Infinix InBook X1 Slim review: Will last for daily use
Infinix InBook X1 Slim price in India
Infinix InBook X1 Slim The price of the laptop in India starts from Rs 29,990. Discounts and credit card offers are also being given with select banks. There are five variants of the laptop. You can choose the best for yourself according to CPU, RAM and storage. In the base price, you get 10th Gen Core i3 CPU, 8GB RAM and 256GB storage. By spending Rs 3000 more, you can also install 512GB SSD in it. The version I have for review has Core i5 CPU, 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD. Its price in India is Rs 39,990. If you double the RAM and take the 16GB variant, then the price becomes Rs 44,990. Its top variant comes with Core i7 CPU, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD, which is priced at Rs 49,990.
The laptop is available on Flipkart and has been launched in 4 colours – Neutral Starfall Grey, Noble Red, Cosmic Blue, and Aurora Green.
Design of Infinix InBook X1
Although this is a basic budget laptop, the company has tried to add some design elements to it. The lid and bottom are made of aluminum. The upper third of the lid of the InBook X1 has a glossy brushed texture while the rest is sandblasted and matte finished. There is a small Infinix logo on the side.
My blue colour unit had a dark interior which was not distracting at all while working. The lower half is plastic and so is the frame around the screen. But nothing looks or feels cheap. The hinge feels quite reliable and even if the lid is bent deliberately, the screen is not affected. The keyboard flexes are normal but the trackpad feels quite plastic and the mechanism is quite stiff and noisy. You cannot compare it with laptops with modern looks and thin borders but in terms of build quality at this price point, it will not disappoint you.
The weight and 14.8mm thickness of the device does full justice to its name InBook X1 Slim. It is very portable for everyday use for students and office workers. You also get a small 65W USB Type-C charger in the box which is quite convenient.
A unique feature that the company has provided in this is the dual star LED flash light. These are two LEDs that are placed above the webcam on the screen. You can toggle them by pressing Win+Space. We will know how these are used in the webcam later in the review. But keep in mind, depending on the angle at which the screen is set, their light can also fall directly into the eyes.
The power button looks like it has a fingerprint scanner, but it doesn’t. You get a traditional keyboard with nothing extra special. The arrow cluster is pretty compact but there are dedicated paging keys on the right side. I wasn’t expecting backlit keys at this price point, but it’s a nice feature and you can choose between two brightness levels. The trackpad is pretty large but is placed in the center of the laptop’s body rather than the standard typing position. I also noticed that the palm rest rejection doesn’t work as well as I’m used to with other laptops.
On the left you get an HDMI 1.4 video output, a USB 3.0 Type A port and a USB Type C port that supports charging as well as video output. On the right is a security lock slot, another USB Type A port, a 3.5mm audio socket, a data-only Type C port and a microSD card slot.
Specifications of Infinix InBook X1 Slim
Being a budget laptop, some compromises have to be made. Interestingly, the company has installed Intel 10th Gen Ice Lake CPUs in all variants. These are three years old but are still good in terms of work. After a few years, you may feel helpless in terms of these.
My review unit gets the Core i5-1035G1 CPU that has four cores and a 15W nominal TDP rating. It runs between 1GHz and 3.6GHz. But the G1 designation suggests that the Intel UHD graphics capability is weak.
Its 14-inch display has a FullHD 1920×1080 pixel resolution and offers a non-reflective surface, which is great for working. The company has said that it has 300 nits peak brightness and 100 percent sRGB color gamut coverage. The device has LPDDR4X RAM which means it is soldered and cannot be upgraded. The company says that the lineup uses PCIe 3.0 SSDs.
The laptop has a 50Wh battery for which the company has said that it can last a whole day. It can be seen for 11 hours of web browsing, 9 hours of video playback. Infinix has said that the battery can be fully charged in 90 minutes. The laptop comes with Windows 11 Home and there is no preloaded third-party software in it. It is a good thing that it can be started without linking to a Microsoft account. In the Start menu, I saw a popup advertisement from Microsoft and shortcuts to download the Microsoft Store.
