I love my X201 tablet. It's the first laptop I've been physically attracted to. It's my first ThinkPad, and Lenovo totally won me over. At $2000 retail, I was hoping they'd keep such a professional work tablet going. But alas, no, the X220 tablet is a massive loss:
- Glossy screens (choose between touch and reflections, or less reflections but no touch)
- Loss of 32 pixels vertically, for even wider display. No thanks.
- Wider body. The keyboard was already full-size, a wider body helps nothing.
- New battery that pops the laptop up in the back, instead of the nice flush battery that gave you a spine to grab onto in tablet mode.
- Loses backcompat with the X201 UltraBase docking station
- And still no HDMI.
And yet, if I want Sandy Bridge (instant gain of 20% clock speed), what're my options?
I was really looking forward to buying an X220 when they came out. Now, I'll sit and wait for some other vendor to get a proper lightweight work tablet out.
I have the x220 tablet (arch linux on it) with the multitouch option and it's definitely matte. I can't compare it to the build quality of the x201, but I'm pleased with the performance and display. 10W power consumption with wifi on after a bit of powertop2.
I've had some questions about the matte screen and will post this here for reference. I've compared it to my matte cinema display and my glossy cinema display. It's not as matte as the 'actual' matte display, but the x220 with multitouch layer would definitely count as a matte screen in my book. I'll try to get a picture up on the arch wiki.
- Glossy screens (choose between touch and reflections, or less reflections but no touch) - Loss of 32 pixels vertically, for even wider display. No thanks. - Wider body. The keyboard was already full-size, a wider body helps nothing. - New battery that pops the laptop up in the back, instead of the nice flush battery that gave you a spine to grab onto in tablet mode. - Loses backcompat with the X201 UltraBase docking station - And still no HDMI.
And yet, if I want Sandy Bridge (instant gain of 20% clock speed), what're my options?
I was really looking forward to buying an X220 when they came out. Now, I'll sit and wait for some other vendor to get a proper lightweight work tablet out.