Amidst all the elegant, sleek and high-priced notebooks in the market designed to provide a luxurious experience, Lenovo has come up with a different design this time. Targeted at school-going and university students, and mainly intended for rugged usage, Lenovo ThinkPad X130e is most suitable for basic educational tasks at an affordable price of $469.

Basic Features

Lenovo ThinkPad X130e is a general-purpose, portable notebook with a full keyboard and a touchpad, along with a webcam on the top of the screen, Bluetooth connectivity and Wi-Fi. It has 2 GB RAM and up to 320 GB of hard-drive storage capacity with a rotation speed of 7,200 rpm, and an 11.6 inches matte display with a screen resolution of 1366 x 768. The processor is AMD E-450 with a speed of 1.3 GHz.

There are no ports at the front or back of the notebook. However, it consists of various ports on both its left and right sides, including USB ports, card reader slot, a headphones/microphone jack (combined), VGA and HDMI ports, power outlet and LAN. In contrast to its predecessor, Lenovo ThinkPad X130e also includes extra features to provide external protection, which makes it slightly heavier than various other similar models available in the market (e.g. HP Pavilion dm1z). It comes in red matte lids available on special bids; otherwise the standard lid color is black.

Pros

The rugged exterior and additional features of protection – which include stronger ports, rounded corners and improved hinges as well as a rubber covering on its edge – make Lenovo ThinkPad X130e an ideal notebook for rough usage. It also includes Active Protection™ software and a built-in accelerometer to act as a ‘cushion’ for the hard drive against falls. The combination of these features makes this notebook resistant to rough use and enables it to withstand the effects of everyday travelling.

The full ‘chiclet’ keyboard provides a comfortable typing experience with an additional benefit of being resistant to water spills. Other than that, it includes a superior-quality Trackpoint device which acts as a substitute for mouse, and allows for quick and easy cursor navigation on the screen. The 62 Wh battery lasts for almost 7-8 hours (as indicated by MobileMark 2007 test). This run-time is reduced for those using it for extensive gaming or processing, in which case it requires charging every 3 hours.

Cons

An evident drawback of this notebook is its small touchpad, which might prove to be uncomfortable for some users with big fingers. Moreover, the design is quite old and outdated in comparison with the competitors’ products, and it lacks in style and luxury. But again, it was never meant to provide a ‘luxurious’ experience, thus it is compensated by its robust build and additional features of protection. Another major flaw is the low brightness of the display, which makes it almost impossible to make out the content on the screen in bright sunlight.

Verdict

In one word, the Lenovo ThinkPad X130e can be described as ‘durable’ or ‘sturdy’. Considering all of its pros and cons, it offers an ideal solution for students and users on-the-go in less than $500, with an above-average capability to handle basic, day-to-day tasks such as web-surfing, word-processing as well as gaming.