Infinix InBook X1 Slim performance
Even though its processors are outdated by time, the InBook X1 Slim performs well in everyday tasks. It is responsive in regular use, even with multiple tabs open at once, which is very common in normal use these days. You can communicate, work with productivity apps, stream videos and even play some light games. Long typing sessions on the keyboard can be done but the trackpad gets in the way at times and you prefer to tap instead of clicking.
Its 14-inch display is not very bright or vibrant, but you will feel this only while watching videos. It is fine for writing work. The company has provided a quad speaker system with DTS Audio support. However, I found the sound quality quite weak. The music sounded very thin and hollow, but the voice was easily understood.
Heavy testing will show that you can’t expect much from it in serious content creation or modern games. It scored 3,621 and 2,847 in standard and extended runs of PCMark 10. While its singlecore and multicore scores in Cinebench R20 were 393 and 1,171 respectively. These scores are decent for a laptop at this price point. Here are the more expensive laptops available in 2020 Mi Notebook 14 If we compare it with , then these scores are equal to that.
One thing that particularly felt weak on the InBook X1 Slim is its SSD. File transfers were very slow, averaging 32MBps. CrystalDiskMark reported sequential reads and writes of 2,377.1MBps and 1,953MBps, respectively. Random reads and writes were 799.7MBps and 950.4MBps, respectively. The company says it has an NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD, but the diagnostic doesn’t reveal the model. Handbrake took 1 minute and 51 seconds to transcode a 1.3GB AVI file to H.265. 7zip took 4 minutes and 25 seconds to compress a 3.24GB folder.
Graphics performance isn’t too bad if you don’t expect too much. You can’t even run older games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider on this laptop, it only managed to reach 14fps at 1280×720 with the quality set to the lowest graphics level. 3DMark’s Time Spy and Night Raid scene scores were 547 and 7,186 respectively. Casual games, however, ran fine. Bloons TD 6, a simple but addictive defense game, ran pretty smoothly on it.
In a single charge, I was able to use this laptop for 8-9 hours for normal tasks and web surfing. This was less than the company’s estimate but still okay. The laptop performed well in the heavy Battery Eater Pro test and lasted for 2 hours and 54 minutes. Obviously the battery will drain quickly in work with LED webcam flash and heavy graphics. It charged from 0 to 45 percent in 30 minutes and was charged to 78 percent within an hour. USB Type C charging is quite convenient but works only with the left port.
You might be wondering if the LED flash is just a gimmick. Well, let me tell you that the webcam is not that good. The images come out dull. Yes, it did help when my face was in the shadows, but there is no improvement in the quality. If you want to look professional in video calls, you need not just a proper ring light but a proper USB webcam.
You will also hear the sound of the cooling fan when the laptop is put under load and I could hear it at times even while performing simple tasks. The left side of the keyboard also got slightly warm while playing games.
Our decision
Nowadays it is very difficult to avoid inflation and every rupee saved becomes important. The company has provided all the basic features that a student, home user or professional needs. It is quite affordable and the usage experience has not been compromised with the build quality, missing features or weak performance. It neither goes below nor above the basics. It may not be useful for a long time but the price also matters a lot to the users.
The entry-level variant comes at Rs 29,990 which is fine for the average user’s needs. The RAM is not upgradeable but 8GB should be enough. The middle variant, which is reviewed here, offers good value for money at Rs 39,990. The top variant comes at Rs 49,999 which will be purchased by a certain class of people. If you don’t want a very powerful or entertaining device, then you may like this as a balanced device.
I didn’t like the LEDs on the webcam, but the backlit keyboard, fast charging, two USB Type-C ports and a non-reflective screen make it quite special. If you want something even cheaper, the company has also launched the much simpler InBook X1 Neo, priced at Rs 24,990. It has a slightly lighter Intel Celeron CPU but the features are quite similar.
