The ThinkPad X200 Tablet, the latest convertible business notebook from Lenovo, combines the portability of LAPTOP’s Editors’ Choice award–winning ThinkPad X200, with the excellent tablet functionality of the ThinkPad X60 and X61. It may lack an optical drive and a touchpad, but it’s still one of the best tablets of the year thanks to smooth performance, durability, and numerous wireless options.
Design
The first thing you’ll notice about the X200 Tablet is its light weight; it’s almost mini-notebook light. According to Lenovo, the X200 Tablet with the four-cell battery weighs just 3.5 pounds. Our review unit, which came with the eight-cell battery (which protrudes out the back), weighs in at 4.2 pounds. This is achieved through use of a lightweight carbon-fiber and glass-fiber shell to protect the screen, which has the added effect of extending the range of the wireless antenna. The bottom of the chassis is made of a magnesium alloy, which provides extra durability.
The X200 Tablet sports a full-size, spill-resistant keyboard, which of course has the comfortable, tried-and-true ThinkPad design; the keys are very responsive and seem almost to leap back up to meet your fingers. As with the ThinkPad X200, Lenovo has eschewed its usual TrackPoint-and-touchpad combination in favor of only a TrackPoint to streamline the system. That may seem like an odd choice to some, but veteran ThinkPad users and novices should have no problems navigating the 12.1-inch display with just the stick.
Above the keyboard are keys for raising, lowering, and muting audio, and the familiar ThinkVantage button, which launches Lenovo utilities for managing power, wireless, and other settings. The perimeter of the X200 Tablet features three USB 2.0 ports, VGA, 5-in-1 memory card reader, ExpressCard/34/54, Ethernet, modem, and headphone/mic jacks. The left side of the machine has a switch for toggling Wi-Fi on and off. The system lacks an optical drive, so if you want to watch Blu-ray discs or DVDs, you’ll have to invest in the ThinkPad X200 UltraBase ($219).
X200 Tablet Touchscreen
Unlike previous ThinkPad tablets, which only allowed users to rotate their screens in one direction, the ThinkPad X200 Tablet offers the ability to swivel the screen a full 360 degrees, which should prove a technological godsend to southpaws. In addition, it sports a low-reflectivity panel that keeps the screen legible in sunlight. The 1280 x 800-pixel resolution screen served up a minimum amount of glare when we watched Hulu or YouTube clips in the morning sun, and had a wide viewing range.
According to Lenovo, the touchscreen now requires 28 percent less pressure than before to register inputs, and it can better detect the stylus. The stylus, which slides into the right side of the chassis, is very light and has a slightly rubberized skin, making it comfortable to hold. Although the X200 Tablet we received had an LED-backlit screen that recognizes only stylus inputs, two other options will be available: a traditional CCFL panel that also recognizes only pen inputs, and an LED-backlit panel capable of pen and fingertouch input. When we rotated the X200 into tablet mode, the screen quickly responded, changing its orientation in just under 2 seconds.
The X200 Tablet sensed the stylus when it was nearly three-quarters of an inch away from the screen—an improvement over the X61 Tablet. Handwriting detection was very accurate; the writing pad application understood almost all of our chicken scratch. If you would rather peck away at individual letters, you can opt to use an on-screen keyboard.
Adjacent to the screen are easily accessible buttons that complement the tablet functionality. These allowed us to rotate the screen, access menu shortcuts (for managing connections, brightness, volume, and more), power the machine on and off, and disable the tablet buttons.
