Review of the Lenovo/IBM X60 ultralight laptop

Earlier this year I purchased a Lenovo/IBM Thinkpad X60. I resold it within a few days. And here is the reason why:

I had circled a particularly good offer at the local Mediamarkt on a Thinkpad X60 for a while. On paper it seemed like a really good deal, I liked the specs, especially the form factor and the low weight. The screen did not seem to be on par with the rest of the machine, but it was hard to tell in the ghastly (or should I say ghostlike) lihghting in the Mediamarkt stores.

Eventually I bought it, but two days later I returned it, or that is, I tried to return it, but Mediamarkt refused on the grounds that I had opened the packaging and started the Computer. If I had bought it at any other chain here in Stockholm I think I could have returned it. Instead I sold it at a 20% discount on the Internet, which worked like a charm.

I really wanted to keep it, but the fact was that the screen was just of a too poor quality. Perusing the net even more after I bought it I found that the maximum screen brightness was just around 115 candela per square meter, but the real disappointment was the contrast ratio was measured to a measly 156:1. Compare that to the 500:1 you saw on LCD monitors some years ago and the 1000+:1 you see today and it is clear that this component is sub par, especially for me who is used to Sony screens. Even my stop gap laptop, the cheapest Toshiba (~$600)  I could find back in March , has a far superior screen.

If you are in the market for one of the X Thinkpads, do take time to check out the screen for a prolonged period before you decide to buy. Hopefully the X series will get a screen upgrade soon, and on some models it seems to be there: A review of the X61T tablet PC at notebookcheck.net shows the brightness of that screen to be almost exactly the same as for the X60, but the contrast is about 400:1, making it immensly better.

The other gripe I had with the X60 was the mysteriously long time it took to wake up and fall asleep, but this can probably be blamed on Vista. Lenovo will supply a downgrade CD for a fee.

Update 01:24

To compare the screen of the X60 with the Sony TZ series check out this review of the TZ: