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Benchmarking, Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, USB devices, WED Blog, Windows 10, Windows OS Musings

USB Cables Make Amazing Differences

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A couple of weeks ago, I read an online item bemoaning the variations in USB cables, especially those with USB-C connectors on one or both ends. This weekend, I experienced this phenom for myself. I also learned that the right USB cables make amazing differences in speed/throughput.

In the lead-in screenshots above, CrystalDiskMark speeds for the same device appear at left and right. To the left is the US$26 Fideco M.2 NVME External SSD Enclosure – USB 3.1. It’s linked to my Lenovo Yoga X390 through its USB 3.1 port using the vendor-supplied cable. Inside is the Sabrent 1TB Nano M.2 2242 SSD I’ve been writing about a lot lately. To the right everything is identical except I used a USB 3.1 Gen 2 cable. It’s rated at “up to 10 GBPS.”

No Lie: USB Cables Make Amazing Differences

Why on earth would the equipment vendor ship such a POS cable with an otherwise capable NVME enclosure? Speed results for the in-box cable (right) versus a US$7 cable purchased from Amazon differ starkly. For bulk transfers, the Amazon cable is 10 or more times faster. For 4K random reads and writes (bottom two rows), it’s between 6 and 7 times faster for queue depth = 32. That drops to 2 to 3 times faster for queue depth = 1.

Clearly, this is a red flag. It tells us that faster USB-C cables can speed peripheral I/O significantly. It also indicates that one should know what kinds of cables to buy. I got the speed-rated cables so I could see if they did make a difference. Little did I know I would actually benefit greatly from this experiment.

Wrinkles in the Plug-n-Play Experience

The question with USB-C cables is not “Will it work?” Rather, it should be “How fast does it go?” I’ve just learned that big differences sometimes present themselves. Testing your devices is the only way to confirm what kind of performance you’re getting. In my case, it quickly showed me that a high-speed USB-C cable is a worthwhile expense.

FWIW, this experiment also  explained some of the cost differential between the US$26 Fideco unit linked above and the US$45 Sabrent units I also own. The latter ships with USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 cables that perform on par with the speed-rated cables I mentioned near the outset of this story. The NVME enclosures are more or less on par performance wise. That’s NOT true for the in-box USB-C cables, though. There indeed: you get what you pay for!

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A Tale of Two USB Ports

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I’ve been troubleshooting a vexing M.2 2242 NVMe drive this week. If you look back over my recent writings here at edtittel.com, you’ll see this adventure has led me to some interesting places. Yesterday, it led me to recognize that not all USB-C ports are the same. I found myself confronting the profound difference that current-gen Thunderbolt support can make. Thus indeed, a tale of two USB ports follows.

Telling the Tale of Two USB Ports

On the one hand: a 2019-vintage Lenovo X390 Yoga. Its fastest USB port is described in its tech specs as “USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C / Intel Thunderbolt 3.” On the other hand: a 2021-vintage Lenovo X1 Nano. Its fastest USB port is described in its tech specs as “USB 4 Thunderbolt 4.” I must confess, I was curious about what differences might manifest between these two technology generations.

It made a significant difference. Thus the story’s lead-in graphic shows. CrystalDiskMark output from the Nano is on the left, the X390 on the right. It shows the speed-up varies somewhat. It is better than 2:1 on the big-transfer items (upper 2). But the more important random 4K reads/writes fill the bottom two rows. There,  we see 17-18% (read-write) for random with queue depth=1. That jumps to 42-50% with queue depth=32.

In practice, I believe it’s what allows the X1 Nano with an i5 processor to work much like my older i7-6700 on my desktop PC. It also makes the X1 Nano faster than the X390, despite an i7 on that older machine. I/O is indeed a  powerful performance factor.

Is USB 4 Thunderbolt 4 Worth Buying?

If you’re in the market for a new PC or laptop, you will get a performance boost from using the newer USB technology. If the ability to complete backups (and other big file transfers) twice as fast is worth something to you, factor that into the price differential. If better overall I/O performance of at least 18% in accessing peripheral storage has value, ditto.

