Review Lenovo ThinkPad X130e Notebook
Till Schönborn (translated by Vinay Pradhan), 04/17/2012
Laptop for Students.
The new Lenovo X130e is designed for students who need a reliable
notebook with long battery life. ThinkPad is famous for their amazing
build quality, but their models are also known to have a few weak
points. So read our in-depth review to find out more about the ThinkPad
X130e.
Luxurious
"Ultrabooks" and stylish tablets are the latest craze, but not every
buyer is comfortable with these new trends. High prices scare off
students and not everyone is ready to leave the familiar x86 platform
yet.
An alternative to weak netbooks is the classic subnotebook. Lenovo impressed us in this category with the ThinkPad X121e, which has high mobility, good multimedia capability and low emissions - all for a fair price.
Unlike its predecessor, the new ThinkPad X130e has a more robust case and it offers the latest hardware inside a matt 11.6 inch case. The fastest AMD ULV-APU, the E-450 (1.65 GHz), 4 GB RAM and a 320 GB hard disk work together to deliver enough performance to tackle everyday tasks. The price of this test model is about 460 Euros (including OS), making this test model one of the cheapest ThinkPad laptops on the market today.
MSI's Wind U270 and Samsung's 305U1A have
similar hardware and different strengths. Can the Lenovo test model
keep up with the competition? We intend to explore that in the following
review.
Case
The
ThinkPad series consists of plain-looking laptops with amazing build
quality. The look of the X130e takes us back 10 years. This impression
is conveyed by the wide display borders, which measures almost 3 cm at the top and the bottom. The test model weighs more than 1.7 kgs which makes this an exceptionally heavy 11.6 inch notebook. Overall, the laptop seems plump and heavy.
The matt synthetic case (made of polycarbonate
and ABS) may not be fashionable but it is practical: fingerprints and
scratches are kept at bay. The workmanship is amazing - precisely fitted materials, small gaps and great feel. The chassis of the X130e is very sturdy and it is impervious to pressure.
The display is held by stiff hinges which do their job well and
prevent the screen from shaking. The display has a nice rubber edge,
which, when closed, seals the laptop off from dust and other unwanted
intruders. The nicely rounded, sturdy edges are meant to minimize the damage from a fall; of course, we did not test this feature. The sturdiness of the display cover is great, but this is not surprising as it measures more than 10 mm.
The competition (MSI Wind U270)
offers good workmanship and sturdiness, but it is inferior to the
ThinkPad X130e. Samsung should learn from Lenovo's example and improve
the case of the 305U1A,
as their laptop performs poorly in this section. We once again remind
the reader that the ThinkPad X130e offers a high sturdiness because of
its thick build.
Connectivity
The X130e has the usual connectivity of a compact subnotebook. Three USB ports (USB 2.0) are provided on the laptop. Their performance is poor:
a mere 25 MB/s. Optimally these interfaces should deliver 50% higher
performance but we would have been happy with 30 MB/s. A modern USB 3.0
interface (as in the MSI Wind U270) would have been a great plus for this model.
VGA and HDMI interfaces take care
of display output to an external monitor, but only one interface can be
used at a time. Sound output can be delivered via HDMI interface or 3.5 mm audio jack, which is also compatible with a microphone or headset. The 4-in-1 card reader (SD, SDHC, SDXC, MMC), GBit LAN and Kensington Lock round off the connectivity of the test model.
The positioning of the ports could have been
better. Lenovo has placed all the interfaces on the left and right sides
of the laptop and this will easily lead to a cable spaghetti if
multiple ports are simultaneously used. Thankfully, the ports are
well-spaced and will not block the neighboring interfaces while they are
in use. In fact, Lenovo even went a little overboard (unlike in the X121e) and has made it possible to connect both ends of a USB Y cable to the notebook.
Communication
The WLAN module (manufactured by Broadcom) enables users to connect to wireless networks with the IEEE standard: 802.11b/g/n.
