Design and Features
Longtime fans of the ThinkPad will be happy to know that the X240 doesn't stray too far from the iconic design, although it does offer a few new touches. The lid is made of carbon fiber and has a new Graphite Black finish, which is a bit smoother than the typical ThinkPad finish. It also uses a drop-down hinge design that allows the screen to be extended to a 180-degree tilt range. As always, ThinkPad and Lenovo badges adorn the lid.
The X240 has a built-in, non-removable 3-cell battery and comes with a removable 3-cell battery and a removable 6-cell battery, both of which are hot-swappable thanks to Lenovo's Power Bridge Technology, which allows you to replace a spent battery with a charged battery without powering down the notebook.
Beneath the lid is a 12.5-inch IPS touch-screen display that delivers vibrant colors, deep blacks, and wide viewing angles. However, its 1366-by-768 resolution pales in comparison to the 3,200-by-1,800 resolution you get with the Samsung Book 9. That said, the touch screen worked flawlessly, and the display's uber-thin bezels made for easy Windows 8 swiping from either side.
The island-style keyboard is a typical ThinkPad keyboard; in other words, it is awesome. The backlit keys are full-size and well spaced, and the keyboard is spill-resistant. Typing is comfortable, and keystrokes are responsive. The newly designed glass trackpad offers twice the work area of previous trackpads, contains five integrated click buttons, and supports 20 Windows 8 gesture commands. I takes a little getting used to the extra surface area but once you do it's hard to image how you ever got along with a smaller trackpad. As always, a red TrackPoint pointing stick is nestled between the G, H, and B keys, and there's a fingerprint reader off to the right side of the keyboard.
Rounding out the feature set are Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios, a webcam and microphone array, and a 256GB solid-state drive with Windows 8 Pro. There are also a handful of Lenovo apps, including Lenovo Cloud Storage and Companion apps, trial versions of Microsoft Office and Norton Studio, Skype, and Evernote Touch.