The Thinkpad X270 looks exactly like the very first Thinkpad. Confusingly they all look the same. And for the build quality Lenovo carried over from IBM, given a chance to choose between an Apple MacBook Pro/Air, I would happily choose a Lenovo Thinkpad with my eyes closed.
I have had the chance to use many Thinkpads throughout my career. Starting with a T61p to an X270 now. But this time around the X270 is my personal laptop, and I got a deal for a hardly used laptop from one of my friends who sells used computers.
Why the Thinkpad X270 and not a T series Thinkpad?
Let me be honest, I will never buy a new Thinkpad. Not because I don’t want a brand new one, but the X series in particular comes with a price tag that questions your existence. This very laptop that I have if I would have bought brand new retailed at INR 1, 55, 000 and I got this one for a fraction of that price.
I was seriously thinking about a ROG notebook from Asus, but when I checked with a couple of my friends who are regular gamers, the one thing I came across was the battery backup and portability. Two of Thinkpad’s best party tricks.
So I decided to go with something robust and a proven workhorse for my daily stuff which involves checking emails, browsing the web, online streaming and the general usage. And sometimes a bit of mild gaming too. What I wanted was simple, function over form and any Thinkpad has got that in spades. So the X270 then, it looks exactly like the X260. Matte black and boring, business as usual. It doesn’t grab anybody’s attention, doesn’t have a lit logo of a half bitten fruit and is not a style statement. Perfect! Exactly what I wanted.
Performance
The X270 that I have comes with an Intel Core i5 6300U. Not the kind of chip you would use for gaming or anything of that sort but, it is fast if you pair it with a system configured with an SSD like what I have. The SSD in my system is a SanDisk with 128GB of storage. Although the specifications of the hard drive doesn’t look supersonic, it does what it is meant to do reasonably fast, and I am a happy camper with that. The performance for most thinkpads is never really a concern. However, if you are looking for some serious productivity like graphics, video editing or anything CPU intensive, you’d be better off with the T or the P series, than the X270. The X series is for the person who wants a proper work notebook which give him/her a ton of battery backup, a beautiful typing experience with the legendary thinkpad keyboard and so on. However, if you throw anything at it which asks for more juice from the CPU, and because of its small form factor, I noticed that the fan starts up and it runs a bit hotter than usual. But as I write this review with Amazon Music, Chrome and HWMonitor programs open, my current CPU temperature is steady at 46 degree Celsius. Definitely not the kind of temperature that could fry your lap.
Battery Backup
As I write this review, (I love the concept of 2 batteries than being dead in the water with one when the juice runs out) the battery 1 is at 99% and battery 2 is at 28% and in use at 50% brightness on the full HD LED screen that this comes with and connected on a 5GHZ wifi connection. The backup time is a whopping 6 hours and a couple of minutes. That for a second hand scooter money is absolutely impressive.
Snob Value and Final Thoughts
Make no mistake, the Thinkpad is either a small or a big black box with a keyboard and a screen, which is exactly why I like it. It gets whatever you want to do with it without the trouble of you searching for specific dongles to connect various things to your laptop. And if you are buying it and want people to take note of your purchase, look elsewhere. People would casually think that black box is your work laptop and leave it there. It is a total sleeper and I love that about every thinkpad out there.
The only thing that bothered me with the X270 like I mentioned in the performance section is the heat management. Except for the W510 which I used to have at work once upon a time. You can say that was because it had a first generation Core I7 chip and it got incredibly hot. For example if I were to play a pretty old game like the NFS Most Wanted for a while, the CPU can get really hot and that I believe it is something to blame with the 6300U chip itself, but otherwise, if you ever want to get a laptop you want use for the next 10 years, you could very well go for X270