Lenovo ThinkPad Edge (13-inch)

Do looks matter in a budget business notebook? Budget laptops are necessary for the self-employed and those without lots of money to burn, but those same users might also be entrepreneurs who prefer affordable, nicely designed machines that do double-duty as personal laptops rather than boxy generic systems. Lenovo clearly felt the same way: the uptight ThinkPad image has been taken in a relatively bold new direction in the new Edge line.

Using AMD Neo or Intel ULV processors, these laptops add gloss and silver touches, and skip the optical drive — an increasingly common move in 13-inch laptops. The new ThinkPads even come in red — at least in the States. For the moment in Australia, we're limited to the matte black version.

Is that enough to entice someone who otherwise might lean away from the ThinkPad brand, or has Lenovo compromised its image into something stuck halfway between the consumer IdeaPad and biz ThinkPad lines?

At first glance, the 13-inch ThinkPad Edge doesn't seem so unlike a ThinkPad, save for the extremely glossy lid. The Edge has a low starting price of AU$999, although that's with an AMD Neo X2 L325 processor; the Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 config will set you back AU$1149. At the lower end of the range, the Edge could represent great value for someone looking for a thin laptop with business software built in. However, when you're getting up to AU$1149, there might be better values elsewhere, especially considering Lenovo only sells SKUs with 2GB RAM.

The Edge is compact, clean and has a battery that only protrudes slightly from the laptop's underside. Covered in glossy black plastic on the outer lid and somewhat cheap-looking silvery edges, the Edge has an appearance much closer to an IdeaPad.

The overly flat and slick lid was a little much for us, and the inner lid's over-abundance of matte plastic surrounding the 13.3-inch LED screen gave it a somewhat budget look. But the Edge is a budget machine, so we forgive it.

More impressive is the Edge's newly redesigned raised keyboard, a replacement to the venerable ThinkPad tapered keyboard. The slightly concave keys do a good job at mimicking the feel of a Lenovo traditional keyboard and prevent the slippage some raised keyboards have. The larger multi-touch touch pad also feels very comfortable, along with the ample and smooth matte-surfaced palm rest. For lovers of the old trackpoint nubbin, no worries: it's been retained. The Edge's entire lower half, including keyboard, touch pad and palm rest, is our favourite part of the new ThinkPad. It might be the most comfortable raised keyboard we've ever used, and the large pad is an excellent improvement.

We're less fond of the upper lid, which contains the screen. The screen itself, with a 1366x768-pixel resolution, is as bright and clear as other ThinkPads to our eyes. The system sound, however, is slightly soft. The Edge is designed as a business thin-and-light, and the embedded speakers don't make this ideal for media playback.

With three USB ports, an HDMI port, VGA and a memory card reader, the ports are fairly standard on the ThinkPad Edge. However, there is no optical disc drive. Though the Edge does have an ultra-low-voltage processor, it's neither truly thin nor truly light enough to merit dropping the DVD/CD burner. We wish it had been included here, or the Edge made even slimmer. It seems that many people still desire optical drives in larger laptops, and the omission here simply didn't seem necessary. Unless you're a MacBook Air, it might be better to keep the optical drive.

All variants of the ThinkPad Edge run Windows 7 Professional as opposed to the more common Home Premium. Our configuration responded snappily and performed in line with other business machines: great for everyday work, and decent for media consumption, but not ideal for any sort of gaming or video editing. Its performance fell right in the middle of equivalent SU7300 laptops, its closest performance equal being the HP Pavilion dm3-1002.

The included six-cell battery on the 13-inch ThinkPad Edge, when subjected to our benchmark tests, lasted for five hours and 20 minutes. That's off from Lenovo's claim of eight hours, but it's right on mark for what we'd expect from a dual-core ULV running continuous video playback. That's a good number, and the battery life should exceed that under lower-intensity work conditions and by adjusting power settings.

Via CNET.com