Only you can decide if it’s worth the price differential. For me, the answer is “Heck yeah!” I’m not sure that means I’ll buy an X1 Nano. But I am sure it means my next laptop will have USB 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports.

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Zen and the Art of USB Troubleshooting

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Back in the 1970s, Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance made its debut. I was a year out of college, working in a somewhat technical job as an audio engineer at the Library of Congress. I devoured that book and many of its thoughts have stayed with me over the intervening years. None has stuck better than his discussion of the scientific method (that link goes to a reprint of that section). It always struck me afterward that when somebody wants to get serious about troubleshooting, it’s time to invoke the awesome majesty of “the formal scientific method.” That’s why I call this blog post, with tongue in cheek: “Zen and the Art of USB Troubleshooting.”

What Good is Zen and the Art of USB Troubleshooting?

Early in the cited section on the scientific method, Pirsig makes two great observations. First he says “Actually, I’ve never seen a cycle-maintenance problem complex enough really to require full-scale formal scientific method.” Second, he compares that method to “an enormous juggernaut, a huge bulldozer — slow, tedious, lumbering, laborious, but invincible.” As I’ve been troubleshooting a vexing issue with a recently-acquired Sabrent Nano 1 TB M.2 2242 NVMe SSD lately, I’ve had reason to revisit and ponder Pirsig’s thinking and  problem-solving toolset.

Here’s the Deal

Here’s the combination of the four-plus ingredients that go into my problem set:

  1. A Sabrent NVMe SSD enclosure, model EC-NMVE
  2. The Sabrent 1 TB Nano SSD, model SB-1342-1TB; for comparison I also have an M.2 ADATA XPG 256GB 2280 NVMe
  3. The USB-C  cable (with USB 3.1 female to USB-C male adapter) that Sabrent shipped with the enclosure
  4. The USB port on Windows PC into which I plug enclosure (1) using cable (3)

The only time I have problems with the enclosure is when the Sabrent Nano device is plugged in. It works reliably and constantly if I use the enclosure, its cable and the ADATA SSD. When the Nano is plugged in, however, the device goes offline if I leave it plugged in overnight. When I come into my office, the controller light on the enclosure is blinking constantly. At other times, and at irregular intervals, the device goes offline while it’s idle.

I take the constant blinking to mean the USB controller in the PC is trying — and failing — to handshake with the drive controller in the enclosure. If I unplug the device (either end) and plug it back it, it resumes working.

The scientific method tells me that you must vary only one item in a collection of possible causes for trouble at a time to determine which item is the actual cause. The only collection of the items listed in 1-4 above that causes a fault occurs when the Sabrent Nano is present. Therefore, the Sabrent Nano is the faulting item.

Filing a Tech Support Case

I’m going to use this article as the documentation for a tech support filing, and re-open my trouble ticket with Sabrent. I believe I have shown that the Nano is not working as it should be, and that it faults regularly. I am hopeful Sabrent will agree with my analysis, and send me a replacement SSD. I’ll keep you posted, and share their response(s) here. Stay tuned.

[Note Added 3/17 Afternoon]

Sabrent simply asked for a copy of the invoice (easy to retrieve from my Amazon order history) and the ship-to information. Let’s see how long it takes for a replacement to get here. Interesting, and satisfying, so far!

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Interesting Partial 21H1 Component Store Cleanup

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I’m running the Beta Channel Insider Preview on my Surface Pro 3. I just bumped it to Build 19043.899 thanks to KB5000842. Out of curiosity, I then ran the DISM commands to analyze and clean up the component store as shown in the lead-in graphic for this story. A final analyze shows interesting partial 21H1 component store cleanup occurred. Let me explain…

What Does Interesting Partial 21H1 Component Store Cleanup Mean?

If you take a look at some detail from the lead-in graphic then check the screencap below, you’ll see they show 7 reclaimable packages before clean-up. After cleanup, 2 reclaimable packages still remain behind.

Notice that 2 reclaimable packages persist, event after running the cleanup option.