The module can achieve speeds of up to 150 MB/s (1x1). Some models
offer an a/b/g/n module which can access the 5 GHz frequency and achieve
speeds up to 300 MB/s. Bluetooth 3.0 is also on-board and can be deactivated, like the WLAN, with an Fn key combination. An optional WWAN card (mini PCI Express) is essential for mobile devices but sadly the X130e is not provided with such a module.
Skype and other programs run well with the webcam despite the low resolution of 0.3 MP.
The picture may not be very detailed but the webcam delivers a fluid
video feed with few distortions. The integrated microphone (hand-rest
region) could have been better, but for everyday use, the record quality
is sufficient.
Accessories
Lenovo delivers the essentials: warranty
documents and a Quick Start guide. There are few programs pre-installed
on the laptop. One of these is ThinkVantage Tools which provides
the user with a variety of security and backup options and can be used
to control power consumption and optimize battery life.
Maintenance
The bottom flap of the laptop comes off with little effort. RAM and HDD can be swapped out easily. Thankfully, there is an free RAM slot which makes upgrading easier. Lenovo has even gone one step further and placed the cables for a mini PCIe UMTS module in position. So the user only has to install the card and connect the cables. The cooler fan can also be easily cleaned.
Warranty
This test model can be found in various student shops and is sold with the standard 12 month warranty. An extension up to 3 years "On-Site Service" is possible for 80 Euros.
Input Devices
Keyboard
The input devices are the strength of the
ThinkPad models, and even the cheap X130e upholds this tradition
proudly. The test model is equipped with a black chiclet keyboard with
normal-sized keys (15 mm). The unconventional placement of the Print
and Page Up/Down keys can prove to be annoying. As in other Lenovo
models, the CTRL and Fn keys are swapped but their functions can be
changed in the BIOS. This keyboard is quite special as it is protected from water spills ("spill-resistant").
The typing feel may not be at the same level as
that of the ThinkPad T420 or other high-end models, but the test model
still offers good quality. The large stroke distance paired with the medium pressure point gives
the user good feedback. The experience would have been better if the
surface of the keyboard were more structured. The sturdiness is great:
typists will not find any weak spots on this keyboard. The quiet impact noise is the icing on the cake.
Trackpoint
This input device is familiar to many users
around the world. The small red input device is placed between the G, H
and B keys and allows the user to navigate the cursor quickly and precisely. The Trackpoint is a perfect mouse replacement thanks
to the buttons placed under the space bar (scrolling, left and right
click). The quality leaves no room for complaint. Some far more
expensive laptops should learn form the precise pressure point and quiet click of this input device.
Touchpad
The touchpad is less exciting. It has a nice surface structure and offers many of the great qualities found in the Trackpoint. Sadly though the surface area far too small: 75 x 38 mm. Multi-touch gestures are much harder due to the small size. The exceptional mouse keys and the amazing slide property of the touchpad can not make up for the size. This touchpad is meant for emergency use.
Display
The resolution of 1366x768 pixels
is standard for cheap 11.6 inch subnotebooks. The ThinkPad X130e has a
pixel density of 135 dpi which is a good compromise between work area
and letter size.
The LED backlight has a brightness of 173 cd/m²,
which falls to 142 cd/m² in the bottom right corner. Despite the matte
display surface, the laptop is not suited for use in bright
surroundings, as even indoors use requires the maximum brightness. In
fact, use of the laptop is much better in the dark and the brightness
has 15 levels which allows the user to almost deactivate it.
|
Information
Gossen Mavo-Monitor
Maximum: 187 cd/m²Average: 172.9 cd/m² Brightness Distribution: 76 % Center on Battery: 181 cd/m² Black: 1.24 cd/m² Contrast: 146:1
ICC File (Datacolor Spyder3Elite)
|
The notebook has a high black value of 1.24 cd/m² which translates to a contrast of 146:1. This value is typical for a cheap TN panel and the competition (MSI and Samsung) use similar low-quality displays, although at least the 305U1A has a decent illumination.
