mode, which should negatively affect some of the benchmarks later in the review. Upgrading later to 8GB means you need to remove the 4GB stick. There is only a single memory slot in the X1.

Graphics are supplied by the Intel 3000 (GT2+), which is perfectly fine for business demands, and offers hardware acceleration for high definition media playback.

For some of the tests today we manually swapped the internal hard drive to an Intel 510 250GB SSD drive, to ascertain how it would affect overall system performance. We will detail this, later in the review.

Above, after changing the 320GB 7,200 rpm mechanical drive (which scored 5.9) to the Intel 510 250GB drive (which scores the maximum 7.9 points). Overall score is reduced by the Intel HD 3000 graphics to an overall score of 4.1. CPU performance is promising, although the Windows Experience Tool is really only useful as a general guideline to performance.

The default install highlights just how many Lenovo tools are installed on this machine to optimise various settings. It is actually a relatively clean install with the majority of the software being software to fine tune the system.

The software implementation really is without a doubt, class leading. The system can update all aspects of the software via a simple user panel. We even updated the bios from here and the machine did it all automatically within the space of a few minutes, finishing with a reboot. Superb.

Software:
Windows 7 64 Bit
SiSoft Sandra
Cinebench R11.5 64 bit
Cyberlink Media Espresso
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra V11
PCMark 7
Left4Dead2
Resident Evil 5
Call Of Duty: Black Ops

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Asus USB powered BluRay Drive.
Nikon D3X and 28-70mm lens with R1C1 kit.
Thermal Diodes.
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp.
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter.

All results are gained from multiple test runs to ensure any abnormalities are removed before publication.

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