Game:

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010)

Duration: 0:00

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1

From not powering on to being a workhorse, x260 is plenty powerful and fast for less demanding tasks. This 9 years old laptop is 1.5-2x faster than some sub $200 new laptops that are available in best buy now as 2024. Plus a new battery pack, 120GB SSD, and a 128GB SD card, this laptop costs less than $100.

Upgrades:
A full size SD card is used as a secondary backup storage, and it's very cheap these days. This is cheaper than to get a 240GB SSD. Having my work stored in 2 places is more important.

The Thinkpad x260 has an Intel Core i5-6300U, and while this is very slow and outdated that my cheap android phone is more powerful than it, yet it's still powerful enough for the tasks that I need to do with it. The 12.5” screen is small, but again, for what I need it to do, I actually prefer a smaller screen for a longer period of time working on it, less eye strain. I need a good keyboard, and Lenovo is well-known for its good keyboard, and this is just perfect. Technically, if you need a good writer, an android phone paired with a good Bluetooth keyboard is all that you need. Touch screen typing is just not fast enough for meaning work to be done. But a real windows laptop can do more than a writer.

X260 is not the best 12.5” thinkpad, but X270 doesn’t have a SATA configuration, but it’s possible to connect to one with cable. X280 is great, but it is less upgradable and too modern. X280 is great for you if you don’t care about the SD-card slot, swappable battery, 2.5” SATA drive and replaceable RAM. X280 is boring, and less useful in terms of available ports, so x260 in a way is the best 12.5” lineup. X270 is similar to x260, but if it needs 2.5” SATA, you need to hunt down the special cable for it.

X280 with an Intel Core i5-8250U is about 5870/3231=181% faster than the X260 with an Intel Core i5-6300U while consuming less power for the same task. If the above shortcomings are not important to you, then X280 is a very nice laptop to have in 2024. It costs about $149-300 refurbished, and this laptop would be 2-5 times faster than a similarly priced new cheaply made laptop, but keep in mind that these computers have different CPU configuration, so the same model is not the same.