Reclaimable packages persist after dism cleanup for one of two reasons AFAIK:
1. At some point, the user ran the /resetbase parameter in an earlier dism cleanup.
2. Something odd or interesting is going on in the component store, and dism can’t clean up one or more packages (in this case, two).

I don’t use /resetbase on test machines as a matter of principle. So something interesting and odd is going on here.

Another Try Produces No Change

Having seen this before on other Insider Previews (and production Windows 10 versions), I had an inkling of what would happen. I repeated the cleanup and got the same results: 2 reclaimable packages still show. In my experience, this means they’re “stuck” in the component store. What I don’t know is if taking the image offline and trying again would make any difference. What I do know is that this won’t change until Microsoft finalizes the 21H1 release for general availability (or issues a specifically targeted fix).

Trading on my connections with the Insider Team at MS, I’ll be letting them know about this curious phenomenon. We’ll see if anything changes as a result. My best guess is that this gets a cleanup as part of the final release work sometime in the next 2-3 weeks. That said, only time will tell. Stay tuned!

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Strange Sabrent Rocket Adventures

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Last Friday, I blogged about swapping out my review unit Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Nano SSD. I purchased a US$150 Sabrent Rocket Nano (Model SB-1342 1 TB). It replaced a Samsung OEM 512 GB SSD (NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4). Check the Friday post for details on performance, installation and so forth. Today, I’m writing about the strange Sabrent Rocket adventures I’ve had since taking that device out of the laptop. Frankly, it’s a continuing and wild ride.

Strange Sabrent Rocket Adventures: Drive MIA

First, I used Macrium Reflect to clone the original Samsung drive. Then, I made the swap, ran some tests and replaced the Sabrent with the original SSD. Things got intersting after I plugged the drive back into the Sabrent NVMe drive enclosure (EC-NVME). The drive was MIA: it showed up as 0 bytes in size and generated a “fatal device error” if I tried to access it. Ouch! I immediately reached out to vendor tech support.

Sabrent Tech Support quickly coughed up a link to a terrific tool, though. The name of the tool is lowvel.exe, and it performs a complete low-level format of the drive, zero-filling all locations as it goes. That turned out to be just what I needed and put the Rocket Nano back into shape where DiskMgmt.msc could manipulate it once again.

Then, I initialized the drive as GPT, and set it up as one large NTFS volume. For the next 12-14 hours, I was convinced this was a final fix. But my troubles are not yet over, it seems.

More Strange Rocket Adventures

The next morning, having left the device plugged in overnight, I sat down at my desk to see it blinking continuously. When I tried to access the device, it was inaccessible. It’s not throwing hardware errors to Reliability Monitor, but I have to unplug the device and plug it back in, to restore it to working order. Something is still weird. Temps seem normal and the Sabrent Rocket Control Panel utility (shown in this story’s lead-in graphic) gives the device a clean bill of health.

I’ve got an intermittent failure of some kind. I need more data to figure this one out. I’m leaving the Control Panel running on the test laptop where the Rocket Nano is plugged in. We’ll see if I can suss this one out further. It’s not inconceivable I’ll be going back to Sabrent Tech Support and asking for a replacement — but only if I can prove and show something definite and tangible. Sigh.

Info Added March 25: All Is Quiet

Who’d have thought a Sabrent NVMe enclosure and a Sabrent NVMe drive might be ill-fitted together? Apparently, that’s what ended up causing my intermittent failures. On a whim, I bought the cheapest NVMe enclosure I could find — a US$26 FIDECO USB 3.1 Gen 2 device — into which I inserted the Sabrent Nano SSD. It’s now run without issue, pause, hitch, or glitch for a week. I did not insert the device pad that normally sits between the case and the device (already present in the Sabrent enclosure). I’m inclined to blame some kind of heat buildup or connectivity issue resulting from an overly tight fit in the Sabrent enclosure, which I may have avoided in its FIDECO replacement. At any rate, it’s working fine right now. Case closed, I hope!

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Swapping X1 Nano NVMe Drives

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OK, then. I went and sprung US$150 for a Sabrent 1TB M.2 2242 NVMe drive at Amazon. It is depicted in the lead-in graphic above. The high-level sequence of events is as follows. Ordered on Wednesday, received and experimented on Thursday, reported on Friday (today). Alas, I seem to have hosed the drive and have started RMA negotiations with Sabrent. Along the way, I learned most of what’s involved in swapping X1 Nano NVMe drives.

