Lenovo ThinkPad X220 Tablet

The Lenovo ThinkPad X220 Tablet ($1,579 direct) strikes a nice concession between ultraportable business and multitouch Windows 7 tablet. Some businesses may be hard pressed to give up its QWERTY ways for a full tablet or compromise losing time learning a new operating system. The ThinkPad X220's convertible-tablet design combines choice aspects of the ($1,299 direct, 4 stars) laptop with a superb multitouch screen, taking top honors among tablet PCs as our new Editors' Choice.

Design
There's little to distinguish the X220 tablet from any other black, plastic-clad member of Lenovo's ThinkPad family—aside from its twist and fold hinge that allows the lid to rotate 180 degrees and close with the screen facing outward, so you can take full advantage of the touch feature. Like the Lenovo X220 laptop, it has a magnesium alloy frame and has been ruggedized to withstand moisture, shock, vibration, and extremes in temperature. The X220 Tablet's touch screen has a treatment of scratch resistant Infinity Glass, acting as a protective layer over the actual screen, however, this extra precaution adds a glare. The display is also designed for visibility indoors and out, with adjustable brightness up to 300 NITs and sharp 1366 by 768 resolution (720p HD).

Weighing 4.15 pounds, the Lenovo ThinkPad X220 Tablet is lighter than the 5 pound ($1,859 direct, 3.5 stars), but heavier than the 3.9 pound ($1,880 direct, 3.5 stars). The X220 Tablet won't be as comfortable to hold as the 1.33 pound iPad 2, especially if you're a frequent user of public transportation. For the most part, you'll need to be seated to comfortably hold the X220 in tablet mode. Of course, convertible tablets are weighed down by keyboards and hardware, whereas Windows tablets like the 1.9 pound ($849 direct, 4 stars) have merely a screen and Atom CPU—a featherweight.

The only visible differences between the X220 tablet and its laptop variant, aside from the twist and fold hinge, is the protruding battery and an odd tab extending from the top right edge of the screen. The tab extending from the top of the screen becomes a comfortable handhold, and a convenient handle when returning the screen to its original orientation. The bulging battery pack goes from design oddity to ergonomic dream, providing a comfortable grip to hold the laptop in one hand, and fitting comfortably into the crook of an elbow—a nicety that its predecessor, the ($2,000 direct, 4 stars), didn't have. Compared to other convertible tablets, which keep the squared off form factor of the laptop, it's a significant improvement. Physical buttons on the screen bezel let you power the ThinkPad on and off, manually rotate the screen orientation, and a dedicated Ctrl-Alt-Delete button will save your bacon if Windows ever stalls.

The touch screen is multitouch capable, able to register up to five fingers at a time. The Lenovo comes preloaded with the Windows 7 Touch Pack, providing you with an on-screen keyboard and Windows' handwriting recognition. The on-screen keyboard is fine while in landscape orientation, but in portrait mode—the orientation that will be preferred due to the ThinkPad's ergonomics—the keyboard is too narrow to comfortably use. In these instances, you'll want to use the included digital stylus to take advantage of Windows' handwriting recognition. The stylus will also come in handy for more accurately cursor control.

The physical keyboard on the ThinkPad X220 tablet is an industry best, providing one of the most comfortable typing experiences of any laptop. It's also spill-resistant, designed to survive up to 4 ounces of liquid spilled directly onto the keyboard. In addition to the touchscreen, you also have two other pointing devices: Lenovo's signature red pointing stick and a revamped touchpad, which incorporates a second pair of mouse buttons into the touchpad. That touchpad also supports the same gesture controls available on the touchscreen, including Lenovo's own SimpleTap user interface.

Features
Lenovo augments the basic Windows touch functionality with its own touch interface, called SimpleTap. Once activated, it provides a touch-friendly, tile-based interface with on screen controls for different settings, like speaker volume, screen brightness, and the integrated webcam. Additional tiles can be added and assigned to launch programs, open specific web pages, or access selected files. Though basic in concept, Lenovo has made SimpleTap extremely flexible, allowing you to personalize your tablet experience to get the most out of it. Plenty of other tablets have tried to add a new UI layer to Windows, but Lenovo's is one of the best we've seen due to its simplicity.

