The Lenovo ThinkPad X100e is a thin, light, and low power laptop aimed at business customers, or anyone who prefers a pointing stick to a touchpad and doesn’t mind a somewhat boxy design. Lenovo recently rolled out the option to configure the mini-laptop with a dual core AMD Neo processor, and the company sent me one of the new models to review.
At first glance, I see a lot to like about this little laptop. The overall design is very professional, and while it’s been years since I used a TrackPoint-style pointing stick, I can definitely see how it could be easier to use than a touchpad since your hand doesn’t have to move from the keyboard — although it definitely takes a little getting used to. Fortunately there’s also a normal touchpad for users who prefer to use one.
The chiclet-style keyboard is large and comfortable to use. And since the 6-cell battery protrudes from the back of the laptop instead of the bottom, it doesn’t add much height to the laptop, which is about 1.2 inches thick.
What really sets this notebook apart from most other thin and light laptops I’ve reviewed is the chipset. The demo unit Lenovo sent me has a 1.6GHz dual core AMD Turion NEO X2 L625 processor and ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics. I’ll be putting the laptop through the paces over the coming days to see how it stacks up in terms of battery life and overall performance,.
The Lenovo X100e is available from Lenovo.com for $449 and up, although a dual core model will cost you a bit more. The demo unit I’m testing starts at $529
, and would actually run a bit more since it has 2GB of RAM and Windows 7 Professional.