The ThinkPad X220T Tablet PC: A Power-Packing Convertible Tablet from Lenovo

By Arthur Omar on November 22, 2011 in Gadgets, Hardware, Latest Technologies, Reviews, Specifications

For quite some time now, the Philippine market for Convertible Tablets (Note: A Convertible Tablet is usually defined as “A tablet PC that typically has an LCD display that can be rotated 180 degrees and can be folded to close, screen facing up, over the integrated ‘physical’ or ‘hardware’ keyboard.”) has seen only four (4) models (namely the Lenovo Ideapad S10-3T N470 Mini Tablet PC, the Asus EeePC T101MT (BLK014S) Convertible Tablet, the Acer Aspire AS1825PTZ-412G32MN, and the HP EliteBook 2740p), three of which are so inexpensively-priced so much so that you would doubt if any serious work (such as continuosly flawless handwriting recognition done at a very high rate) can be done with them.

Well, not anymore. Chinese company Lenovo, which we all know is the company that acquired the microcomputer division of IBM (i.e. International Business Machines) Corporation, has come up with its own very powerful entry (albeit very expensive) in the convertible tablet segment: the Lenovo ThinkPad X220T. This beast of a machine employs no less than the Intel Core i7-2620M as its processor, which, with a base speed of 2.7 GHz, is considerably zippier than the HP EliteBook 2740p’s Intel Core i7-640LM processor, which can only manage up to 2.13 GHz. The ThinkPad X220T also boasts of a pre-set 4 GB of PC3-10600 1,333-MHz DDR3 SDRAM memory, compared to the HP EliteBook 2740p’s 2 GB. What’s more, the ThinkPad X220T also features a full-sized, spill-resistant ThinkPad® keyboard, featuring the famous IBM/Lenovo TrackPoint® pointing device, a touchpad for mouse movements, a stunning 12.5-inch multi-touch TFT Color LCD display with enhanced finger-touch sensitivity, and an optional Digitizer Pen to literally write and erase on the screen as if you had a pencil in your hand. Connectivity is handled through WiFi and Bluetooth 3.0, 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet terminal, and optional WWAN support. The unit also touts an integrated HD 720p web camera with low light sensitivity, dual microphones, a fingerprint reader, and it even comes with the convenient ThinkPad UltraBase® Series 3 Docking Station. This easy, quick-attach docking solution offers a wide array of expansion capabilities, including an optical drive bay, but it is small enough to carry anywhere. At slightly below Php 114,000 however, the ThinkPad X220T is no joke to purchase; it even “outprices” the HP EliteBook 2740p by almost Php 15K, and it surpasses the 100K boundary, which only the filthy rich would dare cross! OK, some pictures:

The feature-rich Lenovo ThinkPad X220T outprices all of the convertible tablets we’ve seen in the Philippines thus far. Top row photos above (left and center) show the unit with the optional Digitizer Pen and the prominent (red-colored) IBM/Lenovo TrackPoint® pointing device, located between the “G” and “H” keys of the full-sized, spill-resistant ThinkPad® keyboard. The rightmost top row photo shows the ThinkPad UltraBase® Series 3 Docking Station. The left photo on the bottom shows how the backside of the ThinkPad UltraBase® Series 3 Docking Station would look like (see red-colored lines) when fitted on the underside of the ThinkPad X220T. Finally, the right photo on the bottom shows a closer (albeit “angled”) look at the various connections/ connectivity “options” that the ThinkPad UltraBase® Series 3 Docking Station offers. © Photos courtesy of Lenovo and www.jessebandersen.com