Lenovo ThinkPad SL500

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

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I strongly believe that a business notebook is better off as looking serious. And serious doesn't necessarily mean ugly. The SL500 from Lenovo doesn't only look serious but looks evil too. The magnificent black casing makes this new ThinkPad look hauntingly beautiful. The understated yet enough number of indicators and one touch keys set a whole new example of vintage elegance. While at the same time, the fine lines and perfect ergonomics seem to come as a byproduct of superior build quality. And in totality, it looks like a serious but beautiful notebook. In what can be said as the true ThinkPad style, there is a trackball and a touchpad. Even though its build seems to be like that of a military tank, the keyboard is as comfortable as a Rolls Royce. But to our disappointment, the same can not be said for the hardware inside. Running this computer at 1.8 GHz is a Core 2 Duo processor coupled with only 1GB of RAM. Adding to this is the absence of a dedicated graphics card. These factors also reflected in benchmark results. While the PC Mark score was a decent 3581, 3D Mark 06 had to do with a mere 618. The battery managed to last for 2 hours 37 minutes which is just decent. If compared, Dell's latitude E 5400 comes at an almost same price but runs on Centrino 2 and hence, delivers a better performance like a four plus hours battery life.

Bottom line: Looks good and feels great, but lacks at what matters the most.

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