Review: Lenovo ThinkPad X130e Review

Today we look at another ultraportable laptop from over 2 years ago featuring AMD APU. The ThinkPad X130e actually has both AMD (Zacate) versions and Intel (Sandy Bridge) versions. The particular system we look at has an AMD E-300 APU (Zacate).

Two latches secure X130e's user removable battery

X130e features an user removable battery. This type of batteries usually has better aftermarket availability thus contributing to a longer service life of the laptop.

Three screws to lift bottom cover

The bottom cover is basically a large 'service door'.

Two SODIMM slots and one 7mm 2.5" SATA HDD

Even though Lenovo specifies only 8GB max RAM, there is some chance 16GB RAM might work in X130e although I haven't seen any user confirmation of it working, other than a confirmation for an Intel based X131e model running 12GB RAM. X130e also features 3 USB 2.0 ports and 1 Gigabit Ethernet port.

Bottom line:

Well, what can I say? A low-end 11.6" ultraportable featuring easy-to-access 2.5" hard drive, 2 SODIMM slots, 1 mini PCIe (WWAN), 1 half mini PCIe (WLAN). Really so there is no excuse for ultrabook designers to not include 2 SODIMM slots. Mind you this was two years ago when mSATA wasn't yet very popular so Lenovo didn't support mSATA with the full size mini PCIe WWAN slot, but of course it can be done easily nowadays. So X130e design is one of the most upgradable and user serviceable 11.6" laptops we have ever seen. The design is carried over to ThinkPad X131e (AMD version here) and ThinkPad X140e as well.

Score card:

Upgradability: 7/10
Serviceability: 9/10
Portability: 8/10
Connectivity: 6/10

Expected service life: 7 years

(Images courtesy of Jonathan Mergy)

Review: Asus U38N Laptop

Earlier this year AMD has refreshed its low power platform with mullins and beema. In previous generation very few vendors designed ultraportable laptops with AMD cpu. While hoping more OEM designing ultraportables with the new generation of AMD APU and SoC, today we look at Asus Vivobook U38N, a rare modern design around AMD's trinity platform.

Released in 2012, Asus U38N remains one of the very few recent AMD ultraportables. U38N is designed with ultrabook in mind, despite the term being defined by Intel so using AMD platform technically disqualifies it. Clearly it shares quite a bit design cues with Asus ultrabook lines.

Unscrew the bottom cover: single 2.5" SATA, no mSATA

After removing bottom cover, one can clearly see the 2.5" 7mm SATA hard drive. U38N is equipped with 24GB SSD cache, so the hard drive should feel more snappy than a typical laptop hard drive.

Zoom in the single SODIMM slot

Even though there is a single SODIMM slot, on ASUS's spec sheet it only supports up to 4GB RAM max. 2GB is soldered on board, so the SODIMM only takes 2GB RAM. It appears that ASUS really means it. An user's attempt in installing 8GB module had reportedly run into problems with Linux, which is likely due to the lack of BIOS support of such memory configurations.

On the connectivity side, it provides 3 USB 3.0 connections but dropped ethernet port. User would need a USB 3.0 to Gigabit ethernet adapter for ethernet connectivity.

Bottom line:

A flashy design that compromises upgradability and serviceability, which gives a rather short serviceable life. It should have been very easy for Asus to include 2 SODIMM slots in the design without any impact to its thinness and weight, which could then support a max of 16GB RAM and extend U38N's usable life a lot longer. Soldering RAM and limiting total RAM to 4GB is typical bad sport of modern ultrabook designs.

Score card:

Upgradability: 2/10

Serviceability: 4/10

Portability: 8/10

Connectivity: 7/10

Expected serviceable life: 3 years

(Images courtesy of MyFixGuide)