Lenovo has come up with the new ThinkPad Edge 13. It bears a sober look with its sharp rectangular structure and glossy black colour, which might annoy some as it is bound to become a dust magnet. The border has a silver band around it, which gives it a compact appearance. The keypad looks to have made judicious use of the space and its big keys are very user-friendly. In the centre lies a red coloured track-point button which can be used as a mouse too. To say that it has a professional look wouldn?t be inappropriate; after all, it is a ThinkPad. It is small, lightweight and is backed with LED back light.
It has a 13 inch screen and one thing it can congratulate itself about is a high resolution of 1366×768 pixels along with sharp and bright colours, which is good for watching HD movies. Its 1.3 kg lightweight makes it easy to carry. So, it is going to be popular and convenient at the workplace.
The keys are big and the overall keyboard looks helpful. Moreover, it?s spill resistant. The touch-pad is larger. Though the speaker occupies considerable space beneath the device, it gives an average performance. It has a low light sensitive web cam for a dim lit room.
The Edge claims to give a battery backup of 7-8 hours. But, in the Battery Mark Test that we conducted, we found it lasted for just about 5 hours 24 minutes, which is quite good. It performed well with the CPU score of 3142, memory score of 3214 and HDD score of 5405. However, in the 3d mark test it was a huge disappointment as it could manage a meagre 906. With that score it can?t support games except for some light gaming stuff.
It has a smooth matte finish and it?s good for watching HD movies with the good resolution. It does not have a combo drive, which is a shortcoming. The major problem with it is ? its want of light indicators. For instance, it has no light indication for Bluetooth, Wifi, and caps-lock.
It has three USB ports, one HDMI output, one audio jack and one memory card slot. Its sound is average, which is surprising because its speaker takes more space than normal and is placed right below the keyboard. Performance wise, Lenovo lags behind its nearest competitor Sony Vaio VPCY115 and Asus UL80vt. But when it came to battery life, it beat Sony Vaio VPCY with almost twice the battery life. Its almost six hours to Vaio?s three hours.
Overall it is good for normal usage but slightly overpriced.
? CyberMedia http://www.LD2.inMail: talkLD@cybermedia.co.in