Thinkpad x270

305 × 208 × 20 mm, 1.3 kg
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6200U CPU @ 2.30GHz

I got this laptop in September 2025 for an extended stay in Spain, so it replaced my Thinkpad x230 for a while. I replaced the 256 GB m.2 sata ssd (in an adaptor inside a 2.5 inch bay) with a 1 TB. You can also add a m.2 sata (2242 size) in the wlan slot. I also replaced the keyboard, which was Czech with Spanish stickers. It came with an Italian power cord, which doesn't work in most of Europe because it's got a center ground pin. I don't quite understand why it needs a ground but Europe has less than half the electrocution rate as the US despite having twice the voltage so I won't argue with their strict regulations.

Keyboard glitches

Sometimes when pressing a key the key is not registered, or registered after a delay, and the screen glitches. This is solved with the i915.enable_psr=0 kernel param.

Fan runs at top speed after wakeup

After waking from suspend, the fan needlessly runs at top speed. Turning the fan off via /proc/acpi/ibm/fan works, but it shortly goes right back to top speed. I fixed this by installing the thinkfan package. The temperature sensor is at something like /sys/devices/platform/coretemp.0/hwmon/hwmon8/temp1_input but it changes on every reboot, so I use a simple script run at boot time to edit the /etc/thinkfan.conf file.

Thinkpad timeline

Here are some of the Thinkpads I've owned and the dates I acquired them. I usually keep the previous around for a while after getting a new one. In addition to these I have had three different T400 servers (I still have one) and a few other Thinkpads that didn't work out for some reason. I also had an IBM L40 in the 1990s, but that was not a Thinkpad.

701c	October 1999
240	April 2000
x40	July 2006
120e	November 2011
x220	February 2013
x230	June 2019
x270	September 2025

Jim Rees