Note that this is less of a review of the laptop itself, but more about the history, design, competition, and where it leads us now.
I feel like a lot of people would point to this and call it an "ultrabook", and while it meets most of Intel's requirements for the "Huron River" ultrabook platform, it came four years early so it doesn't use Sandy Bridge CPUs. This is classified as a subnotebook, a class that either no longer really exists or has been merged with everything else, I don't really know
I like to think so given the fact that it's a sub-3lb laptop with upgradable RAM, SSD, hot-swap battery, WiFi, optical drive/battery, and I believe WWAN. I see, all the time, thicker and heavier laptops that don't have a fraction of the upgradability that this tiny thing does. I like a nice heavy laptop, but not when it's a crummy overheating ultrabook shoved in a big case.
While I'm not quite sure, I believe this machine was built mostly to compete with the MacBook Air. I can't find too many other similarly-classed laptops with similar CPUs. It's like the MacBook Air in screen size, 13.3", thickness, I believe both are around 2cm. While the ThinkPad X300 costed about $600 more than the MacBook Air ($2400 vs $1800 original MSRP), it was so much better even in raw specs that it made up for that.
The MacBook had an 80GB IDE iPod hard drive. The X300 had a 64GB 1.8" SATA SSD and the X301 up to 128GB, and while the MacBook Air had a better CPU on paper, the Core 2 Duo P7500, the cooling system was so bad that it was actually outperformed by the SL7100 in the ThinkPad that used less than half as much power. YIKES. According to notebookcheck (incredible website btw), the X300 scored over 1100 points better in PCMark 05, plus it had the way faster SSD and an optical drive bay.
While the MacBook Air also had the option for a 64GB SSD, it was still using the horribly slow IDE bus, may as well use an iFlash kit.
I own an X301! Mine has a Core 2 Duo SU9400, 4GB of RAM, and a 120GB SSD. It's actually quite performant but the screen kinda sucks. Overall I do really like it though. The speakers are quite good which I would expect for a $2900 laptop as configured.... They are on the palmrest though, which I consider a pretty stupid design decision, but regardless they sound very clear. Could use some bass though, but those are easily found in the water, which I happen to live near.
I personally think that the design spirit behind this short-lived series was more or less lost with the X1 Carbon that came after this and the original X1, which I should probably drag into the mix. The X1 really wasn't like the X301 except in screen size. Gone was the ULV processor for a higher power 2nd gen Core i M series one. Another yikes, the battery life on that thing sucked. It also had a far worse screen, worse keyboard, and worse build. Although it did cost $1000 less, but I'm fairly certain that the X301 would've come down in price.
I know someone's probably screaming at their monitor about the X390 and X13 series that came in 2019. That was never a replacement for the X301. I personally think that the X1 Carbon was more of a continuation of the very basic idea of the X300 series, an expensive, light, high-end ultraportable. The only problem is that instead of replacable RAM and batteries in a 1.8cm laptop, everything is soldered and screwed in place in a 1.9cm one. And that's where the rabbit hole started. Nowadays, everything from the P16 to the X1 Nano has non-replacable batteries and limited port selection. And the rest of the industry followed Apple all because their terrible laptop costed a few hundred less. Weird times.
While I think technological progress is a good thing, it'as also enabled some really bad design choices (eMMC, anyone?). I could go on about CPU performance causing lazy developers but this is about design, not performance. Now that I own a ThinkPad X301, I've realized that I don't hate thin laptops, I just hate ones are flimsy not upgradable.
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