Picked up an X230.

S

swoop56

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 14, 2002
Messages
418
Picked up a Lenovo X230 about 2 weeks ago and wanted to share my experience/joy. I upgraded from an Asus UL20A, which itself was a 12" laptop with a 1.3Ghz Dual core ULV CPU. So this thing has been a huge boost in performance.

The day after it arrived I dropped in 16GB of RAM and a 480GB OCZ Vertex 3 LP SSD. It was a really simple operation. Reinstalling Win7 went without a hitch.

I also picked up all 3 batteries for it. The 4 Cell 44, the 6 cell 44+ and the 9 cell 44++. Using a stopwatch to measure use time here are the rough numbers.

44 Provides 2 hours and 10 minutes of life.
44+ gives 4 hours and 50 minutes.
44++ gives 7 hours and 30 minutes.

I typically had my brightness set between 11 and 13, max is 15 and it is very bright. Mostly ordinary internet use with some youtube videos thrown in and photo editing in Lightroom. I stopped my stopwatch whenever I put it to sleep, and started again when I turned it on. Power savings was set on High Performance.


x230_1.jpg

Next to a Kindle for size comparison. Which is about the same size as a Nexus 7.

x230_2.jpg

The 9 cell lasts all day but it makes it a bit heavier and the rear sticks out.

x230_3.jpg

The 4 cell makes it a very light and compact laptop. But the battery life is short.

x230_4.jpg

All 3 batteries from the top.

x230_5.jpg

The 3 batteries from the side. You can see the size differences. The 44 fits right into the laptop. The 44+ sticks out the bottom a bit. And the 44++ sticks out the bottom as much as the 6 cell but it also juts out the rear as well.

x230_6.jpg

44++

x230_7.jpg

44+

x230_8.jpg

44
 
Thanks for the pictures and review!

You said you had no trouble reinstalling Win7 on the x230 -- what did you do about the recovery partition or whatever? Does your ThinkVantage button work? (You might not care about it much)

Cheers! thanks again.
 
thanks man. Interesting
Only 2 hours on the default battery - disappointing (not you, the X230)

can you check it with something like the battery eater test?

also, is this the premium screen?
 
junky said:
thanks man. Interesting
Only 2 hours on the default battery - disappointing (not you, the X230)

can you check it with something like the battery eater test?

also, is this the premium screen?
Click to expand...

The default battery isn't the 4-cell, it's the 6-cell.
 
junky said:
thanks man. Interesting
Only 2 hours on the default battery - disappointing (not you, the X230)

can you check it with something like the battery eater test?

also, is this the premium screen?
Click to expand...

The OP was also running in a non-standard benchmark way too. Running in high performance with screen at that brightness is a bit more than normal. For him, the benchmark is valid..compared to other laptop review then not so much. I can trash a laptop battery in 30 minutes with the right program running.
 
This might sound silly, but do you happen to know roughly how much was the reduction in battery life after the upgrade to 16GB of RAM? Thanks.
 
OrangeWolf said:
Thanks for the pictures and review!

You said you had no trouble reinstalling Win7 on the x230 -- what did you do about the recovery partition or whatever? Does your ThinkVantage button work? (You might not care about it much)

Cheers! thanks again.
Click to expand...

I did make a recovery disk using the included Utility but didn't use it to Install Win7. I had an OEM DVD of Win7 from a previous desktop build and used that to install the OS. Before I did that, I downloaded all the drivers for the X230 from Lenovo's website.

I did have one issue, I lost the original USB cable to my external DVD drive and for whatever reason when it's plugged in the X230 will not boot up. Took my awhile to figure out it was the cable. What I ended up doing was using a different computer to transfer the Win7 DVD to a bootable Thumb Drive and just installed from that. It went perfect from there. I installed Win7 from the thumb drive, then I installed all the drivers from a separate thumb drive, and it works great.

Also, My ThinkVantage button does nothing now. I'm pretty sure it's only for Lenovo's custom software. Would have been nice to use it for something else but it's no big deal.
 
Des789 said:
This might sound silly, but do you happen to know roughly how much was the reduction in battery life after the upgrade to 16GB of RAM? Thanks.
Click to expand...

