Lenovo Thinkpad X260 Intel Core I5 6th Gen 8GB 256 GB SSD

Lenovo ThinkPad X260 Intel Core i5 6th Gen (8GB/256GB SSD)

The ThinkPad X260 is a fantastic option for business travelers because it combines a great keyboard with a lightweight body and more than 17 hours of battery life.

Pros

• Epic battery life

• Comfortable keyboard

• Durable and lightweight design

Cons

• Dull display (with base screen)

Lenovo ThinkPad X260 i5 6th Gen Price

New Lenovo Thinkpad X260 Price – Rs 1,26,119.00 (in Indian Rupees)

Refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad X260 Price - Rs 19,749

Specifications

Buy Refurbished Lenovo Laptops

Reviews

Manufacturers occasionally neglect to prioritize keyboard quality or battery life to create ever-thinner laptops. The 12.5-inch ThinkPad X260 from Lenovo isn't the slimmest system, but it strikes a near-ideal balance between productivity and portability. The X260 offers good performance, a quick keyboard, an accurate touchpad, a full range of ports, and more than 17 hours of battery life for a starting price of INR 62,329.32 (INR 94,760.17 as tested).

Design

The ThinkPad X260 features a raven-black chassis that is only distinguished by the red TrackPoint nub on the keyboard and the status LEDs on the lid and deck, maintaining the classic ThinkPad style. The X260 is made of plastic with glass fiber reinforcement to withstand abuse. According to Lenovo, the laptop reportedly passed the MIL-SPEC 810G endurance testing for severe temperatures, shocks, and vibrations.

The ThinkPad X260 is small enough to fit on most tray tables and weighs just 3.2 pounds (3.6 pounds with an extended battery). Its dimensions are 12 x 8.2 x 0.8 inches, weighing 3.2 pounds (3.6 pounds with an extended battery). Some rivals are thinner but don't offer as much battery life, such as the Dell Latitude E7270 (3.6 pounds; 12.2 x 8.47 x 0.47 inches) and HP EliteBook 745 G3 (3.4 pounds; 13.3 x 9.3 x 0.74 inches). The Lenovo laptop has two battery slots, one internal and the other removable, with a capacity of three or six cells.

Display

Three alternative screen options are available for the ThinkPad X260: a simple 1366 x 768 screen, a 1366 x 768 screen with IPS for more excellent brightness and color, or a 1920 x 1080 panel with IPS. The screen in our evaluation device was entry-level and showed bland, washed-out images with little to no detail or screen space. The update makes sense, given that the 1920 x 1080 screen only costs INR 12,250 extra.

In Captain America: Civil War teaser, Iron Man's red armor and Cap's blue costume appear bleach-soaking. The X260's base screen can only display 67% of the sRGB color gamut, according to our colorimeter, which is significantly less than the 86 percent average for ultraportable laptops (86), Toshiba Portege A30t (113), HP EliteBook 745 G3 (84%), and Dell Latitude E7270 (84%). Our light meter measured the screen's brightness at 184 nits, significantly less than half the category average (307) and at least 30% less than its closest rival, the Portege A30t. While using it, the matte panel seemed more than luminous enough and provided wide viewing angles with only slight color fading at 90 degrees to the left and right.

The video's small details—like Robert Downey Jr.'s forehead wrinkles—weren't as straightforward as on the higher-resolution laptops we tested. You can view around 30% less stuff above the fold on a screen with only 768 pixels of vertical real estate, which is more significant for productivity workers. As only 1366 horizontal pixels are available on this screen, forget about stacking windows next to one another.

Audio

The bottom-facing speakers of the ThinkPad X260 provide audio that is generally accurate but not extremely rich. The percussion was tinny when I played Deep Purple's guitar-driven "Smoke on the Water," and Chic's bass-driven "Dance, Dance, Dance," but the voices and other instruments were straightforward, albeit a little flat. The system's maximum volume was loud enough to fill a medium-sized living room, but the sound became somewhat muffled when I placed it on my lap.

There is a preloaded Dolby Audio app that you can use to adjust the equalizer settings. The program has presets for voice calls, games, music, and movies, but I found that the Dynamic profile, which adapts automatically, produced the best results.

Keyboard, TrackPoint, And Touchpad

The spill-resistant keyboard of the ThinkPad X260 has snappy, well-spaced keys with smile-shaped curves that are simple to feel and target. I earned a respectable 94 words per minute on the 10fastfingers.com typing test, which is usual for me, but with a somewhat higher than average 5.7 percent mistake rate. The keyboard has a respectable amount of vertical travel (1.6 mm), similar to other Lenovo ThinkPad X-series laptops, but less than T- and W-series models like the ThinkPad T460 (2.3 mm), which offer an even better experience—both the low and high settings of the optional lighting provided more than adequate illumination.

The ThinkPad X260 has two navigational options: a buttonless touchpad and a TrackPoint pointing stick. I once again discovered that the TrackPoint was accurate and improved my productivity because it allowed me to highlight text and navigate the desktop without taking my hands off the home row.

The 3.4 x 2.1-inch touchpad has much to offer if you don't like the red nub. The pad performed admirably during my tests without any of the jumpiness I occasionally get with buttonless devices. Pinch-to-zoom, two-finger scroll, and three- and four-finger clicks to launch Cortana or the Windows Action Center all worked with lightning-fast precision. Its driver application does not support three-finger or four-finger swipes, possibly due to the pad's small size. Only occasionally did three-finger dragging to switch between apps work.

Ports And Webcam

The ThinkPad X260 has almost every port a productivity user could need today, but we wish it had USB Type-C to prepare it for tomorrow's docks and peripherals. A mini DisplayPort, two USB 3.0 ports, an optional SmartCard reader, and HDMI are all located on the left side of the device. An Ethernet port, an SD card reader, an audio jack, and a third USB 3.0 port are on the left side.