In addition to SimpleTap, Lenovo has packed the ThinkPad X220 to the brim with their own proprietary ThinkVantage utilities, which range from power management to data recovery to screen reading tools. Lenovo has also made numerous tweaks behind the curtain to provide faster start times, smoother interfaces, and improved overall performance as part of the Lenovo Enhanced Experience 2.0. Beyond these utilities and system tweaks, the only software you'll find preloaded on the ThinkPad are Microsoft Office Starter 2010, a 30-day trial of Norton Internet Security, and Skype.

Where smaller 10-inch tablets offer only the bare minimum of ports and connectors, the Lenovo ThinkPad X220 Tablet has actually expanded the offerings with extras like an HD Webcam providing 720p resolution for Skype and video chat, a DisplayPort for video and audio output, and Bluetooth 3.0. The 320GB 7,200rpm hard drive has twice the storage capacity of the previous model, and is significantly larger than the drives found in the HP Elitebook 2740p (250GB) and Fujitsu LifeBook T5010 (80GB) . While not as hardy against shocks and bumps as a solid-state drive, Lenovo does protect the hard drive with a rubber-bumper protective metal plates and active protection that senses drops with a built in accelerometer.

Three USB 2.0 ports, a VGA video output, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and a combination headphone and mic audio jack, comprise of the X220 Tablet's connectors of the wired and wireless variety. A caselock slot lets you physically secure the X220, and a fingerprint reader lets you log on quickly and securely. An ExpressCard slot is another feature you won't find on any 10-inch tablets, but is often found on business laptops. Additional wireless options are available for a small bump in price: 4G WiMAX and integrated mobile broadband with a SIM card are available for an extra $35 and $125, respectively. Lenovo also covers the ThinkPad X220 Tablet with a generous 3 year warranty.

Performance
The Lenovo ThinkPad X220 Tablet may have a touchscreen, but its components are all laptop: a dual-core 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-2520M processor provides plenty of power under the hood compared to its competitors running on outdated Core 2 Duo and first-gen Core i5 CPUs. It cranked through Cinebench R11.5 with a score of 2.88 points. Multimedia testing yielded a speedy time of 1 minute 50 seconds in our HandBrake video encoding test and Photoshop CS5 (3:57).

With the inclusion of a second-generation Intel Core i5 processor, the ThinkPad X220 Tablet also benefits from Intel's improved integrated graphics, earning 3DMark 2006 scores of 2,258 points (at medium resolution) and 1,286 points (at higher resolution settings). Where previous convertible tablets were unable to run either of our gaming tests, the X220 Tablet produced 17.6 frames per second (fps) in Crysis and 14.8 fps in Lost Planet 2 on medium detail and 1024 by 768 resolution—still unplayable frame rates, however. It was unable to run either test at native resolution and higher detail, but competing systems were unable to run the tests at all.

In our MobileMark 2007 battery-life test, the X220 Tablet lasted 5 hours 28 minutes with a 6-cell 63Wh battery. Though it couldn't match the 8:40 of its laptop counterpart, it outlasted the HP EliteBook 2740p (4:42) and the Fujitsu LifeBook T5010 (3:35) and came in minutes behind the Lenovo X200 (5:35).

The Lenovo ThinkPad X220 Tablet succeeds where underpowered, poorly outfitted Windows tablets repeatedly fail. Picking up where the Lenovo X200 left off, the X220 Tablet combines the swiveling multitouch screen with all the features of the X220 laptop, like an industry leading keyboard and rock-solid rugged design. Clearly, the Lenovo ThinkPad X220 Tablet has the pedigree for greatness and the performance to back it up, and that's why it's our Editors' Choice for Windows 7 tablets.

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COMPARISON TABLE

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