Jon Gannon's review of the Lenovo X200 Tablet PC

[John Hill]

First off, I bought the Lenovo X-200 so you might have to assume this review may have some bias. Of course, I might have bought anything I really wanted so you have to figure this was at the top of my list. Several weeks after buying I am very happy about the Lenovo X-200. There are a number of reasons for this.

First, if you have a choice, never buy a tablet that does not have a solid state drive. I am just blown away by how quickly this computer boots up. In less than a minute I am ready to go! My previous computer was another tablet. My Motion 1600 tablet has one of the slowest hard drives out there. I think it is 4200 RPMs. I still love the Motion 1600 for many reasons, but it's boot up speed was not one of them.




I put 4 GB of memory into the Lenovo X-200. Yes, I understand that a 32-bit operating system only supports 3 GB of memory. I secretly hope that the Lenovo X-200 knows a way around supporting only 3 GB and can utilize the additional gigabyte. Whether it can use the fourth gigabyte or can't I have to tell you that my speeds of access are amazingly fast. I use Dragon Medical 10 along with an electronic medical record. For those who have a history of Dragon, you will recognize that it is a resource hogging memory hog. I am sure there are other programs that utilize a lot of resources, but Dragon is notorious for this.




Even with Dragon Medical 10 the Lenovo X-200 is amazingly fast. My dictation is transcribed without any delay as quickly as I can speak. I can multitask (which probably is not the smartest move on my part since I tend to get distracted) and do several things at one time on the tablet.

Screen quality is excellent. No graininess and colors are bright. I don't play games on my work computer. Actually, I would play solitaire but this was not loaded in my software. I can only guess that many types of games would work well with vivid color and no lag on this tablet. I bought the touchscreen version of the Lenovo X-200. There are a number of things I can use my fingers to touch and move around or to click things. Because the screen is not overly large, I cannot use touch with everything unless I use the pen.

I have found that nobody so far carries the right size screen protector! Even Lenovo doesn't really know what size screen it has on the tablet. This is a small problem and will ultimately get resolved. Touchscreen does rock!

The Lenovo does not have a touchpad. It does have one of those nub things in the center of the keyboard. It took me maybe two days to get used to it. I don't really miss having a touchpad after all these days of having the nub. It does have right and left clicks. I do minimal typing since I have Dragon, but the typing I have done has been easy with the keyboard. Obviously, it is not full size as a keyboard, but it still works well for me. The touch of the keys feel solid.

Don't buy this tablet for the speakers! Typical laptop/tablet sound. You know what you are listening to but are rummaging around for your headset while you listen to music through the speakers.


So what don't I like? I bought the base station. You know, it's the thing that has the DVD player and writer and holds all the wires. Well, it's a hassle to remove the tablet from the base station. In my case, I have to make sure I turn off the external hard drive that is my backup otherwise I get an error. If I never had a tablet before I probably would not be bothered by the idea that I have to click a button to undock the computer. Sadly, my Motion 1600 only required me to take it out of the dock without having to turn off the external hard drive or push a button to remove it. Oh, you also have to pull a lever to undock it! Back to the drawing board guys! I need this base so I will continue to use it...

Final grade is an A-. Fix the base and the grade goes up to an A+. I can't talk about Lenovo customer support because I have not had any problems. Obviously, that counts. Let me know if you would like updates.

[digitaldoc]

Hi Jon,

Nice review. How big is your battery and how long does it last for you?


“I secretly hope that the Lenovo X-200 knows a way around supporting only 3 GB and can utilize the additional gigabyte.”

32 bit OSes have a theoretical maximum memory of 4GB approximately. This is prior to address space being divided out for add in cards like graphics cards that use/share system memory.
While the Bios won’t reflect all 4 Gigs as being present, I wonder if in fact, that the memory is being used at least in a shared fashion.

I share your grade for the Lenovo. I don't have the touch, but you can read my review here: www.MedicalTabletpc.com