The display captures a mere 54% of the sRGB
color space - one of the poorest values we have seen. Few people intend
to use the ThinkPad for professional picture editing and we would like
to emphasize the fact that this panel is not suited for it. Thankfully,
the restricted color spectrum does not have an adverse affect on the everyday use of the laptop.
Outdoors use of
the laptop will be a problem as the brightness is too low. The display
is anti-glare, but due to the low brightness, the content on the screen
is barely legible in the sunlight. We can not understand why
Lenovo chose to cut costs in this area. We do not think that the X130e
would have been a lot more expensive if it had higher brightness.
The viewing angle stability is poor. Deviations in the vertical plane will result in color inverting and drop in contrast. The horizontal plane is more stable: slight deviations are tolerated well. This TN panel is not suited for multiple viewers.
The video output quality of the provided display interfaces is
decent. Although, the picture is not completely clear, VGA output is
good and has no flickers. We recommend the use of the HDMI interface
whenever possible.
Performance
Like the Samsung 305U1A or the MSI Wind U270, the Lenovo ThinkPad X130e uses the AMD E-450 as its processor. This CPU is clocked at 1.65 GHz and has two cores. The processor is based on the Bobcat architecture and delivers entry-level performance for netbooks and subnotebooks. Sadly, the user will not be provided with the latest features, such as AVX or AES-NI, but the TDP of the 40 nm Fusion APU is a mere 18 watts.
The Radeon HD 6320 IGP is tasked with the graphics of the laptop. This chip has over 80 shaders (VLIW5) which run at 500 MHz, and can be boosted up to 600 MHz (Turbo mode). The chip also supports DirectX 11 and
is thus one step ahead of its Intel IGP counterparts: the Sandy-Bridge
generation. The Intel IGPs can only support DirectX 10.1 at the moment.
A 320 GB HDD and 4 GB of RAM from
Samsung round off the hardware of the notebook. The RAM is clocked at
533 MHz (DDR3-1066), which will adversely affect the performance of the
laptop. Worse: the CPU can only support single channel mode and the
graphic chip hungers for more bandwidth.
System information for the Lenovo ThinkPad X130e
Processor
The E-450 scored as expected in our benchmarks. In the Cinebench R10 (64 bit), the laptop reached 1168 and 2223 points in
single- and multi-thread tests respectively. This is significantly
higher than the performance of the Intel Atom series. However, against
the ULV models of the Core generation, the AMD CPU falls behind. A Core i3-2367M, which is available for the X130e for a significant premium, delivers double the performance. Even the latest Cinebench R11.5 benchmark confirms this statement with a score of 0.62 points (i3-2367M: 1.33 points).
The E-450 delivers sufficient performance for everyday tasks such
as Office or surfing on the web. Some of the more detailed websites
take slightly longer to load and may stutter a bit while scrolling, but
otherwise the hardware of the test model ensures a fluid experience.
Help
|
... in comparison
Storage Drive
The Hitachi HDD (HTS543232A7A384) in our test model is relatively slow as it runs at 5400 rpm and has a 8 MB cache. The drive has a capacity of 320 GB and about 16 GB are reserved for the recovery partition. The rest of the drive is available as storage space for the user.
We did not measure great transfer rates: the HDD delivers 62.4 MB/s (on
average) in the HD Tune benchmark. This performance lies in the lower
midfield among the hard disks we have tested. A faster model which runs
at 7200 rpm can deliver better performance and reduce the access time to 20.0 milliseconds,
but installing a faster HDD will increase the noise and temperature
emissions. On the other hand, swapping out the drive for an SSD should
deliver high performance with low emissions (Windows start up drops
below 55 seconds and programs start instantaneously). The performance
boost will come at a high price as SSDs are quite expensive.