No idea. Also my system does have the premium IPS LCD.

Full Specs.

Win7 Home Premium
12.5" Premium IPS LCD 2x2 Antenna
i7-3520M 2.9Ghz to 3.6Ghz
16GB DDR3 PC1600
480GB OCZ Vertex 3 LP SSD
Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 Wi-Fi
Backlit Keyboard
 
Last edited:
A tangent:

I got an X220 last spring. I've been quite happy with it, until last week. I dropped it about 4 inches on to a desk -- I was opening the screen with one hand, and the hinge is still stiff enough that the bottom of the laptop came up, and the whole thing slipped out of my hand. I opened it up normally, and the screen wasn't working properly.

The Thinkpad splash screen would show up, with what looked like some sort of electrical interference, and then the whole screen would go black. The computer was still on, and the CPU was working fine; I was able to hook up an external display with no issues.

I'm out of warranty (I'll probably spring for the 3 year in the future -- lesson learned). I figured I'd see if there was something obvious loose inside the machine. I downloaded the Lenovo service manual, followed the directions, and had the keyboard, touchpad bezel, and keyboard bezel off in about 15 minutes. Reconnected the monitor connections in the base, and reassembled.

The machine wouldn't even boot now. I was getting a post code -- 1 long beep, followed by two short. The LCD was completely non-functioning now.

So, I took it all apart again. This time, I removed the LCD display, and disconnected the wiring to it. Reassembled everything, and it booted right up. The experience cost me about two hours work, and the black screws on the bottom of the machine show a little silver now.

I was irritated that such a short drop caused the screen to go on the fritz, but I can't explain how gratifying it is to have a machine that I can just fix, sensibly put together, extremely well documented, etc.
 
Not trying to threadjack, but saw your post and thought about pricing one of these out again (been checking lenovo.com off and on for awhile now, just never pulled the trigger). It looks like they have jacked the prices up on these at least $200 since my last check. That includes using the Barnes and Noble pricing.
 
cvgd said:
A tangent:

I got an X220 last spring. I've been quite happy with it, until last week. I dropped it about 4 inches on to a desk -- I was opening the screen with one hand, and the hinge is still stiff enough that the bottom of the laptop came up, and the whole thing slipped out of my hand. I opened it up normally, and the screen wasn't working properly.

The Thinkpad splash screen would show up, with what looked like some sort of electrical interference, and then the whole screen would go black. The computer was still on, and the CPU was working fine; I was able to hook up an external display with no issues.

I'm out of warranty (I'll probably spring for the 3 year in the future -- lesson learned). I figured I'd see if there was something obvious loose inside the machine. I downloaded the Lenovo service manual, followed the directions, and had the keyboard, touchpad bezel, and keyboard bezel off in about 15 minutes. Reconnected the monitor connections in the base, and reassembled.

The machine wouldn't even boot now. I was getting a post code -- 1 long beep, followed by two short. The LCD was completely non-functioning now.

So, I took it all apart again. This time, I removed the LCD display, and disconnected the wiring to it. Reassembled everything, and it booted right up. The experience cost me about two hours work, and the black screws on the bottom of the machine show a little silver now.

I was irritated that such a short drop caused the screen to go on the fritz, but I can't explain how gratifying it is to have a machine that I can just fix, sensibly put together, extremely well documented, etc.
Click to expand...

It's good you were able to fix it - but I'm not at all surprised that this "military tested" laptop had issues with such a fall.

It's not built as well as everyone here likes to think, starting to think some people work for Lenovo here. I have an x230 myself (5th one, finally decided to accept it), and it's still not built superb. It has worse craftsmanship than an $299 Acer I returned.

Overall though, it feels like a somewhat sturdy chassis and I'm sure it's the best built laptop on the PC side, it's nice - but the craftsmanship leaves something to be desired.
 
Deinos said:
Not trying to threadjack, but saw your post and thought about pricing one of these out again (been checking lenovo.com off and on for awhile now, just never pulled the trigger). It looks like they have jacked the prices up on these at least $200 since my last check. That includes using the Barnes and Noble pricing.
Click to expand...
Maybe they are increasing it by $200 now so that they can offer $200 more dollars off for Cyber Monday... hahaha.
 
