We’ve had a good month or two with Lenovo’s new ThinkPad Edge E420s. This 14-incher now comes with Intel’s latest generation Sandy Bridge processor and a healthy serving of internal RAM. Check out our full review after the jump.
This full-sized laptop continued the legacy of the ThinkPad line — no fuss and fancy design, just your usual executive-class design that follows the same genetic make-up as the ThinkPad generation (but with a few improvements here and there).
For a 14-inch laptop, you’d expect this to be a bit of heavy but it’s actually just 4lbs in total weight. It’s a little bulky though so don’t expect to carry around the ThinkPad E420s with ease. I think it’s meant for permanent office or home use, with minimal travel.
The lid on the E420s has that matte finish with a rubbery feel to it. It’s not as much of a fingerprint magnet as a glossy finish but you can see some smudges on top if your hands are oily or sweaty (not really a big of a deal but you can clearly see that in one of the photos below). They call the model color Moss Black.
The 14.1″ display is crisp and bright (actually, the brightest settings is way brighter than most other laptops I’ve seen and tried before). The screen resolution is only at 1366×768 pixels but that seems to be the standard with most business-class laptops nowadays.
This one has a really great keyboard (actually, most ThinkPads have really nice, soft keyboards), a wide and smooth trackpad and large-sized buttons. To those unfamiliar, that small red dot in the middle of the keyboard is the trackpoint (sometimes referred to as the nipple mouse). I think ThinkPad owners no longer use that but it’s been an iconic design accent for many years so it will stay there as some sort of a status symbol.
While the specs of the ThinkPad Edge E420s is already decent for its intended use, some people might find one or two components a bit lacking. One is the use of the embedded GPU from Intel (though I would argue that for its category, Intel HD Graphics 3000 is more than enough for the most part) and the other would be the amount of storage. I was expecting something like 500GB or more for this one (320GB is becoming the standard storage for netbooks).
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420s
14.1″ WXGA LED displayIntel Core i5-2410M Processor2.30GHz up to 2.9GHz Turbo Boost, 3MB cache4GB DDR3 SDRAM320GB SATA HDD (7200rpm)Dual Layer Multiburner Drive (DVD-RW)Intel HD Graphics 3000WiFi 802.11 b/g/n6-cell Li-ion batteryWindows 7 Professional 64-bit
Performance of the Edge E420s is respectable, especially when you have that dual-core i5 processor that can Turbo Boost up to 2.9GHz and enough RAM for running multiple applications in Windows. Windows Experience Index gives the processor a sub-score of 6.9 (that’s already very good), a 4.7 sub-score in Windows Aero (average) and a 6.1 sub-score for 3D and gaming (nice).
It also helps that it comes pre-installed with the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Professional so it maximizes the performance of the system.
As for battery life, we were able to pull a much as 4.5 hours on a single charge at conservative settings but I think that can be extended once WiFi is turned off.
Did I mention it’s got a slot-loading DVD burner, an integrated biometric finger-print reader and an HD webcam that can do 720p videos? The finger-print reader is mostly allocated for security in business environment.
The Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E420s has a suggested retail price of Php59,900. They’re also giving away a free 320GB Iomega external drive if you get one before August 30, 2011.
This article originally appeared at - yugatech
