Hands-on with the Lenovo ThinkPad X200

Lenovo first announced the ThinkPad X200 at the Intel Centrino 2 launch back in July and we’ve been waiting patiently since then to get our hands on this new ultraportable. Well, it’s now in the Mobile Computer office and so we’ve shot a short video to give you a hands-on tour.

The ThinkPad X200 is essentially a scaled-down version of the ThinkPad X300 that Lenovo launched last year. The ThinkPad X300 is one of the slimmest ultraportables around, but its 13.3in screen meant that it wasn’t particularly compact and a 64Gb SSD made it rather expensive.

The X200 is much more compact and, to our mind, a much better size for an ultraportable. It is rather thicker than the ThinkPad X300, though – 28mm compared to 18mm (not including the extra depth added by the battery). Still, with a starting weight of 1.34kg, it’s still eminently portable.

As you would obviously expect for a laptop carrying the ThinkPad logo, the ThinkPad X200 is extremely sturdy and feels just as well made as much larger models. The matte 12.1in (1280 x 800) screen could be brighter, but that’s a complaint levelled against other ThinkPads and it’s otherwise crisp and clear. Again, the legendary ThinkPad keypad makes an appearance on the X200, although you are stuck with a trackpoint pointing device – there’s no room for a touchpad. There’s no room for an internal optical drive, but that’s no great loss for an ultraportable, in our opinion.

Inside is an Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 processor running at 2.4GHz and, in our model, 4Gb or RAM. SSDs are an option rather than standard issue (which should help keep the price down) and our ThinkPad X200 review model had a 200Gb Hitachi hard drive.

Lenovo also offers a 9-cell battery for the ThinkPad X200 – this bumps up the weight to a hefty 1.63kg, but offers a (claimed) nine-hour battery life.

We’re still waiting for confirmation on the UK pricing and the ThinkPad X200 isn’t yet listed by any UK resellers. US prices start at around $1,000 and imported ThinkPad X200s are available for around £700, so we hope the official UK price won’t be too outrageous.

Here's the video: