Did anyone get a x210ai from tpart.net?

[surfbro]

Noticed on his blog tpart.net he mentioned he has started shipping some x210ai. Wondering if anyone here purchased one, and received one yet?

[FranckDeng]

Noticed on his blog tpart.net he mentioned he has started shipping some x210ai. Wondering if anyone here purchased one, and received one yet?

haha, yeah, someone in the UK, France, US, Germany, south Korea, and Poland have received their machine.

[surfbro]

Noticed on his blog tpart.net he mentioned he has started shipping some x210ai. Wondering if anyone here purchased one, and received one yet?

haha, yeah, someone in the UK, France, US, Germany, south Korea, and Poland have received their machine.

Cool, I just saw a review on reddit, so I can't wait to receive mine. Thanks Franck

[FranckDeng]

haha, yeah, someone in the UK, France, US, Germany, south Korea, and Poland have received their machine.

Cool, I just saw a review on reddit, so I can't wait to receive mine. Thanks Franck

thank you for your kindly patience.

[NonesensE]

Noticed on his blog tpart.net he mentioned he has started shipping some x210ai. Wondering if anyone here purchased one, and received one yet?

Yep, "someone from Germany" here, who received one. Couldn't do much with it yet, but first impression is positive: Slapped CachyOS on, let powertop auto-tune do its work and immediately reached the deepest package c-states. Unlike the research needed back in the X62 days...

[astral]

I bought one. It should be arriving in a week or two. Will be doing a review on it when it's here

[NonesensE]

Typing this from my X210Ai now. Overall, it works great even though Franck already mentions some improvements to be made in future BIOS/EC updates in the setup guide.

Minor issues I have run into:
- extra keys on ISO keyboard layout dont work yet (just like in the first BIOS versions of the X62)
- sound via onboard speakers is... well, not very pleasant. Distorted at higher volume and no bass. Not that the speakers ever had any bass to begin with, but to me it seems to be even less than original.
- internal mic not working (or not connected? Placed in the display bezel, this may be problematic to connect, I dont know. Anyway, it never worked on my X62 and I never missed it, I use an external webcam with integrated mic when needed).
- fan slightly rubs on something. Loosening the keyboard screw closest to the fan helps (put a tiny amount of loctite onto the threads to prevent it from falling out). At some point I might remove the board&fan from the case and see where it rubs, probably some minor thing just on my machine.
- slight trackpoint mark already visible on the 3000x2000 screen on dark backgrounds - earlier than expected, but we all knew this would happen eventually.

Keyboard layout and to some extent probably sound can be fixed via BIOS. Rest is not a problem for me, not much different from what I had on my X62.

Bottom line: Already loving the machine. Quick, powerful, mostly silent and with all the proper thinkpad features. Thanks @FranckDeng for making this available to the international thinkpad community!

[RealBlackStuff]

Put some thin rubber bumpers (2-3mm) along the inside top of the LCD bezel.

[NonesensE]

Thanks, I'll try it.

Edit: One thing I forgot to mention, the WWAN mPCIe port is a flat flex cable port, there will be a matching daughterboard but that is still in development. They used a 24 pin port (if I counted correctly), so none of the generic mPCIe / mSATA extensions will match plug'n'play - at least none that I have found.

[eqan]

Noticed on his blog tpart.net he mentioned he has started shipping some x210ai. Wondering if anyone here purchased one, and received one yet?

Yep, "someone from Germany" here, who received one. Couldn't do much with it yet, but first impression is positive: Slapped CachyOS on, let powertop auto-tune do its work and immediately reached the deepest package c-states. Unlike the research needed back in the X62 days...

How much battery life are you expecting now with 1 charge and is it a 9 cell OEM battery? and how's the machine doing?

[NonesensE]

Like I said in the other thread, I get 5+ hours light load battery life on Linux with a rather cheap 6 cell battery. With a good 9 cell battery, I'd expect up to 10 hours. Probably depends on the display, though (and obviously on the brightness setting).

On Windows 11, I get less runtime, maybe up to 4 hours. And more fan noise. Probably because I haven't been able to activate package C-states yet.

Apart from the minor stuff I already posted about, the machine simply does its job. Love it.

[solidsnack]

can't wait to get mine... i ordered mine around end of November and he said shipping mid Jan

[flyingfishfinger]

Just got mine, but I somehow missed that it needs DDR5 memory. Bad time to buy RAM... besides that,I had to pull my existing screen apart to replace the cable which is a little finicky but worked out OK (I bought only the bottom half - pleasantly suprised that it came with a good condition keyboard and a WiFi card).

Unsure what to do about the memory, so I haven't turned it on yet. Will update later!

[eqan]

Just got mine, but I somehow missed that it needs DDR5 memory. Bad time to buy RAM... besides that,I had to pull my existing screen apart to replace the cable which is a little finicky but worked out OK (I bought only the bottom half - pleasantly suprised that it came with a good condition keyboard and a WiFi card).

Unsure what to do about the memory, so I haven't turned it on yet. Will update later!

Looking forward to the updates, phew dodged a bullet bought a 64 GB DDR5 5600MHz Crucial single stick for 230 euros in December, I know got lucky and a 4 TB Gen5 NVME 2280 SSD from Corsair for 200 euro.

[flyingfishfinger]

Will post an update in the X210ai Review thread, check there!

[ssbb]

can't wait to get mine... i ordered mine around end of November and he said shipping mid Jan

Probably a bit too optimistic Ordered mine early August with a mid-Sept shipping estimate. Still patiently waiting for the shipping notification, but hopefully soon!

[astral]

And I ordered mine in...March? with a June shipping estimate. I got mine in September. So yeah, the estimates are usually off, but I did receive the laptop and it does work great!

[Medessec]

I received mine back in October. Fantastic all-round experience with it so far, there's been some flaws discovered by other members that's already been mentioned on here. The trackpoint leaving an impression on the new display, which I've fixed with putting some strips of speaker foam as little bumpers on the palmrest. Astral had an issue with the headphone jacks breaking off on the inside, and looking at the daughterboard myself- it does seem to not be the strongest setup. I've layered some epoxy around the headphone jack on the daughterboard to add some strength... I've tested it and it seems to be a lot stronger. But I personally don't use the headphone jacks much myself.

Mine's the Ultra 9 185H, and I have a 2560x1600 13" display. I've put a 2TB SSD and 32GB of RAM into it, and installed Windows 10 LTSC onto it. After installing all the components, it was up and running and getting going on installing Windows in pretty much a matter of minutes, and Windows 10 was fully installed in under an hour. It's been blazing fast with everything- web browsing, videos, streaming, and I've even been using it for light gaming. I've ran 3DMark benchmarks on it, it scores 2775 in Time Spy and 9974 on Solar Bay, and it actually plays some pretty modern titles well enough on low settings to be playable- particularly Call of Duty Black Ops Cold War. But I've mostly played Civ V on it so far over Christmas/New Years, since that's what me and my buds are into right now.

The screen bezel may be super thin compared to the original which may give some of you guys cause for concern, it certainly did for me... but it's actually quite tough. I can confidently grab it by the top of the screen and wobble the whole thing left and right pretty firmly, and it's totally rigid. There's quality touches elsewhere too, such as the precise way they cut the holes in the original chassis to give the heatsink more ventilation, and the fact that they made a custom heatsink for it which is much more beefy. Otherwise, I just absolutely love the proportions of the keyboard, the classic Thinkpad feel and look, and the small, light build. Definitely one of the best small laptops I think that exist right now. It's a 13" with a Core 9, and 2x M.2 slots, that makes it a pretty ferocious little machine. It does thermal throttle if you really hammer the CPU, but it keeps up relatively well for a laptop of its size and offers incredible performance all things considered.

Another cool tidbit- I've rebuilt a few X200/201 batteries and am currently using a rebuilt original OEM 4-cell prismatic battery, it gets about 2-3 hours of battery life quite easily. I've rebuilt 6-cells as well and they'll last up to 5 hours.

[astral]

It took you pointing it out for me to realize there were extra ventilation holes on the X210Ai! Didn't notice, they look factory.

[solidsnack]

can't wait to get mine... i ordered mine around end of November and he said shipping mid Jan

Probably a bit too optimistic Ordered mine early August with a mid-Sept shipping estimate. Still patiently waiting for the shipping notification, but hopefully soon!

wow, I guess the estimates are off. I just bought the ram and ssd though, these prices are getting out of hand... I wish I bought it sooner though

[ZaZ]

Un;ess you've got a specifc need for top performance, you're almost always better off going used, from a value perspective.

[shrimpboyho2]

I've layered some epoxy around the headphone jack on the daughterboard to add some strength... I've tested it and it seems to be a lot stronger. But I personally don't use the headphone jacks much myself.

I have some JB weld clear weld laying around. Do you know if that would that be an advisable epoxy? Would you mind sharing some photos of your modified daughterboard?

[Medessec]

I have some JB weld clear weld laying around. Do you know if that would that be an advisable epoxy? Would you mind sharing some photos of your modified daughterboard?

Here's a link to an image of how it looks.

JBWeld ClearWeld I'd imagine would work okay. I used the industrial-grade epoxy that hardens more into a chalky, rock-hard texture. You do want to be careful not to pour epoxy into the contacts of course- mine still works just fine.

[ssbb]

Finally got mine! What a beast.

Got it with 42T3671 keyboard which was barely working (mod keys works 50/50 and trackpoint is junk, maybe a replica?) so swapped it to 42T3737 which I had laying around and really happy with it

[outis]

I’m seriously looking into an X210Ai because I love the X201 keyboard and form factor, and I had a general question about reliability.

This would be a secondary, portable machine rather than a primary workstation, but I’d still want to be able to get real work done on it, especially at this price point.

Most of what I’ve seen so far seems to be Linux-focused (and some Windows 10 LTSC). I already run Linux on my project ThinkPads that I tinker with, but Windows would be a requirement for me here since I use Excel, Teams, and Adobe Acrobat Pro for work, so I’m curious how it’s been for anyone running Windows 11 specifically.

Has anyone been using Win 11 with heavier Excel workloads, and if so, how has stability been? In other words, could I actually get some real work done on this, or is it effectively a very expensive version of one of my project ThinkPads?

Thanks in advance.

[RealBlackStuff]

Windows 11 is worse than Windows ME, who on earth really wants that Micro$haft crap?

[dr_st]

Has anyone been using Win 11 with heavier Excel workloads, and if so, how has stability been? In other words, could I actually get some real work done on this, or is it effectively a very expensive version of one of my project ThinkPads?

I don't quite understand the question, but whatever you can get done with Windows 10, you can get done with Windows 11, and then some. If you don't like the UI defaults or the extra software active in Win11 by default, you can disable most of it, essentially making Win11 just like Win10 except with rounded window corners and a newer/better kernel.

[astral]

Has anyone been using Win 11 with heavier Excel workloads, and if so, how has stability been? In other words, could I actually get some real work done on this, or is it effectively a very expensive version of one of my project ThinkPads?

I don't quite understand the question, but whatever you can get done with Windows 10, you can get done with Windows 11, and then some. If you don't like the UI defaults or the extra software active in Win11 by default, you can disable most of it, essentially making Win11 just like Win10 except with rounded window corners and a newer/better kernel.

Windows 11 has way more bloat than 10, and you will absolutely notice the performance difference, especially if you're using an older computer. You can get it debloated with some work, but with how much Microsoft has been touting their use of AI in programming Windows recently, I wouldn't exactly trust the kernel to be more stable... The file explorer is definitely slower than Windows 10's, and I don't think getting rid of all the AI and tracking background processes will do much about that.

[dr_st]

Windows 11 has way more bloat than 10, and you will absolutely notice the performance difference, especially if you're using an older computer. You can get it debloated with some work, but with how much Microsoft has been touting their use of AI in programming Windows recently, I wouldn't exactly trust the kernel to be more stable...

So debloat it, and don't use an older computer. Windows versions always run best on contemporary hardware anyways. Otherwise you are asking for compatibility issues, since no one tests the drivers properly. The X210Ai hardware should be modern and good enough.

As for the Windows kernel - it's the only component of Windows NT that's been steadily improving with every version, no exceptions (barring, of course, localized 'hiccups' which are typically fixed within weeks). Most of it is simply due to Microsoft's development and maintenance policies. Past a certain date they will simply not introduce any new features into "last year's" OS, and even bugs will be fixed begrudgingly. All the serious kernel development is only forward-facing.

Like everything, AI in programming can be a great thing or a horrible thing, all depends on how you use it.

[NonesensE]

I’m curious how it’s been for anyone running Windows 11 specifically.

As I said in some of my other posts: The X210Ai runs a little bit hotter / noisier on Win11 than on Linux. Other than that, it's perfectly fine, as should be expected with the modern hardware.

Has anyone been using Win 11 with heavier Excel workloads, and if so, how has stability been? In other words, could I actually get some real work done on this, or is it effectively a very expensive version of one of my project ThinkPads?

Excel and heavy workloads? That must be a hell of a sheet. I've only used regular Excel sheets yet, nothing out of the ordinary. Real workloads? I've had the chance to run the laptop at full power for about 2 hours straight with libretranslate. It's a powerful laptop, it does what it's supposed to do.