Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.
AIA

Laptop reviews: Lenovo Edge and U100e

by
8th Mar 2010
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

Spring is almost here and so is the time for new PCs to arrive on these shores. Fresh from their debuts at January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Lenovo’s new 13in ThinkPad Edge (pictured, left) and its 11in sibling, the ThinkPad x100e, are now available in Europe.

Low-cost netbooks, typically with 7-10in screens, have been a big hit with the kids in recent years, but these mini-notebooks haven’t made much of a dent in the business market yet. But as a business specialist, Lenovo is definitely rising to the challenge with its new machines.

Lenovo has gone all consumery with the Edge, which features a shiny, flat-profile casing (in black or red), banded with thin, grey plastic trim. The 11.2in x100e is netbook-size, but comes with Windows 7 installed and has enough horsepower to cope comfortably with its demands. Both test machines had AMD processors, a slight compromise on raw performance offset by UK prices starting under £400 for both models.

Edge 13in (£399)
The Lenovo product team explained that as well as breaking the company’s design mould, the 13in Edge is  a hybrid laptop, designed for people who won’t just use it for work, but also at home – typically business owner-managers or, for this audience, accountants on the move. The wide aspect monitor is easy on the eye, but with both VGA and HDMI monitor sockets (and an optional USB dock), you could just as easily connect it to PC and TV screens at home or in the office.

When you start to carry it around, the 1.64kg 13in Edge should be noticeably lighter than 15in alternatives. The smaller, thinner design leaves no room for a CD drive, but the Edge compensates with 3 USB ports and a slot that can accommodate a variety of solid state memory cards.

According to Microsoft’s Windows 7 Experience Index, the Edge’s two-core AMD Turion Neo X2 processor scores 3.1 out of 7.9, but with 4MB of RAM on the test machine and a 5.8 score for disk data transfers, it certainly didn’t feel slow. The ATI Radeon HD3200 graphics subsystem also handled business imagery smoothly, and might come in handy for those who like to relax with War Craft after hours.

I plugged in and ran the brand-new Edge straight out of the box and after less than an hour it was up to a 94% charge that would last for 4-5hrs at the default factory setting, and longer if I’d spent more time tinkering with the PC’s power management software. For anyone who has nursed older, heavier laptops around the country’s rail network, that’s a pretty impressive result.

ThinkPad X100e 11.2in ultraportable (from £379)
Where the Edge is a grown up, 64-bit, dual-core Windows 7 workhorse, the x100E is spearheading Lenovo’s drive into the ultra-portable market. Its single core AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 processor runs Windows 7 in 32-bit mode and brought the overall Windows Experience Index (WEI) score down to 3.0 (out of 7.9), but don’t let that put you off. The laptop may be small but it doesn’t act like it. The test model came with 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive.

The WEI data reading times were much higher and it took almost no time to create a quick, multi-total pivot table from an Excel datasheet. The only niggle I experienced was when I came to save a WordPad file to a USB memory drive; the 14MB RTF file took around 20secs to make it on to the stick.

The X100e’s keyboard in particular is a dream to use. The layout is similar, but just a tad smaller than that of the 13in Edge and small separations between the keys reduce misfingerings and double keystrokes you sometimes get with small laptops. Both new Lenovo laptops have a nipple-style mouse control between the G-H and B keys for those who like that sort of thing, as well as a touch-sensitive track pad and double left-right mouse button controls.

My quick Excel pivot table test was hardly conclusive, but both test laptops came with an AutoCollage program that automatically mashed together a set of 7 or more images into a composite image. AutoCollage placed a bit more of a load on to the core processor and took around 15 seconds to calculate and display on the Edge, and a few seconds longer on the x100e.

Verdict
These days you don’t just buy a laptop from a PC manufacturer, but a “user experience” enhanced by various software tools. Included with the latest Lenovo laptops is a nice, easy-to-use power management utility, a visual Wi-Fi access control panel, plus backup, recovery and restore software options. I also liked the Smart Audio EQ tool, which lets you adjust sound settings for different types of music and playback options including headphones, speakers or over VoIP telephone lines.  While it’s hard to come up with a business justification (presentation sound effects, anyone?), it reinforces the company's hybrid approach to the business and consumer laptop markets.

After recent adventures on the PC beat, I’m aware of more powerful and intimidating laptops, including Lenovo’s own T-series. But in many cases getting your hands on a premium machine means paying a price that can approach four figures. The AMD processor selections in these two laptops are part of a calculated decision to bring portability and power to a wider customer base and on both counts Lenovo has succeeded. The Edge 13in I tried was a perfectly acceptable PC, if a little self-conscious looking in its shiny red case. After lugging around a much bigger, heavier 15in machine for the last few months, I felt an even stronger affinity for the 11in X100e, one of the most compact and useable laptops I have seen for some time.

Tags:

Replies (0)

Please login or register to join the discussion.

There are currently no replies, be the first to post a reply.