You know before you buy this kind of laptop whether or not it’s something that suits your needs. They are very thick and business like ThinkPads, with their matte screens, thickness and track sticks.
Like all ThinkPads before this one hasn’t changed and Lenovo’s ThinkPad X130e is small, but chunky.
The 11.6-inch, 1366×768 screen is decent enough, the matte screen a welcome addition to ward off glare. While the keyboard is excellent, Lenovo’s hinged click pad is frustrating, sometimes actuating right button clicks when you don’t want them, and the textured surface impedes two-finger scrolling, often not registering the movement. You’ll end up using the buttons above the touch pad, intended for use with the track stick, purely to increase reliability.
Options are modest port-wise, with three USB 2.0 ports, an SD card reader, VGA and HDMI out, gigabit Ethernet and a headset jack. Bluetooth and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi give you wireless connectivity.
Our review sample is intended for the education market; a Celeron 857 at 1.2GHz, 2GB of RAM and 320GB hard drive is a step down from the retail model, which includes a Core i3 2367M at 1.4GHz. Spend a little more, and you’ll get a 128GB SSD swapped in, and 4GB of RAM.