Lenovo Thinkcentre X1 review: All-in-one design done right - rascosomprood

All-in-combined PCs ideally save space, minimize clutter, and allow open approach to the surface they repose connected. None that I've seen have fully realized such design goals—yet. Lenovo's ThinkCentre X1 hits those targets accurate.

Lenovo

The Thinkcentre X1 is thin, and quite light at 8.8-pounds sans stand.

This all-in-ane is also easy to use and fast adequate that if I had to use it for my everyday computing, I'd be perfectly happy. And that's scorn the smattering of changes that the ThinkCentre X1 could benefit from, like different color-steganography for the always-on USB 3.0 port and the power jackass, and options for a 4K UHD display or a touch screen.

Design, ports, and fashio

The Thinkcentre X1 comes styled in the accustomed Lenovo charcoal-gray-gray colour scheme, with a 23.8-column inch, 1920×1080 non-touch show featuring an opposed-glare application. Aforesaid coating works jolly well, but this particular type reminds ME of the haze you get on mirrors. The X1 would be better with a full matte panel, like the incomparable on Toshiba's Z20t-C2112 laptop. That doesn't detract from the ThinkCentre X1's superior design, though.

The key aspect of such success is the X1's stand. Its root word is so thin that you can treat IT as start of the work open. Yet the X1 gives none feeling of instability—it should withstand being pushed more or less for repositioning without falling over.

Another 2 factors are the unit's wide range of tilt, and the abject amount of pressure needed to adjust it. The result is hassle-free access to anything you've stored behind the car, and less frustration when connecting cables or dongles to the set up ports.

Lenovo

The Thinkcentre X1 tilts to far greater angles than the average AIO, and doing and then doesn't return a lot of force.

A further sign of the the X1's thoughtful design is the arrangement of its ports and switches. Everything you're verisimilar to leave blocked in connects to the back of the system: gigabit ethernet, Kensington lock port, power jack, a bi-directional DisplayPort 1.2 port, and three USB 3.0 ports. For more daily use, you'll find two USB 3.0 ports (cardinal of which is always happening, for charging purposes), a combination headphone/microphone old salt, and a media card slot along the lower left wing hand side.

On the lower right hand side of the X1 are the power button, mute button for the microphone, and computer/display switch. The latter is there because the bismuth-directional DisplayPort connector gives the option to drive another display or output to the Thinkcentre X1's screen from other computer. Course, if you're a lefty, you might prefer the side layouts transposed, simply the general clustering was a good decisiveness.

Lenovo

The ThinkCentre X1's ports are absolutely arranged and situated, though we wish the forever-on USB larboard (not shown) weren't the same yellow as the power jack.

My one ailment well-nig the ports is the color-coding used by Lenovo. The X1 uses a king connector that's very shut in size up and anatomy to a USB connector, and it's yellow. And then is the always-along USB port. I obtain it—power equals yellow. Tranquillise, I proved to nag the tycoo connection into the USB port first time out. Arguably, I could have first consulted the user's guide, but realistically speaking, my instinct South Korean won't be outside the norm.

One potential drawback is the lack of height adjustment. Taller users might want to opt for an arm mount—the Thinkcentre X1 weighs only 8.8 pounds, which even stylish lightweight arm-mounts can hold. You will need to buy a VESA put on, even so. Lenovo's low-visibility option for the X1 is $18.

One other thing I should citation is that the arm of the stall is so thin, you'll probably cost healthy to see the cords, especially as it's chrome. Black might experience been advisable choice for the telegram-haters out on that point.

Components and functioning

Inside the ThinkCentre X1 are an Intel Gist i5-6200U processor, 8GB of DDR4/2133MHz RAM, a 256GB SATA SSD, and an Intel Radio-AC 3165 card for dual-band 1×1 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2.

As foreseen with this choice of components, the ThinkCentre X1 is American Samoa fast as about people ask for casual tasks, like word processing and web browsing. In PCMark 8's Home Conventional benchmark, which runs web browsing, authorship, casual gaming, photo redaction, and video chat workloads, this all-in-one simple machine scored 2,615. While processors with more cores and more power do outpace it, the X1 should feel mint quick for basic tasks.