Hitachi Travelstar Z5K320 HTS543232A7A384
Transfer Rate Minimum:
40.1 MB/s
Transfer Rate Maximum:
80.6 MB/s
Transfer Rate Average:
62.4 MB/s
Access Time:
20 ms
Burst Rate:
82.1 MB/s
CPU Usage:
1 %
System Performance
A cheap ULV CPU and a lazy hard drive ensure low scores in the system benchmarks. The test model scores 2181 points in PCMark Vantage and 943 points in PCMark 7 - the same level as an MSI Wind U270 or a Samsung 305U1A. Similarly priced 15.6 inch notebooks include the Acer Aspire 5750G,
which takes a big lead thanks to its faster processor. The user should
avoid intense multi-tasking or detailed video editing on the X130e.
Help
|
... in comparison
Graphics
As feared, the slow DDR3-1066 modules throttle the graphics performance of the notebook significantly. The 3DMark 06 score of 2155 points is only slightly lower than the scores of the similarly-equipped competition. However, in 3DMark Vantage the ThinkPad loses about 20% performance and can only reach 751 points. There was very little loss in performance in the latest 3DMark 11 benchmark
but the fps dropped to single digits and the video stuttered a lot.
Thankfully, the performance of the CPU and graphics processor is not
limited during battery use.
AMD's latest video decoder, UVD3,
can play films and trailers fluidly up to 1080p. However, if the laptop
is occupied with another task, the video might freeze momentarily.
Help
|
... in comparison
Gaming Performance
Despite the fact that the Radeon HD 6320 is quite powerful for its price and form factor, the latest games refuse to run fluidly on
the laptop. We tested the following: Dirt 3, Fifa 12 and Anno 2070.
None of the games passed the 30 fps mark even though the settings were
all set to low. Users who run older games, such as Counter-Strike: Source or the network classic Warcraft 3, should not have any problems.
low | med. | high | ultra | ||
Dirt 3 (2011) | 25.2 | 12.8 | fps | ||
Fifa 12 (2011) | 27.5 | 18 | fps | ||
Anno 2070 (2011) | 25 | 9.7 | fps |
Emissions
System Noise
A power-saving Fusion APU should be able to run
quietly in a subnotebook. Lenovo could not quite achieve such a low
level of emission in our test model.
While idle, the cooler fan is off and the system emits 30.6 dB(A).
Now and then, the hard disk rises above this level to 31.3 dB(A) but it
is only audible if the user listens carefully. The drive gets louder as
soon if a program demands more resources and this is always the case as
the E-450 offers meager performance. The resulting 33.5 dB(A) are
barely noticeable in a noisy environment, but in quiet surroundings,
the emission is audible but not distracting. A plus point of the laptop
is the constant and low frequency noise emitted by the cooler fan. This is far better (subjectively) than having a cooler fan which continuously turns up and down.
Whether idle, or under full load, the noise
emission stay constant over long periods of time. The measurement device
recorded a maximum 35.4 dB(A) when we ran FurMark and Prime95 together on the laptop. Overall, the X130e performs similarly to the Samsung 305U1A. The Wind U270 from MSI can not fit in the same class with its maximum emissions of 40.8 dB(A).
Noise Level
Idle |
30.6 / 30.6 / 33.5 dB | ||||
HDD |
31.3 dB | ||||
Load |
33.5 / 35.4 dB | ||||
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30 dB silent |
40 dB audible |
50 dB loud |
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min: , med: , max: Voltcraft SL-300 (15 cm distance)
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Temperature
The surface of the laptop can heat up to 27 degrees Celsius (room temperature: 22.1 degrees Celsius) while idle. This is barely noticeable and we did not notice any hot spots.
The bottom of the laptop reaches around 29 degrees Celsius and stays
far from critical temperatures which would prevent the use of the X130e
on the lap.
Long periods of full load (stress test) will raise the temperature emission by 2 to 4 degrees. The ThinkPad X130e performs magnificently in this department. The E-450 has a TDP of 18 W and we could measure a maximum 72 degrees Celsius from
it. This means that the system will not overheat easily, even if it is
outdoors in the hot summer sun or if the laptop vents are clogged with
dust. Throttling, errors and other stability issues were not measurable
at any point.
