Lenovo Makes X300 Official

By Nick Mokey Published July 26, 2014

Lenovo Makes X300 Official — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Although rumors about Lenovo’s X300 ultra-light notebook began circulating only days after the announcement of Apple’s MacBook Air, the machine has remained in the ethereal realm of blogs and sneak previews without an official nod from Lenovo. On Tuesday, the Chinese manufacturer broke that silence by simultaneously announcing and launching the notebook officially through its online direct-order site.

As expected, the X300 ousts the Air by fractions of a pound in weight, hitting 2.93 lbs to the Air’s 3.0 lbs, and measures in at 0.73 inches thick at its thinnest point, making it slightly chunkier than the Air, which measures 0.76 inches at its thickest point. The X300 also gets a LED-backlit 13.3-inch display, along with low-power processors and drives, which together should allow it to hit 10 hours of battery life on its most miserly settings, compared to the Air’s five-hour claim.

Recommended Videos

Lenovo also brags about the X300’s integrated DVD burning drive, which its marketing claims is “hard to find in such a thin system” – a direct shot at the Air’s need for an external drive. The X300 also packs three USB 2.0 ports to the Air’s one. However, the X300 offers only one storage option: a 64GB solid-state drive, while the Air can optionally be equipped with a larger 80GB traditional drive.

The most basic X300 currently runs for $2,548 at a seemingly perpetual “sale price,” with $3,185 listed as its MSRP. Upgrading the system with its much-touted DVD burner adds an additional $180. The systems are currently available for order immediately.

Former Editor in Chief

As Digital Trends’ Editor in Chief, Nick Mokey oversees an editorial team covering every gadget under the sun, along with…

Computing

Parents worry AI is becoming a crutch for their kids while schools struggle to keep up, survey finds

Only 1 in 3 schools has AI guidelines as nearly 50% parents grow anxious about kids leaning on AI too much.

a boy using iPhone

Kids are using AI for their homework, and half of their parents are not sure that's a good thing. Deloitte's 2026 Back-to-School Survey, which polled 1,207 parents of K-12 students, found that 49% worry their child relies on AI too much.

The findings suggest AI adoption is moving far faster than the policies meant to guide it, leaving many parents unsure how these tools are being used in education.

Computing

Samsung wants to put its own chip in your next PC and it’s all about speeding up AI chores

Samsung Custom Chip

Samsung may be plotting a new entry into the PC chip business. A new report from the Korea Economic Daily says Samsung’s System LSI division is developing a dedicated AI accelerator for PCs called Gaia. The company has reportedly supplied early samples to Lenovo and HP for performance testing, with mass production potentially beginning as early as 2027.

Prominent Samsung leaker Ice Universe described the project as the company’s return to the PC processor market after roughly 13 years. However, the details point toward something slightly different from a traditional laptop processor. Gaia might be a specialized companion chip designed to handle artificial intelligence workloads rather than a complete replacement for an Intel, AMD, or Qualcomm CPU.

Computing

AI image generators have escaped nightmare fingers and entered the fake premium era

Meta Muse, Gemini, and ChatGPT can now make clean, usable images. They also keep making reality look like a product render with feelings.

Terminal, Railway, Train

I expected this comparison to be uglier. Meta Muse, Gemini Nano Banana 2, and ChatGPT Images 2.0 sounded like a perfect setup for plastic faces, mangled hands, fake products, and posters written in haunted alphabet soup. Instead, they were mostly competent, which somehow made the whole thing more suspicious.

These aren’t identical tools wearing different logos. Meta pitches Muse Image as a social image model living inside Meta AI and its apps. Google frames Nano Banana 2 around speed, editing, and Gemini’s broader knowledge. OpenAI sells ChatGPT Images 2.0 on text rendering, visual control, and stronger prompt handling. Different ambitions, same polished little showroom.