Be Careful When Swapping X1 Nano NVMe Drives

As is almost always the case, there’s a YouTube video for that. It showed me everything I needed to do. Disassembly/reassembly were easy and straightforward. I had no mechanical difficulties. But once again, my US$7 investment in a laptop screws collection saved my butt. I mislaid one of the two NVMe holder screws (found it later during  cleanup). I lost one of the 6 battery restraint screws (fell on the floor into neutral brown carpet). Both were easily replaced from the collection.

Cloning Works, But Proves Mistaken

For whatever odd reason, the Sabrent drive shows up pre-formatted. The disk layout is MBR and the primary partition is ExFAT. Both of those got in my way as I cloned the original drive to the replacement. First, I had to clean the drive, convert to GPT, then format it as a single NTFS volume. Then, I used Macrium Reflect to clone the contents of the Samsung OEM drive to the Sabrent. Along the way Reflect told me it had turned off BitLocker and that I would need to re-enable it after boot.

Replacing the Samsung with the Sabrent, I went into BIOS and turned secure boot off instead. This let the X1 Nano boot from the cloned drive just fine. I was able to run CrystalDiskMark to compare their performance. Here’s what that looks like:

Swapping X1 Nano NVMe Drives.side-by-side

Samsung OEM results left; Sabrent results right. Best improvement where it counts most!
[Click image for full-sized view.]

What do these results show? Indeed, the Sabrent is faster on all measurements, and more so on the most important random 4K reads and writes (lower two rows). It’s not a night-and-day difference, but IMO the added capacity and increased speed justify the expense involved. It’s a good upgrade for the X1 Nano at a far lower price than Lenovo charges. Also, performance is somewhat better than what their OEM stock delivers.

Here’s a summary of performance row-by-row (count 1-4 from top to bottom):
1. Read speeds increase by <1%; write speeds by >28%
2. Read speeds increase by >7%; write speeds by >36%
3. Read speeds increase by  >52%; write speeds by >21%
4. Read speeds increase by >14%; write speeds by >51%

Where Did I Go Wrong?

Cloning was a mistake. I saw it in the disk layout, which showed over 400 GB of unallocated space. Better to have done a bare-metal backup using Reflect with their Rescue Media. Next time I’m in this situation, that’s what I’ll do.

Something untoward also happened when uninstalling the Sabrent drive. When I stuck it back in my M.2 Sabrent caddy (which fortunately handles 2242 as well as other common M.2 form factors), it came up with a fatal hardware error. None of my tools, including diskpart, diskmgmt.msc, MiniTool Partition Wizard, or the Sabrent utilities could restore it to working order. I suspect that removing the battery, even though the power was off on the laptop, spiked the drive with a power surge. It’s currently non-functional, so I hope my warranty covers this and I’ll get a replacement. If not, it will prove a more expensive lesson than I’d planned, but still a valuable one.

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Pondering Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano

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It’s not often I get to step back from day-to-day work items and pause to think about something. I’ve had a Lenovo X1 ThinkPad Nano since Tuesday, February 23 (I wrote a First Look piece the next day). Since then, I’ve worked with that machine daily. I’ve even used it in place of my iPad Air for evening reading in bed. All this has me pondering Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano further. I want to position and present it properly to readers so they can decide if what it offers is what they want.  .  . and if they want to pay for it, too.

When Pondering Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano, Use Cases Rule

To justify the cost, one really needs strong use cases for a thin-and-light laptop. It weighs 381g more than my iPad (906 vs 525g). But it’s still comfortable on my lap. As a pretty serious touch typist, I actually prefer constant access to a keyboard. I do now wish, though, that Lenovo offered a touchscreen option for the X1 Nano for simple tablet-friendly activities like web surfing and reading e-books.