Max. Load
Idle
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Maximum: 27.7 °C Average: 27.1 °C | Maximum: 29.3 °C Average: 29 °C |
Speakers
The X130e is not designed to be a great
entertainer and thus Lenovo places little value in the speakers. The
stereo speakers hidden under the keyboard deliver sound which leaves much to be wished. Music output is made up of a range of high tones and the speakers are not very loud. These speakers are cheap devices which are good enough for a Skype call or the playback of a trailer.
The headphone jack is far better. This
interface delivers good sound even through HiFi models such as the AKG K
701. We recommend the use of the HDMI interface for home systems as
this interface can transmit the signals of multiple channels.
Battery Life
Power Consumption
The extremely low 4.2 W minimum power consumption may seem amazing at first, but this value can only be reached if the display backlight is nearly off. 6.6 to 7.7 watts are more realistic values while the laptop is idle and the WLAN is on. This is far below the power consumption values of the MSI and Samsung competition.
The X130e reaches a mere 15.9 (3DMark 06) to (maximum) 21.8 watts under load.
These are great values for a system and no other laptop with AMD's
E-450 could perform so well in our previous tests. These low value are
probably thanks to the notebook's relatively low maximum brightness.
The 65 watts power adapter is over-dimensioned, but it stays cool while charging.
Current consumption
Off / Standby | 0 / 0.2 Watt |
Idle | 4.2 / 6.6 / 7.7 Watt |
Load |
15.9 / 21.8 Watt |
Key: min: , med: , max: Voltcraft VC 940 |
Battery Life
Lenovo proclaims a maximum battery life of 9.2 hours and our measurements record even more: 669 minutes which is more than 11 hours. The 62 Wh battery lasted this long in the Battery Eater Reader's test, in which the communication modules were switched off and the brightness was set to minimum.
The WLAN test is much more practical: the ThinkPad lasts a great 7 hours and 7 minutes.
The laptop loaded various websites and played some HD videos at a
brightness of 150 cd/m². This is a simulation of everyday usage of the
X130e.
Users, who need this subnotebook for intense
processing or playing games on-the-go, will need to plug it in for
charging after about 3 hours. This is a comfortable runtime: after 60 minutes, the battery can be charged to 75% (100%: 134 minutes). In comparison to the Samsung 305U1A, which needs a full 4 hours to charge, the X130e is ready much faster.
Battery runtime
Idle (without WLAN, min brightness) | 11h 9min | |
Surfing with WLAN | 7h 07min | |
Load (maximum brightness) | 3h 01min | |
Verdict
The question on every reader's mind: can the buyer expect a real ThinkPad for less than 500 Euros? After all, even the predecessor, X121e, showed one or two flaws when we looked closer.
The X130e is a different story: even when compared to far more expensive laptops, the workmanship quality is amazing.
The design may be old but the laptop was never meant to be part of a
fashion show. The biggest disadvantage of this robust build is the heavy weight, which is noticeably higher than the competition.
Lenovo has picked the right CPU for the job:
the AMD E-450. Users should not expect amazing performance from the
Fusion APU but the extremely low consumption values and the thereby resulting long battery life are
great pros for the X130e, as they allow the subnotebook to be used an
entire day on-the-go. The decision to upgrade to the Intel alternative
(Core i3-2367M) is free for each user to make. The upgrade will deliver
more performance but will come at a high price.
We lament the missing USB 3.0 interface and
the somewhat small touchpad (the input devices are otherwise
exceptional). Thankfully, the ThinkPad has few major flaws, such as the display, which prevents the notebook from reaching an excellent rating. The screen is matt but far too dark for outdoors use.
Students who need a mobile but sturdy laptop for
the university will find the ThinkPad X130e to be a good fit. Other
buyers should take a look at the more outdoors-friendly Samsung 305U1A and MSI Wind U270 with USB 3.0.
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