Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 Evaluation： A Thin Book Keeping pace with the Times
[PConline evaluation] "Keeping pace with the times" is like the blood flowing in the body of a technology manufacturer. Without blood, you can’t survive; Without hematopoiesis, there is no vitality. And "keeping pace with the times" has different concrete appearances in different industries and different types of manufacturers. For example, in the notebook industry we are going to talk about next, "keeping pace with the times" means using the latest hardware and adopting a design language that fits the times and approaches consumers.
From the hardware point of view, the latest hardware is nothing more than Intel’s eight-generation (thin notebook)/nine-generation (game notebook) processors and NVIDIA’s MX (thin notebook) /RTX (game notebook) graphics cards. As a leader in the notebook industry, what kind of new hardware is connected in series and what kind of design is used to make Lenovo’s products stand out in the fierce competition in the market? This time,
Intimate design and accurate positioning of users
Just as black and white is an eternal classic, simplicity is a design that never falls behind. However, simplicity does not mean monotony, and how to distinguish simplicity from monotony, Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 is realized by small corner LOGO embellishment.
The front of Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 is treated with frosting and spraying technology. On the whole, it looks strong in metal texture, and it is dry and delicate in practice.
On the front of Nuoda, except Lenovo Logo in the upper left corner, the notebook has no other gaudy logo, which is concise and clear, not only conforms to the design pursuit of simplicity and fashion of young people at present, but also shows the neatness and competence of business elites when taking it on business trips.
When it comes to the use of business elites, Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 is equipped with many practical interfaces. Among them, from the outside to the inside, USB 3.1 interface x 2, SD card reader and small hole with "one-button recovery" function are arranged on the right side. The external USB 3.1 interface can charge mobile phones, tablets and other devices even if the computer is turned off. The notebook is cleverly transformed into a large charging treasure, and there is no need to carry multiple charging treasures on business trips, which is easy and enjoyable; The "one-button recovery" function converted from the ThinkPad blue key can also help users get out of trouble easily when they encounter intractable problems such as system crash/computer blue screen.
As for the left side, the power interface, HDMI display interface, USB Type-C interface and 3.5mm 2-in-1 audio interface are listed in turn. With the addition of USB Type-C interface, the diversified interface support of the computer is realized. No matter what type of data cable the mobile phone uses, there is always an interface suitable for you.
At the back of the rotating shaft and the bottom of the notebook, a large fence corresponds to the cooling fan of the notebook, and the heat generated when the notebook runs large software also has sufficient cooling space.
In addition, different from the traditional four-corner foot pads, Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 uses 2+1 rubber foot pads at the bottom, with long and thick rubber foot pads. With the first two small foot pads, the notebook can be used stably in more scenes.
Thanks to the flexibility of the rotating shaft, the opening and closing angle of Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 model can reach 180. It is also very convenient to play drama on the sofa/bed in leisure time and discuss ideas with others at work.
The narrow bezel design that keeps pace with the times generally stays at a width of 7.5mm in the market, while Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 has achieved a width of 4.25mm, which makes the notebook screen account for as much as 85.3%. The 15.6-inch notebook looks only the size of the traditional 14-inch notebook. When users are working, their horizons are wider and their mood is naturally brighter, and they can also feel greater vision when watching movies.
Due to the integration of the camera and microphone required for video, the forehead of Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 is not as narrow as the borders on both sides, but it is still much narrower than the ordinary models on the market. On this narrow forehead, Lenovo skillfully added a physical peep-proof switch to the camera, turned it off to the left and turned it on to the right. In an era when privacy is increasingly valued, sometimes an excellent design language is a small and intimate design that meets the needs of the times.
Now that we talk about privacy protection, fingerprint recognition is indispensable for a light notebook that keeps pace with the times. In the lower right corner of the keyboard of Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019, the fingerprint recognition function is added to Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019. This pressed fingerprint key can be used as a power-on key, and it can be unlocked to enter the system when it is dormant, thus avoiding the embarrassment of inputting passwords in front of many people and effectively protecting personal privacy.
Maybe you will ask, with this button, what is the function of the power button in the upper right corner? Just as the "one-button recovery" function exists, a backup scheme is also needed for the safety of business use. The existence of the power key is not only the first entrance when fingerprint identification is not set, but also the second entrance when fingerprint identification fails.
In order to get a better feel, many users like an external mechanical keyboard. Going on a business trip means saying goodbye to the mechanical keyboard, but using Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 does not mean saying goodbye to a good feel.
Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 keyboard adopts an isolated chocolate keyboard, and each key exists independently, with a distance of 19.05mm, which is not easy to touch by mistake; The key stroke is 1.3mm, and the quick tapping response is quick; Coupled with the matte paint on the surface of the keycap, although the feel is not as good as that of the mechanical keyboard, it is definitely not bad for business trips.
In addition, it is not difficult to use the backlight at night by calling up the backlight through FN+ space bar. And the digital keyboard area that makes full use of space will greatly improve the office efficiency for friends who have to deal with numbers every day.
In the touchpad part, Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 adopts an integrated glass touchpad solution. The area looks small, but it is very sensitive and smooth in actual operation. It can complete accurate operation only by clicking and gesturing, and it is not a big problem without a mouse in daily office.
Surrounding dolby pro logic with 15.6-inch ultra-narrow bezel and high color gamut full HD IPS full screen not only provides users with excellent audio and video experience visually but also audibly.
In terms of thickness and weight, Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 is made of aluminum alloy metal, which provides sufficient strength guarantee for the fuselage, and also makes the whole notebook lighter. The thinnest part is 16.9mm, and the 15.6-inch fuselage with power adapter is only 2.3kg (1.76kg for the fuselage), so it is relatively light to carry on business trips.