PCWorld

The ThinkCentre X1 also performed as expected in our Handbrake encoding test, which involves converting a 30GB MKV register into a smaller MP4 using the program's Android Pad of paper planned. For machines using a thermally unnatural CPU, Handbrake is more of a soak test than a measure of functioning: We use IT to see how fortunate the machine holds up below long, intensive tasks.

The ThinkCentre X1 isn't the fastest machine using a Core i5-6200U, but IT's even inside the expected range. The Dell XPS 13 still comes dead out front prospective due to winnow speeds, whereas the Samsung Notebook computer 9 lags incredibly far behind because its CPU's clock amphetamine drops (throttles) low prolonged heavy load.That said, the ThinkCentre X1 isn't the simple machine you want for lawful self-complacent creation, every bit you can see when compared to our PCWorld Zero machine, which is abasic desktop hul with a full socketed divide (and three years old, at that.)

PCWorld

Gambling on the ThinkCentre X1 is slightly below what you'd bear for its integrated HD 520 graphics. In 3DMark's Sully Gate bench mark, which is a a posteriori DX11 test designed for typical internal desktop systems and laptops, the X1 netted an overall seduce of 4,946. Patc that's a puny surprising, it again likely has to fare with how Lenovo tweaked the fan profiles.

However, even if the X1 had compatible other Sum i5-6200U systems' scores, that wouldn't switch the fact that this each-in-one is only good for lightweight games. As for telecasting playback, 4K UHD filesplayed quite smoothly, As long they were H.264 and not HEVC (H.265) or 60 frames per second.

PCWorld

The Thinkcentre X1's SSD, a Samsung MZ7LN256HCHP-000L1, has a middling write speed of a little to a lesser degree 300MBps, but it reads at a reasonable pace of 500MBps. To be fair, spell faster SSDs are available, this kind of throughput speed is still light source years better than a hard-disk drive.

One aspect of the X1 that could be better is its speakers. There's Dolby software on board to enhance the sound, just information technology's still a minute weak. You'll definitely want to utilisation headphones or hook it up to a sound organization.

Stimulus bioengineering

The keyboard and mouse provided by Lenovo are useful. They believable won't beat out anything you already love, only they have plenty heft that they don't feel cheap. They're as wel wireless, so there are no cables to bedding material the make clean desktop space generated past the X1's design.

Price and warranty

You can get a Thinkcentre X1 for as petite as $845 at the prison term of this review (thanks to an instant discount done Lenovo's storefront), with sole 4GB of system retentivity and a 500GB Winchester drive. I highly recommend against that shape because of the slower performance you'll get from the hard drive compared to an SSD. Our 8GB/256GB SSD conformation costs a little o'er a G dollars, and you'll be much, much happier with it (or even the 128GB SSD) than the HDD version in the long run.

The standard warranty is one-year on-site. Upgrading to adequate four years of happening-site service costs from $79 to $149. Notably, IT includes the pick of keeping your storage drive—worth noting for people who dislike warranties that make you surrender defective hardware.

Lenovo

Look Mummy! No wires. Actually, you bequeath see some such as the power corduroy and ethernet cable, which are not shown present.

One more plus for the Thinkcentre: The user's guidebook shows you how to amend and upgrade the X1, which is quite easy. I'm little displeased vendors who pronounce there are none user-serviceable parts when a mere uncomplete-dozen screws would allow access. Kudos to Lenovo.

Conclusion

To be perfectly honest, I'd like to see Lenovo take the outstanding BASIC Thinkcentre X1 design and realize it to the max: a 4K UHD display, a PCIe-NVMe SSD, Case C USB 3.1, and…a red (not chromatic) ever-on USB port.

As it stands, however, 1080p is all almost users need. The Thinkcentre X1 is easily fast enough, and forking over incomparable $1,000 bill (instead of two) for a computer is more in line with the norm budget. So LET's block the wish list and just say that if you'atomic number 75 looking for a solid-performing, exceptionally well-designed all-in-one, this machine should be your terminus a quo.  And probably ending point.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/415167/lenovo-thinkcentre-x1-review-all-in-one-design-done-right.html

Posted by: rascosomprood.blogspot.com

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