Lenovo ThinkPad Edge

Full Review

The new 13-inch ultraportable Lenovo Thinkpad Edge is unlike most Thinkpads of the past. It sports a refreshing new look, comes with a decent ULV processor, has excellent build quality--as usual--and very good battery life.

Build and Design

Although well built, Thinkpads are traditionally renowned for their industrial (re: boring) design (look at the Lenovo Thinkpad X301). With the new Thinkpad Edge, Lenovo's given the iconic Thinkpad a much needed facelift. The Lenovo Thinkpad Edge has a polished, glossy black piano finish on its screen lid, with silver accents along both its screen and chassis edge. Needless to say, the Thinkpad Edge looks a lot more sophisticated and elegant than previous Thinkpads. However, it doesn't overflow with gloss (and your fingerprints!) and you won't be embarrassed to pull it out in a business meeting.

But Lenovo hasn't completely done away with the Thinkpad's traditional industrial design--the screen bezel, palmrest, and the area surrounding its keyboard has a matte finish. It may not have the Dell Vostro V13's all-aluminum, metal design, but the Thinkpad Edge is still very well built. It weighs a respectable 1.75-kg with a six-cell battery pack.

Usability

Perhaps the best feature of the Thinkpad Edge is its new keyboard design. The spill-resistant keyboard sports isolated, full-sized, slightly raised keys that have the slightest hint of inward curve on them--less pronounced but similar to the HP Pavilion dm1's keyboard keys. The tactile feedback from all the keys is just right on the Lenovo Thinkpad Edge, and its keyboard is a treat to type on--one of the best we've seen for a while. The touchpad is nice and large and has two separate mouse buttons, but fans of Thinkpads will appreciate the familiar TrackPoint (red eraser nub) nestled between the G and H keys, and its accompanying mouse buttons placed between the Thinkpad Edge's keyboard and touchpad. It's an extremely convenient way to navigate the mouse pointer on the screen, using the TrackPoint navigation, once you get used to it. 

The Thinkpad Edge's 13.3-inch screen is glossy in nature--another departure from Thinkpads of the past. It is LED-backlit and supports a maximum screen resolution of 1366x768 pixels. The screen is bright enough and displays crisp text and sharp video, and it has good horizontal viewing angles. A webcam is recessed above the screen, and it's good enough for video chats.
Lenovo also bundles in a host of useful software under its ThinkVantage Technologies on the Thinkpad Edge--security and system administration and diagnostic tools--unlike mindless bloatware found on popular laptops these days.

Features and Specs
The Lenovo Thinkpad Edge is an ultraportable laptop available in flavors of ULV processors from Intel and AMD. Our test unit came with an Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 1.3-GHz processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM (clocked at 1066MHz), and a 320GB hard drive. There isn't a dedicated graphics card, instead you've to make do with onboard Intel GMA X4500 adapter--which is just fine as this is targeted as a business laptop. Apart from the standard input-output ports, the Thinkpad Edge includes Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, HDMI-out port, multicard reader, and three USB ports--one of which is a powered USB port that allows you to charge a cell phone, MP3 player, or any other gadget. The Thinkpad Edge 13 also has built-in 3G mobile broadband with GPS, and even WiMAX support--not many laptops can boast of this feature. It comes with Windows 7 Professional edition and omits an optical drive and ExpressCard slot, but the Thinkpad Edge still has a very good configuration for a compact business notebook.

Performance
The Thinkpad Edge's number-crunching performance isn't as good as other bulky business machines like the 14-inch HP ProBook 4410s or Acer Extenza 4630Z, but better than thin and light laptops like the Dell Vostro V13, MSI X430, and Acer Aspire Timeline 3810T. Our synthetic benchmarks conclude that the Thinkpad Edge offers pretty good performance overall. You can multitask with ease, and even watch smooth, stutter-free 720p HD videos. Its in-built speakers, situated under the Edge's front lip, are loud and clear and one of the better ones we've encountered on a thin and light laptop. 
Battery life from the Thinkpad Edge's included six-cell battery is very good--we got over 2 hours 20 minutes on our battery tests (on high performance preset and full-screen brightness). Easily expect over 5 hours of surfing the Web over Wi-Fi on a single charge, in power save mode--pretty good for any self-respecting laptop, let alone a business machine.

Bottom Line

The 13-inch Thinkpad Edge has what we love about Thinkpads--great build quality, excellent keyboard and touchpad--with above average battery life and a refreshing new facelift. For Rs. 49,000, it comes with a nice feature set and offers sufficient performance for a business user.