Excellent configuration to enhance user experience On the screen side, Xiaoxin Air15 2019 adopts the popular "high color gamut IPS screen", which has a high color gamut coverage of 72%NTSC, and the screen resolution is 1920×1080. The surface layer is treated with anti-glare atomization, and with the high brightness of 300 nits, it also has a good impression under strong light.
On the processor side, Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 is an eight-generation Core i7-8565U equipped with Intel’s latest Whiskey Lake architecture. This processor has been enhanced, and its performance is at least 10% higher than that of the i7-8550U introduced earlier, with a main frequency of 1.8GHz, a turbo frequency of 4.6GHz, 4 cores and 8 threads, a third-level cache of 8 MB, and a TDP of 15W.
With a stronger eight-generation Core i7-8565U, Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 also enables multi-mode support. Through FN+Q, users can switch between beast, mute and balanced modes at will.
When the external power supply is inconvenient for business trip, use the "silent" mode with longer battery life; Leisure and entertainment want to play games such as League of Legends to start the "beast"; Multi-mode selection also makes it better adapt to more usage scenarios.
Silent mode
Beast mode
Then, under different modes, what is the performance difference of Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019? We tested its lowest performance "silent" mode and the strongest performance "beast" mode through CINEBENCH R15. The results are shown in the figure, and the final results of the "silent" mode are: multi-core 542cb and single-core 160cb；; Final results of "Beast" mode: multi-core 694cb, single-core 171cb.
Judging from the score, the silent mode is quite different from the Beast mode, but don’t underestimate the performance of the silent mode, which is only a little lower than i7-8550U (single core 166cb, multi-core 561cb), which also means that in the silent mode, any browser can be opened more, office software can be used, or PS retouching, video editing and simple rendering can be done.
As for the "Beast" mode, the single-core performance basically exceeds that of the previous generation i7-7700HQ standard voltage. In other words, this processor has more than enough computing power to deal with some mainstream online games.
Since there is no problem with the computing power of the processor, the only other factor that may hinder the notebook from playing is the core temperature. We use AIDA for this part? 64 Carry out CPU copying test on Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019. Under the condition of 100% high load, we can see that the core temperature of i7-8565U fluctuates regularly between 70℃ and 90℃, and the whole process processor runs stably without sudden frequency drop. It is not easy to perform stably at high temperature. This achievement is not only due to the low power consumption of Intel processor, but also thanks to the design skill of Lenovo’s double fans, double copper pipes and die cooling of the whole machine.
During the copying process, we tested Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 with infrared thermometer. Under the condition of room temperature of 26.1℃, the high temperature area of the machine is mainly concentrated in the heat dissipation port at the rotating shaft, with the highest temperature of 47.3℃. Only by touching that position with your hands can you feel the temperature.
As for the graphics card, NVIDIA MX250 has a core frequency of 1519MHz and a memory frequency of 1752MHz. It is full of blood without castration, and its performance is improved by 5% ~ 10% compared with the "full blood version" MX150, which can meet the needs of ordinary 3D online games and barely getting started eating chicken. In addition, the editing speed of general pictures and videos such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom and Premiere will be faster.
In the hard disk part, Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019 has a built-in 1T PCIe SSD. In the test of CrystalDiskMark, the sequential reading and writing speed of 1G file is as high as 3453MB/s and 2107MB/s, and the random reading and writing performance of 4K is 37.35MB/s and 77.78mb/s. To be honest, it is quite unexpected that the sequential reading and writing can reach such a high speed. This side reflects that Lenovo uses the same amount of materials in invisible places, and uses high-standard hardware at any cost, in exchange for a smooth user experience with 5 seconds of boot and rapid software response. In terms of product scalability, according to the official product introduction, Xiaoxin Air15 2019′ s memory supports a maximum of 20G dual-channel memory expansion. The SSD also supports dual SSDs, with extra M.2242 extension bits reserved, and supports PCIe bus and NVMe protocol as well as the main hard disk bits. As a thin notebook with a thickness of only 16.9mm, its storage scalability is still worthy of recognition.
The battery life-related part is a highlight of Air15 2019. Compared with the previous generation of 45Wh and the current situation that the products of the same level are mostly hovering at 50-60Wh, this year’s Air15 2019 battery has jumped to a super-large capacity of 70Wh, which is a ride in the same level of light and thin books. The official announcement has the longest battery life of 19 hours. Of course, this is the theoretical time. In fact, it is closer to the scene used by users. We recommend using PC Mark8′ s Work mode battery life test. Due to the compatibility problem with the language pack of PC Mark8, it is temporarily impossible to carry out the battery life simulation test on the test machine on hand. According to the results released by netizens at present, the longest working mode can reach about 7-8 hours. This has obvious advantages over the common score of about 5 hours.
In addition to the large battery, Air15 2019 also supports ultra-fast charging technology, claiming that it can be used for 4 hours after charging for 1 quarter of an hour, and it can use the fragmented time to quickly "return blood" to the computer. However, the description of 65W high-power adapter reminds me of Z6 Pro’s "27W fast charging adapter" some time ago, which is funny manually.
Summary:
Even if it is implemented in notebooks, the performance of "keeping pace with the times" is different because of different product segments. Lenovo Xiaoxin Air 15 2019, based on the common elements such as large screen, all-metal, thinness and uniqueness, also strengthened the two outstanding advantages of screen quality and battery capacity, and explained to you the configuration and design language that a large-size business thinness should have. Its version of i5/8G/1T SSD/MX250 is priced at only 5499 yuan, which is still very competitive in a light and thin book of 5000 yuan. .