JULY 2019 PCWorld 57The X390 keyboard looks like that of every other
ThinkPad, but it feels stiffer.
SECURITY, CAMERAS,
AND SOUND
The Lenovo ThinkPad X390’s webcam is your
typical 720p model, but it does have a
physical privacy shutter. Slide it into place,
and a subtle red dot covers the lens to
confirm that no snooping will occur. Lenovo
plans to offer a “PrivacyGuard” display this
summer to thwart inquisitive glances, but this
wasn’t available on our review unit.
For authentication, the ThinkPad X390
offers both a fingerprint reader and an IR
sensor for Windows Hello face recognition.
It’s great having both options on one
laptop, but keep in mind face recognition
won’t work when the privacy shutter is
over the webcam.
Sound quality is seldom a priority on
business laptops—case in point for the
ThinkPad X390, whose speakers are lacking in
bass and not particularly loud. Lenovo says it
uses a new audio signal processor for noise
cancellation on its microphones, though, and
here the results were excellent. A voice
recording sounded crisp even with heavy-rain
sounds playing on a nearby speaker. I tried
this with a couple of other laptops (including
the ThinkPad L390 Yoga), and the recordings
were more muddled.PERFORMANCE
It’s no surprise that the fully loaded
ThinkPad X390 we received made short
work of its benchmarks. The laptop doesn’t
get too hot on its underside either, thanks
to a vent that blows air out the right side.
The system fan mostly stays quiet under
basic productivity workloads.
One caveat, though: On Lenovo’s default
unplugged power setting (“Better Battery”),
performance throttling becomes quite
noticeable for certain tasks. While using the
Windows app Tweeten (go.pcworld.com/
twtn), for instance, scrolling seemed choppy,
and web links took a while to load. Setting up
the X390 side-by-side with Lenovo’s ThinkPad
L390 Yoga (with a lesser i5-8265U CPU and