Lenovo ThinkPad X280 Review: Powerful, Business-Class Ultraportable
Lenovo ThinkPad X280: 3DMark and GRID Benchmarks
Futuremark’s well-known 3DMark benchmark suite features tests that target a wide array of computing devices.
Furturemark 3DMark
We opted for the Cloud Gate and Sky Diver tests, for which we have plenty of comparison data, but also as light-duty 3D graphics and gaming benchmarks that are well-suited to thin and light laptops. Sky Diver is a bit more strenuous, but still well within the limits of our test group.
Cloud Gate returned a score just behind that of the 2018 revision of Dell's XPS 13, and ahead of the 2017 model tested here at HotHardware. Sky Diver, however, had the machine dropping down a few rungs, where it finished just ahead of the Surface Pro.
GRID Autosport Benchmark
GRID Autosport is a cross-platform racing simulation developed by Codemasters. After the luke-warm reception of GRID 2, due to its less than realistic racing model, the Codemasters team set out to improve GRID Autosport's handling and environment rendering to make it feel like more of a true racing simulator. The game is based on Codemasters' EGO engine that has an amped-up physics and damage system that adds to the immersion and realism Codemasters also tuned its graphics engine to perform well over a wide variety of mainstream systems, so it makes for a good watermark in a medium-duty graphics workload. It also actually happens to be billed as "optimized for integrated Intel HD Graphics."
We also run GRID, with graphics presets on high, to test gaming performance. Here the X280's gaming prowess wasn't terrible strong, but is in-line with other systems featuring the same GPU. An average frame rate score of 25.10 isn't ideal, and in this case the notebook scored near the middle of the pack. It fared little better in its minimum frame rate of shy of 20 fps.
