The other big ThinkPad announcement coming out of CES today is the updated ThinkPad X120e, successor to the X100e ultraportable. Sporting what appears to be the same chassis and 11.6-inch display, the X120e gets a major tech upgrade with AMD’s new Fusion platform.
AMD’s Fusion platform is intended to not only compete with Intel’s low power, low performance Atom platform, but blow it out of the water. The dual-core Fusion E-350 is reported to have cut power consumption by 40% compared its Athlon V120 predecessor. The other major improvement is with the integrated GPU, which outperforms Intel’s (last generation) HD graphics by far and even beats or keeps pace with the higher horsepower VIA and NVIDIA offerings.
The CPU side of things won’t win many or any contests, but should stand out from Atom and other low-end CPUs. Along with the lower power usage and higher GPU performance, one of Fusion’s major selling points will be its price. Though a new “Sandy Bridge” 2011 Core CPU from Intel will steadily outperform Fusion, that would cost several times more and defeat the purpose of the low-cost X120e.
The Fusion E-350 processor sports dual cores running at 1.6GHz, while the lower cost E-240 makes do with a single core running at 1.5GHz. Both sport an 18W TDP, though we don’t have any word how much more the E-350 will run stuffed inside the X120e.
Just how much better is the power consumption than the X100e’s Athlon Neo chip? Lenovo calls for a respectable 6.6 hours of runtime on the X120′e 6-cell battery, compared to 5 hours with the X100e’s Neo processor.
Outside of the technology platform, the X120e also gets a low-light HD webcam, 320GB 7200rpm HDD, 128GB SSD, and the all-important HDMI output.
The X120e will be available in February starting under $400.
For more information on AMD’s Fusion platform, we recommend checking out this great overview written up by DailyTech.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
If you watch the x120e marketing video on lenovovision’s YouTube channel, I believe it has a crack in the plastic bezel. I think this one needs Infinity display. :^)
Is there a VGA out? If not it would be a deal breaker in cooperate environment…
John, in line with what ralf asked, the pictures show a VGA port, not HDMI, on the rear left of the unit. So did Lenovo just release a stock photo of the X100e, instead of an actual X120e?
HDMI port is on the left side of the laptop, watch the video at 1:04 mark. the vga is on the back. I guess the unit loses 1 usb port as a result.
1:33 in video
we can see 3-d usb on the other side
but the pictures on this post they are not, perhaps pictures of x100e
You must log in to post a comment.