The webcam's 720p resolution produced passable but mediocre photographs. My features were crisp enough to be seen in our office's overhead lighting but not mainly defined. The camera managed to catch a noisy, dark image of me when I was photographed in my virtually pitch-black living room, but at least it showed my face. Users in the business world who require video calls will be happy.

Security Features

All of the security and manageability capabilities needed by corporate IT departments are included in the ThinkPad X260. TPM encryption is standard, and Intel vPro for remote management is available if you configure it with a Core i5-6300U CPU or higher. Biometric logins are possible with an optional fingerprint reader (INR 1,633.80), but regrettably, it uses a swipe-based authentication method rather than a simple press.

Performance

Our review unit of the ThinkPad X260 was equipped with an Intel Core i5-6300U CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD, making it more than capable of handling demanding productivity activities and multitasking. When I opened more than a dozen Chrome tabs and had a 1080p video playing in another window, the Lenovo laptop took everything we threw at it quickly and didn't even notice the slightest slowdown. The X260 scored a solid 6,424 on Geekbench 3, a synthetic performance benchmark, comfortably surpassing the average for the ultraportable notebook category, the AMD A8-powered HP EliteBook G3 and the Core i5-6200U-powered Toshiba A30t. The Dell Latitude E7270, on the other hand, achieved an even higher 7,544 thanks to its Core i7-6600U CPU.

The Lenovo laptop completed our spreadsheet macro test, in which we matched 20,000 names with their addresses, in just 4 minutes and 12 seconds. This is significantly quicker than the category average (7:05), the Toshiba Portege A30t (4:31), and the HP EliteBook 745 G3. The Dell Latitude E7270 (3:41) was a bit faster.

Our test unit's 256GB SSD performed admirably, transferring 4.97GB of mixed-media files in 32 seconds. That amounts to a rate of 157.1 MBps, significantly higher than the Toshiba Portege A30t's 7,200 rpm hard drive and roughly on par with the category average (154.4). It also puts it slightly ahead of the HP EliteBook 745 G3 (124.1). With a speed of 181.75 MBps, the Dell Latitude E7270 delivered a somewhat higher rate.

Though we wouldn't advise playing video games on the ThinkPad X260, the laptop from Lenovo and its built-in Intel HD 520 GPU are more than sufficient for general productivity tasks or watching videos. The X260 (59,489) outperformed the Toshiba Portege A30t (53,939), HP EliteBook 745 G3 (44,377), and the category average (46,031) on 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited while falling just short of the Latitude E7270.

Battery Life

If you choose the six-cell, 72-watt-hour extended battery, the ThinkPad X260 gives fantastic battery life. On the Laptop Battery Test, which involves continuous Web browsing over Wi-Fi at 100 nits of brightness, a bigger battery allowed Lenovo's laptop to survive 17 hours and 14 minutes. That is more than twice as fast as the average for ultraportable computers (8:12), the Portege A30t (7:01), the Dell Latitude E7270 (8:02), and the HP EliteBook 745 G3 (8:02). (5:54).

Even Lenovo's own ThinkPad T460 (13:12), which utilizes identical batteries, has a 4-hour shorter battery life. But if you choose the three-cell battery for the X260, which costs INR 1,225 less and weighs 0.4 pounds less, you get a respectable but unimpressive 8 hours and 16 minutes of runtime.

No matter which battery you select, Lenovo allows you to change it without shutting down the computer. The X260 utilizes PowerBridge, which combines an internal three-cell battery with its removable unit to enable the laptop to continue operating (possibly for hours) even when its rear unit is removed. Even competitors with comparable sizes from HP, Toshiba, and Dell lack detachable batteries.

Software And Warranty

Lenovo includes a few helpful utilities and very little bloatware with the ThinkPad X260. Lenovo Settings gives you precise control over the camera, touchpad, wireless radio, and other components, while Lenovo Companion performs hardware and software scans to keep your laptop operating smoothly.

Unfortunately, it also comes with a few pointless programs like Candy Crush Soda Saga, Flipboard, and a tile that directs users to the Windows Store page for Adobe Photoshop Express, much like most Windows 10 laptops do. A Standard one-year "depot" parts-and-labor guarantee for the X260 is provided, and free shipping is provided if you need to send your computer in for repair. Additionally, you can pay an additional INR 3,185.90 to INR 47,298.39 to add on-site service and accidental damage insurance or extend the term by up to five years.

Configuration Options

The cheapest version of the ThinkPad X260, which has a dull 1366 x 768 display, a sluggish Core i3-6100U CPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive, starts at INR 62,411, but we don't advise buying it. A Core i3/Core i5/Core i7 CPU, a high- or low-res display, up to 16GB of RAM, and a hard drive or SSD may all be purchased from Lenovo. Our Core i5-6300U processor, 8GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, and base 1366 x 768 display configuration cost INR 94,760.17.

We strongly advise purchasing the X260 with the 1920 x 1080 display, an INR 12,250 option, and the high-capacity battery, which costs an additional INR 1250 but provides the best experience. Without these options, we wouldn't even consider purchasing them.

Bottom Line

Because it's the perfect size for tiny desks (or your lap), the ThinkPad X260 is an excellent option for folks who need to be productive on the move. It also offers a fantastic battery life, a comfortable keyboard, and powerful mainstream performance. Consider the ThinkPad T460, which is a touch heavier but provides similar functionality and more than 13 hours of endurance. It has a larger display and a marginally better typing experience. However, the X260 should be at the top of your list if you need a laptop that best compromises portability and usability. Make sure the screen resolution is 1920 x 1080.