Lenovo Makes X300 Official, Unveils Configuration Options

There has been much interest hovering around Lenovo’s X300 for a few months now, but up to now, it’s all been unofficial. Until now. As predicted, a full-featured machine will retail at around $2,799, but foregoing a few features will bring the price down a bit. The X300 has previously been compared to Apple’s MacBook AIR, but it’s difficult to make a direct comparison because both machines are quite different and both have various trade offs.

While the AIR is sleeker, lighter, a bit thinner and also offers better battery-life (the X300 can use two batteries to allow 8 – 10 hours worth, however), it’s not as feature-rich as the X300, even at the base model. One of the biggest benefits of the AIR, though, is the ability to purchase with a standard hard drive, skipping over the expensive SSD. Although Lenovo is strictly going after the businessman, an option with a standard (and larger) 1.8" hard drive would have been appreciated.

In the X300’s favor, a fully-equipped machine costs less overall when compared to the AIR’s SSD offering. Extra features include a wired LAN, wireless USB, three USB ports and a DVD-RW drive. You could also upgrade to 4GB of RAM and still be under the AIR’s $3,098 price point. The biggest selling-point to me, though, is that while both notebooks offer the same-sized display, the X300 has a higher resolution, at 1440×900.

But as another downside to the X300, one gripe I have is that is has a slower included CPU than the AIR (1.2GHz vs. 1.8GHz). Given that fully-configured, the X300 is more feature-rich overall when compared to the AIR, I am sure they had to cut corners somewhere, but seeing a faster processor as an option would have been nice to see at least. As it stands, no one has reviewed the notebook except for Walt Mossberg, so it’s worth a look for an initial opinion.

Lenovo has used that extra thickness to good advantage. While the MacBook Air’s extreme thinness makes it gorgeous, it left no room for an Ethernet jack, a removable battery, a built-in DVD drive or a cellphone modem. The X300 has all these things, either standard or as options, plus three USB ports, compared with just one for the Apple. The Lenovo even offers GPS location-finding, the ability to connect to new wireless USB devices and future support for a forthcoming wireless network standard called WiMax.

Source: AllThingsD