4. Keyboard and Trackpad, Display, Temperature, Noise Level

Keyboard and Trackpad

Thinkpad series keyboards are considered the gold standard by many, even within Tom’s Hardware. In this area, too, the X61s doesn’t disappoint: the feel is very pleasant; the stop is soft, without being spongy, and is still accurate. The keyboard is stable; it is solid and doesn’t bend anywhere. Even long writing sessions are no problem. A nice detail for night owls: in the display area is an LED to illuminate the keyboard. You can turn it on and off using a key combination. Unfortunately, it only illuminates the keys if the cover is open to 90 ° at most; otherwise, the light doesn’t hit the keyboard.

Typical for a Thinkpad keyboard, on the left outer row is theFn-button right next to Ctrl. To be able to accommodate the most-used buttons in full size, some others have to be smaller. On the left are the Shift, CAPS-Lock, Tab, and the Windows key. On the right, the Alt-Gr, the context menu button, CTRL, Ü, Ä, +/* and #/' are thin, only half as wide as the rest. The block of Ins/Del, Home/End, Print screen/-Page upare directly under the screen - Lenovo uses every inch of space here. Also typical for a Thinkpad is a track point in the keyboard; Lenovo skips a separate track pad. This is not a loss though, as the TrackPoint is smooth and precise. After a short period of time even track point newcomers get used to it. There is also nothing to criticize with the buttons; in total, there are three of them, the third one providing a horizontal scrolling function.

Display

The X61s has a matte display with a resolution of 1024x768 pixels. The maximum brightness is 219 cd/m², the minimum is 152 cd/m². On average, the luminance is 192 cd/m². This is quite bright, and pleasant enough for working under direct sunlight.

Unfortunately Lenovo was less successful in terms of display illumination. Although the luminance in the middle is very even, the brightness strongly decreases at all edges—sometimes up to 40% less than the maximum. This can also be experienced with white or bright display images, where it ends up looking like shading, especially on the left and right sides. In addition, the backlight shines through the panel at the bottom edge when displaying black images. Even the black level of 1.56 cd / m² is very high, which results in an only average contrast of 122:1. The screen is not capable of displaying a deep black. Other than that, the color reproduction is alright, with color levels acceptably strong without seeming excessive. The angles of view are good. The colors invert quickly when looking at the screen from the bottom, and fade when looking at it from the top; from the side, they remain constant for a long time. For text, it is similar: from the bottom you can read well, from top the white background is so bright you can’t see the letters. From the side the white background of Word becomes pink, but text remains legible up to almost 90 degrees.

Temperature

When idling, the X61s can sit your lap without any problem; it gets warm, but even with thin pants it is just fine. The exhaust is not a problem either. Even under higher load, hardly anything changes: the bottom and the exhaust air become slightly warmer, but remain far from being too hot. So even here, thin pants are enough to have the Thinkpad on your lap.

Noise Level

Like the other notebooks, the Thinkpad idles at around 33 dB (A). This is also good in quiet environments. When the two processor cores work hard, the noise level rises to 35.1 dB (A)—very good, considering that most devices have a DVD player this loud.