Infinix InBook X1 Slim Review: Will perform well in daily use
Infinix InBook X1 Slim price in India
Infinix InBook Its price in India starts from Rs 29,990. Discounts and credit card offers are also being given with some selected banks. There are five variants of the laptop. Among these, 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 a Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. Its price in India is Rs 39,990. If you double the RAM and get the 16GB variant, 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 colors – 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 still tried to add some design elements to it. The lid and bottom are made of aluminum. The top third of the InBook X1’s lid has a glossy brushed texture while the rest is sandblasted and matte finish. A small Infinix logo is given on the side.
My blue colored unit had a dark interior which was not at all distracting 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 the screen is not affected even if the lid is deliberately bent. The keyboard flex is simple but the trackpad feels quite plastic and the mechanism is quite stiff and noisy. You cannot compare it with laptops like modern look and thin borders but it will not disappoint you in terms of build quality at this price point.
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.
One unique feature that the company has given in it is dual star LED flash light. These are the two LEDs that are located above the webcam on the screen. You can toggle these by pressing Win + Space. How these are used in webcam, we will know further in the review. But keep in mind, depending on the angle at which the screen is set, its light may also fall directly into the eyes.
The power button looks as if it has a fingerprint scanner, but it is not so. You get a traditional keyboard with nothing extra on offer. The Arrow cluster is very compact but dedicated paging keys are also provided on the right side. At this price I wasn’t expecting backlit keys, but it’s a nice feature and you can also choose between two levels of brightness. The trackpad is quite large but is placed in the center of the laptop’s body instead of the standard typing position. I also noticed that the palm rest doesn’t do much 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 also supports charging and video output. A security lock slot is provided on the right side, a second 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. The interesting thing is that the company has installed Intel 10th Gen Ice Lake CPU in all its variants. These are three years old but still in good working order. After a few years, you may feel helpless in this matter.
My review unit comes with a Core i5-1035G1 CPU with four cores and a 15W nominal TDP rating. It runs between 1GHz and 3.6GHz. But the G1 designation suggests that Intel UHD graphics capability is weak.
Its 14 inch display has FullHD 1920×1080 pixel resolution and has a non-reflective surface, which is very good for working. The company has said that it will have 300 nits peak brightness and 100 percent sRGB color gamut coverage. The device comes with LPDDR4X RAM which means it is soldered in and cannot be upgraded. The company says that PCIe 3.0 SSDs have been used in the lineup.
The laptop has a 50Wh battery, for which the company has said that it can last the whole day. 11 hours of web browsing and 9 hours of video playback can be seen in it. Infinix has said that the battery can be fully charged in 90 minutes. The laptop comes with Windows 11 Home and does not have any preloaded third-party software. It is a good thing that it can be started without linking to a Microsoft account. In the Start menu, I saw a popup ad from Microsoft and shortcuts to downloads from the Microsoft Store.
Performance of Infinix InBook X1 Slim
Even though its processor has become old with time, InBook X1 Slim performs well in everyday work. It’s 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 on it. Typing on the keyboard can be done for a long time but the trackpad sometimes gets in the way and you prefer to tap rather than click.
Its 14-inch display is not very bright or vibrant but you will feel this only while watching videos. It’s fine for writing work. The company has given it a quad speaker system with the support of DTS Audio. However, I found the sound quality quite weak. The music sounded quite thin and hollow but the voice was easily understood.
Heavy testing will reveal that you can’t expect too much from it for serious content creation or modern games. It scored 3,621 and 2,847 in the standard and extended runs of PCMark 10, respectively. Whereas in Cinebench R20 its singlecore and multicore scores were 393 and 1,171 respectively. These scores are decent for a laptop at this price point. More expensive than what came here in 2020 Mi Notebook 14 If compared to, these scores are at par with it.
One thing that seemed particularly weak in the InBook X1 Slim is its SSD. It was very slow to transfer files which was an average of 32MBps. CrystalDiskMark reports sequential reads and writes at 2,377.1MBps and 1,953MBps, respectively. Whereas, random reads and writes were 799.7MBps and 950.4MBps respectively. The company says it has an NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD but the model is not available in the diagnostics. Handbrake took 1 minute and 51 seconds to transgender a 1.3GB AVI file to H.265. 7zip took 4 minutes 25 seconds to compress the 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, which only managed to run 14fps at 1280×720 with the quality set to the lowest graphics quality. 3DMark’s Time Spy and Night Raid scene scores were 547 and 7,186 respectively. However, casual games played well on it. Bloons TD 6 is a simple but interesting defense game that ran quite smooth on it.
On a single charge, I was able to use this laptop for 8-9 hours for simple tasks and web surfing. This turned out to be 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 54 minutes. LED webcam flash and heavy graphics work will obviously drain the battery quickly. It charged from 0 to 45 percent in 30 minutes and 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. So let me tell you that the webcam is not that good. Images come out dull. Yes, but it definitely helped when my face was in shadow, but there is no improvement in quality. If you want to look professional in video calls, you’ll need not only a proper ring light but also a proper USB webcam.
You will also hear the sound of its cooling fan when the laptop is loaded and many times I could hear it even while doing normal work. While playing the game, the left part of the keyboard was also getting slightly hot.
our decision
Nowadays it is very difficult to avoid inflation and every rupee saved becomes important. The company has given it 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 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.
Its entry level variant comes for Rs 29,990 which is suitable for the needs of the average user. RAM is not upgradeable but 8GB should be enough. The middle variant, reviewed here, offers good value for money at Rs 39,990. The top variant comes for Rs 49,999, which will be bought only by a special category of people. If you do not want a very powerful or entertaining device, then you may like it as a balanced device.
I didn’t like the LEDs on its webcam, but its backlit keyboard, fast charging and two USB Type C ports, non-reflective screen make it quite special. If you want something even cheaper than this, then the company has also brought a very simple InBook X1 Neo which is priced at Rs 24,990. It has a slightly lighter Intel Celeron CPU but the features are quite similar.