I've been tossing my X220 around like it's a Panasonic Toughbook and it's been fine. I did replace the platter drive with an mSATA SSD, though.

As people have noted, it's very easy to open up and tinker with. I've taken it apart to install an mSATA drive and an aftermarket Intel Centrino 6205-N WiFi card. The documentation is superb, offering a video that shows how to completely disassemble and reassemble the laptop.

If you do a full format your ThinkVantage button won't work. That functionality is installed on the separate recovery partition. You can install all of the ThinkPad software via the Lenovo site so don't worry about having lost anything.

In normal usage, I get roughly 10-11 hours with my X220 w/ 9-cell battery running Ubuntu 12.04LTS. In Win7 I'd get slightly better (around 12 hours) battery life due to better and more frugal drivers. That's with 4/15 brightness and some tweaking in BIOS, like turning off irrelevant I/O.
 
pelo said:
If you do a full format your ThinkVantage button won't work. That functionality is installed on the separate recovery partition. You can install all of the ThinkPad software via the Lenovo site so don't worry about having lost anything.
Click to expand...
So reinstalling all the software will also reinstall the functionality for the button to get it to work? I know it's stupid to keep bringing this up, but something just bugs me about it not working on a machine (especially if I have the software and whatnot installed for it to work -- I used it to save my butt at least 3-4 times on my old Thinkpad, it helped me reinstall without losing a lot of data, and so on. Far better than I could have managed without it.)

At any rate... if there's a deal up Cyber Monday I think I'm gonna buy one.
 
OrangeWolf said:
So reinstalling all the software will also reinstall the functionality for the button to get it to work? I know it's stupid to keep bringing this up, but something just bugs me about it not working on a machine (especially if I have the software and whatnot installed for it to work -- I used it to save my butt at least 3-4 times on my old Thinkpad, it helped me reinstall without losing a lot of data, and so on. Far better than I could have managed without it.)

At any rate... if there's a deal up Cyber Monday I think I'm gonna buy one.
Click to expand...

Just leave the recovery partition alone. You only need to reformat the OS partition to do a clean install, the recovery partition is separate for exactly this reason.

If for some reason you do have to reinstall the recovery software (like b/c your HDD dies), it is possible to do so. But it shouldn't be an issue when just doing a clean OS install.
 
Ah, cool. I was planning to format the OS partition and just use it as storage, then install an SDD and put Windows7 on that (still leaving the recovery partition alone).

Perfect, thanks.
 
OrangeWolf said:
Ah, cool. I was planning to format the OS partition and just use it as storage, then install an SDD and put Windows7 on that (still leaving the recovery partition alone).

Perfect, thanks.
Click to expand...

You can just make a recovery USB and wipe the partition if you want the extra space. I believe it takes just over 8GB so if you've got a 16GB USB stick that should suffice.

I do recommend reinstalling some of the software, though. Their battery management software is absolutely top notch.
 
Adreneline said:
It's good you were able to fix it - but I'm not at all surprised that this "military tested" laptop had issues with such a fall.

It's not built as well as everyone here likes to think, starting to think some people work for Lenovo here. I have an x230 myself (5th one, finally decided to accept it), and it's still not built superb. It has worse craftsmanship than an $299 Acer I returned.

Overall though, it feels like a somewhat sturdy chassis and I'm sure it's the best built laptop on the PC side, it's nice - but the craftsmanship leaves something to be desired.
Click to expand...

I abuse the hell out of my x200 tablet and I've never encountered a problem. I work with it in freezing and hot temperatures and expose it to a lot of dust. Not once have I ever thought, "Well I better be gentle with a laptop with a single hinge." I throw the bastard from a few feet up onto the ground without hesitation. I never use a special notebook sleeve or backpack to carry it around. It has been on planes and trains in a standard backpack several times. I have had it for a few years now and it is still running strong with no scratches or bruises, except it lost the rubber foot in the middle of the base which doesn't impact it at all. I can't vouch for the newest Thinkpads, but goddamn I love mine :)
 
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