Over time, I’ve grown even more impressed with the X1 Nano’s performance and capability. It really does run on par with my older (2016) desktop PC. That’s true despite 32GB RAM and an i7-6700 on that PC vs. 16GB RAM and an i5-1130G7 on the X1 Nano. To me, it’s a telling illustration of how fast technology marches ahead. I didn’t expect an i5 to be able to go head-to-head with an i7 (even a 5-year-old model).

Blast from the Past…

The lead-in graphic for this story comes from Sergey Tkachenko’s WEI clone. He calls it the Winaero WEI Tool. For those who don’t remember — or who never knew — WEI stands for Windows Experience Index. It’s been around Windows since Vista came out in 2007. You can still run the equivalent functionality in Windows 10, in fact, with this command winsat formal. I like the Winaero tool because it presents the same look’n’feel as in Vista and 7.

What you see in that graphic is a rough-and-ready assessment of hardware components on the PC it’s run on. Those numbers show values from 8.9 (CPU, RAM) to  9.2 for the SSD and 9.9 for 3D business and gaming graphics. The only outlier is the desktop graphics — Iris Xe in this case — which come in at a relatively low 8.0 value (the primary reported value as well, because WEI uses the lowest number to desigate overall capability).

FWIW, the only area in which my older desktop beats the X1 Nano is on the desktop graphics category (it’s got an NVIDIA GTX 1070 card). All the other metrics are within 0.1 of one another, so neither machine obviously beats the other by any kind of margin.

Desktop graphics performance notwithstanding, I’ve come to appreciate the X1 Nano quite a bit in the 10 days I’ve had it in hand. It runs acceptably when surfing the Web, using Outlook or Word (my two most frequently used and important desktop apps). To be honest, I am seriously considering buying one of these with my own money. I can’t give a laptop a better endorsement than that.

What’s the Ideal Package?

If you, like me, decide to buy the ThinkPad X1 Nano, I recommend buying the i7 model with the 16 GB RAM configuration. Because the SSD is the only user serviceable part (RAM is soldered), get the 256 GB SSD, which you’ll want to replace when something like the Sabrent 1TB Rocket 4 becomes available in a 2242 form factor.

If you absolutely have to buy something now, the Sabrent 1 TB Rocket is available in a 2242 package. While it’s a bit slower than the Rocket 4, it’s faster than the Samsung OEM parts Lenovo uses in the Nano. You’ll also want to buy a Thunderbolt/USB-C dock, because the Nano is pretty short on ports (2xThunderbolt + 1xheadphone is all you get). As a backup fiend, I’ve already got a 5TB 2.5″ drive enclosure hooked up for extra storage and Macrium Reflect’s use.

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Fixing Non-responsive Taskbar Icons

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Last December, I wrote an article here that described an easy fix for an unresponsive Start Menu. The trick on my affected PCs was to go into Task Manager, right-click Windows Explorer, and select “Restart.” Over the past week the same thing is affecting Task Bar icons for open and pinned applications. It came in the wake of the occasionally wonky preview version of the upcoming March CU. That is, I’m inclined to name KB4601382 as an “update of interest” in this case. Fortunately, the same fix works.

Fixing Non-responsive Taskbar Icons

How can you tell when this problem manifests? Easy! You click on an icon in the taskbar and nothing happens. I show a portion of my taskbar icons in the lead-in graphic, by way of illustration.

I actually show the taskbar at the foot of both of my monitors. Sometimes, when one quits working, the other keeps going. Then I click that one instead. If neither works, the fix goes in. I’ve never had it fail.

As with my earlier report of Start Menu issues, I’m inclined to see some interaction between Stardock Software’s Start10 and the Explorer-based start menu and associated UI elements. Those include the taskbar icons and the notification area as well. Something wonky is happening, but is also easily fixed. I’ve reported this to Stardock and MS and am hopeful that, as before, a fix trickles into one or the other of those environments.

Seems Like a Limited Issue

I don’t see other reports of this phenomenon in the Start10 forums at Stardock. There’s plenty of discussion on the general phenomenon (Google search: “taskbar icons nonresponsive”). But all are unanimous in what to do: Restart Windows Explorer. Not much other cussin’ and discussin’ involved. Nice to know I’ve got the right fix, even if I don’t know the cause unequivocally and unambiguously. Sigh.

