Since Lenovo acquired IBM's PC business in 2005, one thing has always been true: The ThinkPad X series had a 12-inch screen, while the ThinkPad T series always contained a 14-inch screen as the smallest option. From 2008 onward, Lenovo sold the smallest ThinkPad as the ThinkPad X200 series, which has spawned several popular models over the years, like the Lenovo ThinkPad X220 from 2011. Last year's model of this series was the Lenovo ThinkPad X280, the thinnest and lightest model of the X200 series, which was the first X-series ThinkPad that lacked features like an external battery or upgradeable RAM.

With this in mind, it is not possible to say that Lenovo was not willing to change up things to keep the most compact ThinkPad relevant in an ever-changing laptop market. Still, it was no secret even last year that the 12.5-inch form-factor of the X280 had no future. The screen bezels of this model were very large for a modern laptop and one of the most important competitors discontinued its 12.5-inch business series – HP released the EliteBook 830 G5 with a 13.3-inch screen instead of an EliteBook 820 G5. Lenovo had to react and the reaction came in 2019: The successor of the ThinkPad X280 is named Lenovo ThinkPad X390, a compact business laptop with a 13.3-inch screen.

This increase in screen size of course results in an X-series ThinkPad that is closer to the larger T series than before. Especially compared with the Lenovo ThinkPad T490s, we have to ask the question if it is even necessary to have those two ThinkPads as separate models – maybe there are not enough differences left to justify the segmentation. Also, there still is the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon, which has a similar feature-set as well. Aside from those two Lenovo ThinkPads, we use the HP EliteBook 830 G5 and Dell Latitude 7390 for our comparisons.

Our review unit originated from the German Lenovo Campus program. This special configuration is exclusively available for students and teachers and costs 1,159 Euros (~$1,300). For this price, the ThinkPad X390 contains the Core i5-8265U, 16 GB RAM, a 512 GB SSD and an FHD display. Windows is not preinstalled on this special model. A similar configuration with Windows costs roughly 1,500 Euros (~$1,682) in Germany. In the US, such a configuration of the X390 (which also includes three years of Premier warranty) costs $1,535.

