2. X300 Visual Design: You Can’t Please Everybody

We won’t mince words – this ultraportable doesn’t exactly boast the snazziest looks we’ve seen in our test lab. If we had to choose an adjective to describe it, we might go with “restrained,” which is the least you can ask of a machine that costs in the neighborhood of $3,000. You thus won’t be getting a lot of compliments on the looks of your laptop. But then that’s probably not what you’re shelling out the money for. What’s really important is what’s under the hood. And look at it this way: It won’t attract undesirable attention.

The Display

The X300’s display is at once its biggest advantage and its major shortcoming. An advantage, because with its 1440 x 900 resolution (that’s better than the majority of 15.4” models on the market), the desktop area is enormous. And Lenovo has made a point of using a matte display surface, which is obviously an advantage for business use. So what’s the shortcoming? Well, the display itself is not much better than average. The high definition (which is 128 dpi, whereas the recommendation is generally a maximum 110) won’t work too well for presbyopia sufferers; the brightness (especially on battery power) is fairly low; and the horizontal viewing angles are very poor.

Connectivity: Near-Perfect

One big strong point of the X300 is its external connectivity. Where many ultraportables are hampered by reduced connectivity, Lenovo has equipped the X300 richly. There are three USB 2.0 ports, two on the left-hand edge of the case and a third in the rear, and they’re far enough apart from each other to let you plug in USB peripherals with a wide base. There are audio out (earphone) and in (mike) connectors, and an Ethernet (gigabit) connector. There’s also a standard VGA analog connector, and a connector for the charger.

On the other hand, there’s no FireWire, ExpressCard or DVI connector. Frequent users of external storage may miss the first, but leaving out the other two is justifiable – ExpressCard is essentially used for 3G cards, and the X300 has that technology built in; DVI is practical for connecting a flat panel, but VGA is still more common (especially on projectors).

As for sound, the X300 has two speakers. Their quality is acceptable, but the placement isn’t very good – they’re on the front, right where your palms rest as you type.