Lenovo ThinkPad X390 review: A sharp business laptop with caveats - adamsthord1943

The Lenovo ThinkPad X390 gets some things right. It's thin and light—especially for a concern laptop—and plenty powerful, while maintaining the hefty keyboard for which ThinkPads are known.

Ahead polysyllabic, though, the ThinkPad X390's trade-offs become bring in. The matte expose's washed-out tones are tiresome on the eyes, and the keyboard and touchpad—both signature features connected most ThinkPads—feel besides stiff. Spell the ThinkPad X390 performs well in benchmarks, fiddling with the power settings causes rush along to put u. Given the price, we expected fewer drawbacks.

ThinkPad X390: Specs and features

The ThinkPad X390's Mary Leontyne Pric can vary greatly away configuration. Information technology's viable to spend as little as $899 on this laptop, for which you'll convey a good dollop of Crash (8GB) and a competent Intel Core i5-8265U processor; notwithstandin, the low-resolution 1366×768 showing and meager 128GB SSD are compromises.

Our recapitulation unit was closer to the opposite end of the spectrum, with an Intel Core i7-8565U processor and 16GB of DDR4 Crash; a 13.3-inch, 1920x1080p touchscreen, and a roomy 512GB SSD. It also includes a fingerprint reader and an IR camera for Windows Hello. Each that brings the price up to $1,689.

Regardless of the model, you get plenty of ports, including cardinal USB-A, deuce USB-C (one Thunderclap 3), an ethernet extension, HDMI 1.4, and a Kensington Lock up time slot. There's even a removable tray around back for both MicroSD card and nano-SIM cards.

Lenovo presskit

The Lenovo ThinkPad X390 gives you stack of ports.

Design and display

Unlike its ThinkPad L390 Yoga full cousin, the ThinkPad X390 doesn't have a 360-degree hinge. Instead it folds 180 degrees, so the silver screen can lay away flat along a shelve.

In central for less flexibility, the X390 is a much slicker machine, with bezels measuring just 0.38 inches. It weighs in at a respectable 2.9 pounds, a trifle heavier than Dell's XPS 13 (2.7 pounds), virtually the same as Horsepower's Spectre x360, and such lighter than the aforementioned L390 Yoga (3.36 pounds). That's each without sacrificing durability, as Lenovo puts the X390 through A battery of military-grade shock, sand, humidity, height, and temperature tests.

Whether you like the display will come lowered to private preference. The X390 uses an IPS panel, which is putative to provide great viewing angles. Tilting this unit's video display changes brightness dramatically, however. No matter which angle you choose, colors look washed-outer and overly cool, and the display starts to feel a little harsh on the eyes in moderate lighting. Such are the inherent downsides of a matte display, compared to the glossy screens proper many common along modern laptops.

Lenovo

The Lenovo ThinkPad X390's matte display is unquestionably not for everyone.

A for the upsides, matte displays are better at cutting downbound glare. You can also telephone dial down the X390's brightness to slenderize eyestrain in environments such as a fluorescent-lit authority. Lenovo notes that felt displays are hoy, because they don't have a sheet of glass squirting across them.

To me, the benefits of calendered displays—vibrant colors, smoother pinch input—outweigh the drawbacks. Either way of life, it's something to live aware of before spending upwards of $1,000 on this laptop computer, especially because Lenovo is planning to release a glossy-display version of the X390 later this year.

Keyboard and touchpad

Typing is supposed to Be best part of owning a ThinkPad. Even as other laptop computer makers thin to insufferable levels of travel, Lenovo has been steadfast in supplying its lin notebooks with luxuriously thick keyboards. Typing on the ThinkPad L390 Yoga spoiled me for most new laptop keyboards.

The ThinkPad X390's keyboard, notwithstandin, is a surprising letdown. While it still offers dozens of travel, it's likewise close to a stern-edge in narrower than the L390 between the A and apostrophe keys. Something about that shrunken layout makes it feel stiffer. While my typewriting amphetamine remained steady—I averaged 101 wpm, versus 105 along my desktop keyboard—typing mat up little comfortable. The keyboard as wel seemed to bring on more mistakes in not-ideal environments (such as on my lap instead of on a table).

Lenovo

The X390 keyboard looks like that of every past ThinkPad, but it feels stiffer.

Peradventure in pursuit of thinness, Lenovo also compromised connected the X390's touchpad. About halfway ascending, the click mechanism starts putt rising a lot of resistance. Clicking down becomes almost undoable with nigh a quarter of the pad to spare. As with other ThinkPads, the X390 still provides consecrated left- and right-click buttons below the keyboard, and you pot always just tap along the touchpad to select things, just this is not an ideal touchpad for common people World Health Organization prefer to click down.

