Lenovo ThinkPad X 12.5" X250, Core i5-5300U, 8GB, 240GB SSD, Black

The Lenovo ThinkPad X250 is a refurbished 12.5-inch business ultrabook that's extremely compact and well-built, but its decade-old Intel Core i5-5300U CPU and 8GB of RAM make it slow by modern standards. It's fine for basic office work and travel, but gaming and heavy multitasking are out of the question. At around CAD 944, you're paying for portability and durability, not performance.

The i5-5300U is the bottleneck here, and it's not close. This dual-core chip scores in the 21st percentile for CPU performance in our database, which means it's slower than roughly four out of five laptops we've tested. In practice, that translates to sluggish multitasking once you have more than a handful of browser tabs open. The 8GB of RAM doesn't help much either, sitting in the 13th percentile. It's enough for Windows 10 Pro to run, but you'll hit swap file territory fast if you're a tab hoarder.

The 240GB SSD is also on the small side, landing in the 11th percentile for storage. It's an SSD at least, so boot times and app launches won't be painful, but you'll be managing disk space constantly. The integrated Intel HD 5500 graphics are in the 14th percentile, which means gaming is effectively off the table. Our gaming score for this machine is a 3 out of 100. That's not a typo. This is a work machine, not a play machine.

Stacked against something like the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition, the X250 looks ancient. The Surface has a modern ARM chip, a sharper display, and better battery life, but it's also a much larger investment. The Apple MacBook Pro M4 Pro is in a completely different universe performance-wise, and the ASUS ROG Zephyrus and HP OMEN Transcend are gaming machines that would run circles around the X250. But none of those are 12.5-inch ultraportables. That's the trade-off. The X250 competes on size and price alone, and against modern 13-inch ultrabooks, it loses on every other metric.

If you're considering the X250 versus a newer budget laptop, the newer machine will almost always win on performance, screen quality, and battery life. The X250 only makes sense if the compact size is non-negotiable and you're willing to accept a slow, aging processor to get it.

At CAD 944 for a refurbished unit, the ThinkPad X250 is a tough sell on paper. You can find newer refurbished laptops with better CPUs and more RAM for similar money if you shop around. But the X250's value isn't in raw specs, it's in the form factor and the ThinkPad name. If you specifically need a tiny Windows laptop with a great keyboard and don't care about performance, this is one of the few options in this size class. Just know you're paying for portability and durability, not speed.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X250 is a refurbished business ultrabook that still gets listed because it nails one thing: being small. At 12.5 inches, it's genuinely compact, and our database puts it in the 96th percentile for portability among laptops. That's the whole pitch. You're getting a tiny Windows 10 Pro machine with an Intel Core i5-5300U, 8GB of RAM, and a 240GB SSD for around CAD 944 on the refurb market.

But here's the thing. The CPU inside is from early 2015. That's a decade old at this point. The i5-5300U is a dual-core chip running at 2.3GHz, and it lands in the 21st percentile for CPU performance compared to modern laptops. If you're wondering whether the ThinkPad X250 is good for everyday office work, the answer is a cautious yes, but only if your everyday work is email, web browsing, and light document editing. Anything heavier and you'll feel the age immediately.

People searching for a cheap ThinkPad X250 usually want a durable little machine for travel or a secondary device. And for that narrow use case, it's fine. The build quality is classic ThinkPad, which means it'll probably outlive your interest in using it. Just don't expect it to keep up with anything remotely modern.

Skip the ThinkPad X250 if you do any kind of creative work, gaming, or heavy multitasking. The CPU and GPU are simply too old, and the 8GB RAM ceiling will frustrate you. If you need a compact laptop for more demanding tasks, look at a newer 13-inch ultrabook like the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition or a refurbished Dell XPS 13. And if you're a student on a budget, a newer Chromebook or a refurbished ThinkPad T480 will give you far better performance for similar money.

Should you buy the Lenovo ThinkPad X250 in 2025? Only if you need a tiny, durable Windows laptop for basic tasks and you can find it for a good price. The compact size is genuinely impressive, and the ThinkPad keyboard is still one of the best typing experiences on any laptop. But the CPU, RAM, and storage are all well below average by modern standards, and the port selection is nearly nonexistent.

For students or anyone doing more than light web browsing, this isn't the right machine. You'll be frustrated by the slowdowns within a week. But as a secondary travel laptop or a dedicated writing machine, the X250 still has a niche. Just go in with realistic expectations.