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Mild Microsoft Update Health Tools Mystery

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An interesting item is bubbling up in user forums  lately. Lots of Windows 10 PCs — including some of mine — have seen a new-ish, intriguingly named application show up. This story’s lead-in graphic shows it in second place. In fact, I’d say we’re facing a mild Microsoft Update Health Tools mystery. Typical questions include “What is it for?” and “When is it used?”

Cracking a Mild Microsoft Update Health Tools Mystery

A Microsoft Docs “Questions” item links the utility with update KB4023057 .  A corresponding support page mentions all Windows 10 versions, including 20H2. (It’s dated October 2020.) I’ve seen posts at answers.microsoft.com as far back as August 2020. It, too, references that same KB article.

That article says the update delivers “reliability improvements to Windows Update Service components.” It also says it:

includes files and resources that address issues that affect update processes in Windows 10 that may prevent important Windows updates from being installed. These improvements help make sure that updates are installed seamlessly on your device, and they help improve the reliability and security of devices that are running Windows 10.

Some Interesting Notes about KB4023057

There are 5 bulleted items (and a sub-note) the Support Note. All make fascinating reading. I reproduce them verbatim. (For brevity, I prune “This update may” or “This update will” ):

  • …  request your device to stay awake longer to enable installation of updates.

    Note The installation will respect any user-configured sleep configurations and also your “active hours” when you use your device the most.

  • … try to reset network settings if problems are detected, and it will clean up registry keys that may be preventing updates from being installed successfully.
  • … repair disabled or corrupted Windows operating system components that determine the applicability of updates to your version of Windows 10.
  • … compress files in your user profile directory to help free up enough disk space to install important updates.
  • … reset the Windows Update database to repair the problems that could prevent updates from installing successfully. Therefore, you may see that your Windows Update history was cleared.

Invitation to Conspiracy Thinking?

Go back, and read the forum traffic. Or, search Google for “Microsoft Update Health Utility.” Sadly, it reveals suspicion among community members. Indeed, some fear it helps MS forcibly update older Windows installs. In fact, MS does this already. Others don’t trust MS update orchestration. They’d rather control updates themselves. Still others worry about unwanted side effects or unusable PCs after forced updates.

Gosh! While these things are possible, I see nothing untoward at work here . Instead, I see MS staging repair tools in advance for update issues on Windows 10 PCs should they manifest. Aside from lacking user controls, I see them no differently than built-in update troubleshooters. In fact, I’m a devoted user of Shawn Brink’s Reset Windows Update tutorial and its accompanying batch file. It’s gotten me past 95% of all WU problems I’ve seen. That’s why I’ll gladly keep using it.

No Cause for Alarm

As far as I can tell, there’s not much to see here. Admittedly, Update Health Tools is a small surprise. But its Support Note offers good explanations. Thus, I’m OK with this tool. Nor should you worry, either. Rather, it looks like good software engineering.

Better yet, the Update Health Tools can handle update issues on their own, sans user input or guidance. That sounds like a blessing, even if in disguise. And FWIW, it’s missing  from Insider Preview releases. That tells me it aims squarely at production PCs outside IT umbrellas. That means mostly home and small business users. Thus, it should benefit those who need it most.

I’m coming out in favor of the Update Health Tools. I hope we’ll learn more about them from Microsoft soon. In the meantime, if you don’t like the tool, you can choose to uninstall it. I’m leaving it alone myself. If I’m right about it, it may come in handy someday.

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X1 Nano First Look

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Sometimes, you just get lucky. This Monday, I saw Rich Woods’ review of the Lenovo X1 Nano laptop at NeoWin.net. Immediately thereafter, I emailed my contact at Lenovo to ask for a review unit. Yesterday (one day later) I had that unit in my hands. That’s lucky! This mini-review is my X1 Nano first look report. Also, I’ll be writing about this light, compact, and powerful unit one or two more times in the next couple of weeks. Then, alas, I must return it.

