Lenovo ThinkPad X260 Review: A Sleek, Tough, All-Business Ultrabook

Lenovo’s ThinkPad X260 clearly isn’t intended for gaming, but it has Intel's DX12 HD Graphics 520 onboard, so there’s no reason you can’t blow off some steam after work with some casual titles. We ran these benchmarks to see what the entertainment experience looks like on the ThinkPad X260.

Our benchmarks here include Futuremark’s PCMark 8, 3DMark and Far Cry 2. PCMark 8 v2 is a cross-platform suite that gauges a system’s capabilities in several usage categories. The venerable 3DMark also has a suite of cross-platform tests, but these are tailored to measuring a system’s graphics chops. And finally, Far Cry 2 gives us a chance to see how the laptop handles a fairly lightweight game.

PCMark 8 Benchmarks Productivity And System-Level Benchmarking

We selected three tests from the PCMark 8 benchmark suite: Home, Storage and Work. Futuremark recently improved all three tests with PCMark 8 version 2. We selected the Open CL "Accelerated" options for both Home and Work.


PCMark 8 is an excellent benchmark for assessing the performance of a business-class notebook, and The ThinkPad X260 scored reasonably well here, landing between two notebooks with Core i5-6200U processors. As much as we liked its respectable Home- and Work Accelerated scores, we were most impressed by the Storage score of 4978, which takes the top spot in our notebook comparison pool.

3DMark Cloud Gate And Sky Diver Synthetic DirectX Gaming And Graphics Testing

We used the Cloud Gate benchmark, which targets mainstream laptops like the ThinkPad X260 with on-processor graphics, to get a sense of how it compares to similar systems running a 3D graphics workload. We also ran Sky Diver, which is a tougher test aimed at gaming laptops and PCs. 


The 5290 Cloud Gate score is right where we expected it to be and shows that the ultrabook has the chops to handle some light gaming. Its score dipped a bit in Sky Diver, putting it a little below systems we’ve recently tested, but the score isn’t low enough to raise any red flags. As we mentioned, Sky Diver is a punishing test for a typical ultrabook and it designed for testing more-powerful, discrete graphics options.

Far Cry 2 Benchmark Light-Duty DX10 Gaming

When it comes to lush vegetation in a steaming, sinister jungle, no one pulls it off quite like Ubisoft does in its Far Cry series. Far Cry 2 uses high-quality textures, complex shaders, and dynamic lighting to create a realistic environment. The game’s built-in, DirectX 10-based benchmark gives us a good look at a system’s light-duty gaming performance.


Given that Far Cry 2 is an old DirectX 10 game, you might expect it to be a cakewalk for today’s notebooks. It still presents a challenge, though, and we generally see frame rates in the low- to mid- 40s (fps) for systems like the ThinkPad X260. Sure enough, it landed at 42.37 – respectable, but not earth-shattering.