Lenovo X300 Vs MacBook Air

Convention suggests that the MacBook Air and the Lenovo X300 are meant for different people. But are they really? Both are at the premium end of the notebook segment. Both are constructed with top-notch materials using the latest technology. And both have one common purpose-to fit easily into an interoffice envelope! There's also another good reason why both these reviews have been clubbed together in these pages; anyone looking at purchasing one of the thinnest notebooks around will unquestionably be considering both! Apart from fitting everything into a smaller casing, probably the biggest challenge for the makers of these two featherweights was heat dissipation. And they both do get quite hot, especially when used in a non-air conditioned environment.

Take the MacBook Air. No one can deny that it's a marvel of design and engineering. To earn the tag of the 'thinnest notebook in the world' takes a lot of doing, but there's also a fair bit of compromises along the way. The lack of an optical drive is easily overlooked. But then comes the question of the single USB port, the missing Ethernet port & the non-removable battery. The Lenovo X300 also wants to be thin. Enough to fit in almost all the nooks that the Air can fit into, but without the compromises. But in the end, the X300's design can only be called bland when compared to the Air. Oh yes, it's a tough choice. One that we may be able to help with!

Comparisons between the two are inevitable, and let us just say at the outset that when compared to the MacBook Air, the X300 looks like yesterday's dowdy discard. But it's a ThinkPad, and with that lineage comes the no-nonsense practicality that innumerable business users have sworn by over the years. Probably the most exciting part about the X300 is not how thin they made it, but how they managed to make it so thin without excluding any feature that a road warrior will miss. The connectivity features, ports and materials used in the X300 will put a notebook twice as heavy to shame! It has an Intel Core 2 Duo SL7100 (1.2 GHz) and 2 GB RAM. We didn't expect it to be blazing fast, but it surprised us, thanks to the fast 64 GB SSD. It also includes a DVD writer, webcam with mic, a full-sized keyboard with ThinkLight, TrackPoint and trackpad, fingerprint scanner, 3 USB ports, VGA out, audio out, line in, Ethernet, Bluetooth and WiFi. It managed a score of 3709 PC marks and 442 in 3D Mark; low when compared to higher specced notebooks, but more than acceptable for the size and intended usage. Battery life with the standard battery was about 3 hrs 15 min. Probably the only thing that we really didn't like on the X300 was the somewhat dim screen (especially when compared to the Air). Overall, a great product, but the price tag puts it out of reach of all but the elite.

Apple has a way of creating an aura about their products. And no one can deny the precise attention to detail in the design. The Air is just 4 mm thin at the edges and increases to 19.5 mm at the center. Numbers just don't do it justice; it has to be seen to be believed! It still houses a 13.3-inch LED backlit LCD, full-size backlit keyboard, a gigantic multi-touch touchpad and webcam + mic. The multitouch pad can be used to zoom in or out of images, rotate them or flip pages using a three-finger gesture. It has the latest OSX Leopard, a C2D processor (1.6 GHz), 2 GB DDR2 RAM and a 1.8-inch 80 GB hard drive. Everytime you use it, you'll be reminded of how cool it is by the admiring glances. But you'll also be reminded of the omissions. We used BootCamp and loaded Windows XP for our benchmarks. It managed 244 3D marks and the battery managed a runtime of 2 hours 45 minutes with the brightness set to max. I'd say that the MacBook can be one of the hottest gadgets of the decade. But the omissions like optical drive, USB ports, and Ethernet have ensured that it's a machine only for a select few; die-hard Apple afficionados and those who just love to show off. (There is an overlap!)