Infinix INBook X1 Slim review: THE best laptop under ₹30000

What do you imagine when I say a laptop for Rs. 30000? Something dull? With big bezels around its display, a chunky fat profile, lots of outdated and slow ports, poor battery life, and a design not worth a second look; right? This, or those Chromebook laptops that barely qualify as a workload-handling machine. No manufacturer has paid attention to the affordable segment of laptops, except for Infinix. Its last outing with the Infinix INBook X1 made headlines, considering its price. However, Infinix wanted to undercut itself and hence, we have the Infinix INBook X1 Slim – a laptop that you can ACTUALLY buy for less than Rs. 30000.

Unlike those abominations that other manufacturers are offering, the Infinix INBook X1 Slim is a modern Windows laptop that seems like it was designed for 2022. A metal body, narrow bezel display, exciting colours, fast processors, and fast charging support – this laptop has it all. It even has a decently sized 256GB SSD storage on the base variant! Seems too good to be true, right? To find out if that’s actually that good, I have been using the Infinix INBook X1 Slim Core i3 variant with 512GB storage.

ALSO READ: Infinix INBook X1 Core i5 review: Cheap laptops are getting better

Infinix INBook X1 Slim Design

Unlike the dull plastic shells that the big boys of the industry use on their cheap laptops, the Infinix INBook X1 Slim with its sleek metal body and a tasteful choice of colours looks tempting. Coming from a MacBook Air, I didn’t complain about the build quality, or had issues with the form factor. This is a well-built 14-inch laptop with some beautiful colours on its lid, and a finely crafted keyboard deck. My unit in this fancy shade of red looks saucy, and I love that dual-tone paintjob on the lid. At 1.24 kilos, it is very lightweight.

The lower price doesn’t mean emission of useful ports. The Infinix INBook X1 Slim has two USB-A ports, two USB-C ports, an HDMI port, a microSD card port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. One of those USB-C ports is used to charge the laptop – Yes, you can fast charge the laptop and you get a 65W charger in the box. Huh, only if the industry picked up this trend.

Infinix INBook X1 Slim Display

Infinix hits a sixer here too. The 14-inch LCD display is easily the best one I have seen on a Windows laptop at this price. The resolution is Full HD, which means it is plenty sharp to look at. The DCI-P3 colour support means you don’t see faded images and videos on the screen, unlike the competition. The 300 nits of peak brightness is decent too for indoor usage. The bezels are are a bit chunky at the bottom but that’s way better than what the competition offers at this price. And yes, webcam is at the top and it works decently for video calls. Infinix has added two LED flash lights to help with low-light video calls. Neat!

Infinix INBook X1 Slim Performance

This is where Infinix plays it cleverly. Brand new 12th Gen Intel processors are expensive and a Core i3 variant of the same could hike the price above Rs. 40000 easily. But a 10th Gen Intel laptop from two years ago is still plenty fast today and is cheaper to buy – Infinix has used that to keep the price low. My unit has the Intel Core i3-1005G1 CPU clocked at 1.2GHz and has four cores. Paired with Intel UHD Graphics, 8GB RAM, and 512GB PCIe 3.0 SSD storage, this is among the fastest Windows laptops in this price range. Oh, and it also runs on Windows 11.

A power efficient setup like this is more than enough for casual tasks and basic workloads. My workflow, which involves dealing mostly with 9-10 Google Chrome tabs, WhatsApp, and Spotify playing in the background, could not sweat the Infinix INBook X1 Slim. In fact, I subjected it to basic image editing and this laptop held on to its fast performance credentials just fine. This is obviously not a gaming laptop and I suggest you spend more money on ones with dedicated GPUs for the same. Windows 11 is a breeze to use on this laptop. The cooling fans are silent and keep things calm on the surface.

The keyboard on the Infinix INBook X1 Slim is good too, considering its price. It has decent tactile feedback and the key travel is sufficient. Get this Redmi – the keyboard has backlighting too. The trackpad is decent too and works well with the Windows gestures. For students and casual users, this laptop has almost everything to pamper.

Sadly, this streak of impressing ends with the audio section. The dual speaker setup on the Infinix INBook X1 Slim is weak and sounds tinny. These will be good enough for causal YouTube sessions but for music and movies, you better plug in your headphones.

Infinix INBook X1 Slim Battery Life

With a 50Whr battery at the helm, the Infinix INBook X1 Slim doesn’t put up a great show with respect to its stamina. With my aforementioned workload, I was able to extract at max up to four hours on a single charge – this is with the screen brightness at 40% and constant connection to a Wi-Fi network. Thankfully, the 65W fast charger can fully charge the battery from under 5% within 90 minutes. The laptop charges with any USB-PD charger capable of doing a 65W charging.

Verdict

The Infinix INBook X1 Slim is a splendid laptop considering the price Infinix is asking. For Rs. 30000, you are getting a Windows 11 laptop that has a very nice FHD display, runs fast with its Intel Core i3 processor, has a very fast SSD storage, offers all the necessary I/O ports, and a decent set of keyboard and trackpad. Not to forget, it looks stunning too. The battery life is weak and Infinix could have stuffed a bigger battery inside, but it makes up for it with a 65W fast charger. I would also recommend you spend a bit more and get the 512GB storage variant, if you seek longevity.

Honestly, why would you buy anything else at this price? Laptops from Asus, Dell, Lenovo and HP at this price offer under 4GB RAM, HDD storage, rubbish 720p, poor battery life and dull designs with soft plastic clamshells. The Infinix INBook X1 Slim is currently the best laptop for students and casual users not seeking to exceed the Rs. 35,000 mark.