This may just be the year of whole day (and then some) laptops. Not too long ago, HP showed off their 32-hour Elitebooks; this time, it’s Lenovo’s turn with a more modest 24-hour battery life for their X220 ThinkPad.
An ultraportable for business use, the 12-inch notebook boasts the same beefy physique as previous releases in the company’s X-series line. While the industrial appearance is far from exciting, it’s hard to argue against the brawny construction, with its solid magnesium outer frame and skeleton, along with the other rugged qualities it brings to the table.
Like many business laptops, the Lenovo X220 ThinkPad can be customized with your choice of various hardware elements, including processors (i3, i5, i7), RAM (up to 4GB), storage (720GB HDD or 160GB SSD) and graphics. Display is a 12.5-inch widescreen panel, with power supplied from a 9-cell battery that can last users a full 15 hours and an optional snap-on external battery to extend run time by another 9 hours.
You get the usual notebook essentials, too: a 720p webcam, optical drive and a smattering of ports (including DisplayPort and USB 3.0). It has WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity by default, with options for GPS, 3G and 4G available as upgrades. Oh, and it’s impressively lightweight, as well, at only 3.3 lbs.
While the HP Elitebook remains unbeaten in sheer battery life, the Lenovo X220 ThinkPad does bring military-grade durability and whole-day usability in its favor. We imagine a few less hours might be a fair trade off, considering how rugged Lenovo’s ThinkPads have proven themselves in the past. Prices start at $900.