Impressions from X1 Nano First Look

I’m a fan of the more compact X series ThinkPad laptops. I currently own an X220 Tablet (2012 vintage), 2 X380 Yogas (2018) and an X390 Yoga (2019). I like the portability of the 13″ form factor. I like the ease with which I can throw a unit (or two) into a carrying sleeve, a briefcase, or a backpack. On family trips especially, I’m used to taking two small laptops along. Thus, I can still keep up with email and post blogs while on the road. And my wife and son can use the other laptop when their smartphones aren’t enough.

I came into this review thinking the Nano would be a great candidate for family laptop on the road. I came out of it thinking that it would make an excellent (if lighter duty) candidate for work laptop on the road. I’ll need more time with the unit to suss this out further.

X1 Nano First Look.speccy

PiriForm’s free Speccy tool shows the basic components in this review unit.

X1 Nano Review Unit Speeds & Feeds

OK then, it’s got a Tiger Lake (11th generation) i5-1130G7 CPU, which runs at 1.10GHz on four cores and eight threads. Burst mode goes to 1.80 GHz for single-threaded tasks. It also comes with 16 GB of surprisingly fast LPDDR4-4266 RAM. It’s the first laptop I’ve used with Intel Iris Xe graphics. (Once again: these are surprisingly fast and also capable.)

There’s a Samsung OEM 512 GB SSD (NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4) that’s reasonably fast (NotebookCheck calls it “entry-level to mid-tier by H1 2020;” one year on, it’s pretty much straight-out entry level). It’s got a non-touch, 2560×1440 (2K), 450 nits, 16:10, sRGB display that’s crisp and readable at default resolution. The only ports on the device are two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C connections: one labeled for power-only, the other labeled for power and data.

It also sports a speedy Intel AX201 Wi-Fi chipset that meshed quite nicely with my Asus 802.11AX router. (Access speeds of 400 Mbps and better, in a busy, signal-rich office environment.) Oh, and it has a fingerprint reader and a 720p Windows Hello capable integrated Webcam, too.

What’s missing on this unit for those who don’t have a Thunderbolt dock handy? (I have several.) At least one USB 3.0 Type A port, and  a micro SD port for added, onboard flash storage. With even high-capacity uSDXC cards now pretty affordable, I do indeed wish Lenovo had found a way to squeeze one in somewhere.

What Makes the X1 Nano a Standout?

It weighs only 906 grams (1.99 lbs). It’s got a carbon fiber top deck and a  (nicely coated) magnesium bottom deck.  The keyboard is about 10% smaller than the one on my other X model ThinkPads. Even so, it feels (and works) so much like those others that I can’t tell any difference. And for somebody like me who makes his living by typing on a keyboard, that’s a big thing.

The display is also pleasingly bright and clear, and the Iris Xe graphics are fast, crisp and powerful. I’m no gamer, but I couldn’t make the display choke up even by throwing graphics pop-ups at it. Working with my usual mix of multiple Chrome, Firefox and Edge windows, plus MS Word for writing, I was impressed. It works and feels just like my now-aging but still capable i7-6700 Z170 desktop (32 GB RAM, Samsung 950 Pro SSD, GTX 1070) on my typical in-office workloads. Even comparing CrystalDiskMark 8.0.1 results for the two primary drives, they’re almost identical.

More to Come in Days Ahead

Right now, my response to this PC is an enthusiastic “So far, so good.” As equipped, this unit’s MSRP on its Lenovo product page is US$1727.40. That makes it about $100 less than a 10th generation,   i7-equipped, non Iris XE (Intel 620 UHD) touchscreen ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 5.

Were I myself to buy one of these, I would spring the extra $120 for an i7 CPU. It uses an M.2 2242 NVMe drive, of which 1 TB units are not yet readily available on the aftermarket. Thus, I would probably buy the 256 or 512 GB SSD and then do a swap myself, when higher-capacity, higher-performance options go up for sale.

Other than that, it’s a delightful little laptop. I recommend it highly, subject only to my reservations. Those are: few ports, no SDXC slot, and a mildly painful ouch factor on price. But that’s how it is for “thin-and-light” laptops, isn’t it?

 

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