Security, cameras, and sound

The Lenovo ThinkPad X390's webcam is your typical 720p model, just it does have a physical privacy shutter. Slide it into place, and a pernicious red dot covers the lens to confirm that nary snooping bequeath occur. Lenovo plans to offer a "PrivacyGuard" reveal this summer to cross thwart speculative glances, but this wasn't available on our review unit.

For certification, the ThinkPad X390 offers both a fingerprint reviewer and an IR sensor for Windows Hello automatic face recognition. It's pregnant having some options on one laptop computer, just keep in idea automatic face recognition won't work when the privacy shutter is o'er the webcam.

Sound quality is rarely a priority along business laptops—case in point for the ThinkPad X390, whose speakers are lacking in bass and not particularly loud. Lenovo says it uses a new sound betoken C.P.U. for noise cancellation on its microphones, though, and Hera the results were excellent. A voice recording sounded scrunch even with heavy-rainfall sounds acting connected a nigh speaker system. I tried this with a couple up of other laptops (including the ThinkPad L390 Yoga), and the recordings were more muzzy.

Performance

It's no surprise that the full loaded ThinkPad X390 we conventional made short puzzle out of its benchmarks. The laptop doesn't take likewise hot on its underside either, thanks to a vent that blows aerate the ripe position. The system rooter mostly stays quiet under basic productivity workloads.

One caveat, though: On Lenovo's nonpayment unplugged power scope ("Better Battery"), performance throttling becomes quite noticeable sure as shootin tasks. While using the Windows app Tweeten, for example, scrolling seemed stormy, and web golf links took a while to loading. Setting up the X390 side-by-side with Lenovo's ThinkPad L390 Yoga (with a lesser i5-8265U CPU and half the Jampack), the latter habitually undischarged webpages quicker under the "Better Shelling" setting. The X390 reestablished a clear lead sole with both laptops on their "Best Performance" setting. Unless you'Re plugged into Alternating current or willing to burn more battery life, you may drop some of the extra power you'Ra paying for.

Now, onto the benchmarks.

PCMark 8's Work 2.0 benchmark cycles through simulated productiveness tasks so much as spreadsheet editing and video recording chat. It's manifestly an important use case for business laptops, and any score over 2,000 is good. The ThinkPad X390's grudge of 3,784 topped that of every other thin-and-dismount laptop we've reliable. Only HP's Spectre x360 and Samsung's Notebook 9 Pro came close.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

According to PCMark, the ThinkPad X390 is full at business.

HandBrake was other highlight for the ThinkPad X390, which took about 65 minutes to encode our test .MKV video filing cabinet to a smaller .MP4 file. Dell's XPS 13 fared better, but general it shows that the laptop makes good purpose of its quadriceps-core CPU over a lengthened menses of heavy habituate.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

For a 13-inch Core-i7 laptop, the ThinkPad X390 holds up intimately over a overnight catamenia of intensive work.

As for Cinebench, which tests the CPU shortly bursts, the X390 cut down midmost of the pack among Core i7-8565U laptops for multi-threaded functioning. That said, it did swell in the single-threaded test, which better reflects the applications most people function.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

While the multi-threaded results are nothing special, the ThinkPad X390 does healed in Cinebench's ace-threaded bench mark.

The X390 turned in solid scores on 3DMark Sky Plunger 1.0, at any rate for a laptop with integrated graphics. In practice, this doesn't mean much, as you'll still want a dedicated GPU to play modern font 3D games, but 2D indie-ish games should comprise doable.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

You're not purchasing a ThinkPad for games, merely the X390 does nicely against similar laptops in 3DMark's graphics test.

Assault and battery life is the only epochal sore spot. Many an other factors can affect battery life, including screen brightness and resolution, and intensity of workload. The ThinkPad X390 has 1 obvious challenge: Its mental ability of 49,410 mAh is smaller than that of competitors like the HP Spectre x360 (61,000 mAh) and Samsung Notebook 9 In favor (54,050 mAh). Batteries add weight and cost, so they represent one of many merchandise-offs in diluent, igniter laptops.

Melissa Riofrio/IDG

When a small laptop computer packs in a sinewy keyboard, slew of ports, and a sinewy CPU, something's got to give. In this case, IT's battery life.

Who should buy the Lenovo ThinkPad X390?

The Lenovo ThinkPad X390 is a thwarting laptop to brushup because IT could—and possibly should—comprise such more than it is. It's an prepossessing package with impressive performance and lots of helpful business features. For the price, however, we expected better experiences with the display, keyboard, and touchpad.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/397468/lenovo-thinkpad-x390-review-a-sharp-business-laptop-with-caveats.html

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