My Lenovo Thinkpad X200 is, in my opinion at least, one of the best laptops out there. Unless you really need the extra oomph in performance, you shouldn’t pay sky high prices for these top of the line laptops out there. I got my Thinkpad off of ebay for £209.99, the base price was £179.99 but I shilled out an extra £30 for a RAM and an SSD upgrade (120Gb –> 240Gb, 4Gb –> 8Gb). Another thing I should mention is that it did come pre-librebooted.

The battery#

I’ll just give it to you straight, the battery life on my Thinkpad X200 is shit. Even with minimal usage, I still run through multiple charges a day. For many people, including me, this is an issue. Luckily in most of my lessons at college I have access to a socket that I can charge from whilst working, this is a different case during independent study however, most of the time I’m having to keep a watchful eye on my battery life as to not run out of charge without having saved all my work. However, this is not a deal breaker for me. The Thinkpad X200 has a removable battery which means eventually I will invest in a spare battery for these situations where I cannot charge for a large period of time.

Performance#

Maybe I set my expectations low but honestly the performance from the X200 has been largely perfect. It does everything I need it to do, and even more. We were even able to get Tetrio working with not much lag/jank. If you wanted a beefy gaming laptop to play games on the go, this is certainly not it, but if you just need a cheap-ish laptop to do work on, this is where I would point you. Personally, I do my college work on this laptop. Such work includes essay writing for my Psychology class, Programming and notes for computer science, not so legally obtained textbooks for maths, and just general miscellaneous work I have to do such as writing my personal statement.

Other Comments#

It may not be for everyone but I absolutely love the rugged aesthetics of it. The keyboard that actually bounces back and feels like an actual keyboard, the trackpoint sitting there with no trackpad in sight, random lights and buttons all with their own purpose. To me it’s just pretty. I love just throwing it into my backpack without a case and knowing that it’ll be alright, and that if it’s not alright, its not that hard to fix (comparative to other brands). I’m no utilitarian but this just makes me appreciate its sheer functionality.