Lenovo ThinkPad Edge Review
Lenovo was kind enough to send me a loaner unit for the ThinkPad Edge — which fits somewhere between the netbook and notebook family. I’ve had it for about a month now. Here’s some thoughts and impressions on the 3-month-old member of the Lenovo mobile computer family…
For the anxious, here’s a one line review: Great computer, weak touch pad, killer keyboard. The ThinkPad Edge is Lenovo’s answer to finding the right space between netbook and laptop. The Edge doesn’t have any optical drives, and it doesn’t have too many fancy features, but it delivers where it matters most…almost…
Pros
The first thing you’ll notice about the Edge is the new shiny…well..everything. The Edge is one of the first new Lenovo laptops to ship without the classic matte black you’re used to. It’s now super-glossy, and available in black or red (seen above). The screen is glossy too. I like glossy, but some prefer a matte screen because of glare, but with or without the gloss, most would agree it’s a sharp screen. At 1366 x 768 it’s pretty typical for a 13 inch screen. It’s similar in size to my Macbook’s screen resolution (1280 x 800) just slightly different proportions. It’s crisp and vivid, all text is very well defined.
The screen comes adorned with a webcam, which is incredibly good. I tried it out in low light with Skype and for some reason, it displayed a very bright image despite the less-than-stellar lighting conditions.
Lenovo has also updated the entire line of laptop keyboards, and the Edge was no exception. Lenovo has done away with the square boxy keys you’re used to, and have given it a new ‘modern’ design. I call it following the Macbook keyboard trend, but the colloquialism on the web is to all it the ‘chicklet’ style keyboard; the keys are recessed into the plastic of the laptop and “pop” out. The keys feel great. They’re responsive, they have a very pleasing clack to them, and they’re also have just the right amount of ‘squish’ to ‘click.’ My favorite feature of the keyboard is the “page up” and “page down” keys recessed deeper into the keyboard tray. They’re positioned either side of the ‘up’ arrow key. It makes for easy navigation through documents and web pages and facilitates a great way to ‘read’ with the arrow keys poking up and down, and then ‘scan’ through the page with page up and down. Very cool, very nice. The most used feature on the machine.
Lastly, it’s got HDMI out, VGA out, three USB slots, an Ethernet port, and a 5-in1 card reader. It’s the perfect setup for a road-computer doing presentations and anything else. With 4GB of RAM and Windows 7 it was completely fast and responsive (though it did randomly freeze on me, but just once…) And how could I forget the battery life? It was incredible: 7 hours on a single charge, I went days without plugging it in, since all I did was merely browse the web and blog.
Cons
I really wanted to say nothing but good things about the Edge, but there’s one thing I just need to be really blunt about. It’s got the worst touch-pad I’ve ever used. Lenovo packaged the touch pad with an intense amount of features. It does multi-touch, two finger scrolling, one finger scrolling, three finger gestures, touch-clicking, and a whole list of other things I turned off right away. Writing on this machine felt like boxing with my computer.
At first, I thought maybe it was just the touch-pad software that was wonky, so I turned off all the advanced features. But even with them turned off (and after a reboot) the system still was registering ‘one finger scrolling’ when my finger reached the edge of the touch pad, despite it being turned completely off. Also, despite all the fancy features turned off, the slightly-off centered touch pad would contact the inside palm of my left hand, between my thumb and wrist. This would mean that while I was typing, it would register a ‘click’ and move the cursor to a new location, causing me to start typing inside a paragraph somewhere else. That meant I could either type like I was playing proper piano, wrists in the air, or move the cursor far far away, and hope that if it did ‘click’ it wouldn’t be inside a text box. I resorted to turning the touch pad “off” and using the red-eraser nub that Lenovo’s ThinkPads are so renown with — but I couldn’t get precision text selection I needed with it.
Last resort? I moved to uninstall the mouse software all together. I figured that would solve everything, and the touch pad would just function like a plain old touch pad. It worked, somewhat. But it still registered my palm-clicks, and on occasion, a quick mouse movement across the entire screen resulted in the cursor shooting across to the opposite side of screen. Sometimes the touch pad would just feel all together unresponsive or overly sensitive — the cursor sometimes would hop or skip across the screen randomly.
On a final note, the Edge makes a very annoyingly loud “BEEP” when it goes in and out of sleep mode. I didn’t check the BIOS to see if I could turn this off, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind when you open it in a library or a quiet cafe…like I did…
Fun
All work and no play makes the ThinkPad Edge a dull machine. The Edge is actually outfitted pretty well. It’s sporting an Intel SU7300 CPU at 1.30 GHz and 4GB of RAM. The video card is an Intel Integrated Mobile 4500MHD Series. It’s not going to be breaking any benchmark scores, but it’s not terrible. In fact, it put up with about two hours worth of an ad-hoc Quake 3 Arena LAN party one evening. Just a note: The Edge did get a little warm, but fans turned on when needed.
What would’ve been fun, but I didn’t get to test — was the WiMAX and 3G connectivity. I assume they work just fine. A word of caution — Lenovo’s built-in software that enables 3G and WiMAX automatically turns off the WiFi. To turn it back on, I had to run the Windows 7 troubleshooter; I think there’s a conflict between Lenovo’s software and Windows somewhere…
Bottom Line
The price tag is starting at $599 shipping with Win 7 Home Basic and an AMD Turion CPU, but my loaner unit was outfitted at nearly $900 with Win 7 Professional and the Intel CPU. The build quality on this machine feels solid and it held up to mild abuse between my car, Starbucks, my desk, kitchen and back to my desk. The power charger is small and unobtrusive. It catches eyes easily, and it’s cosmetically pleasing. Expect fingerprints on the glossy finish. Nothing a microfiber cloth can’t fix.
But the touch pad was a real challenge. As I type this on the Edge, I’m currently using an external mouse, and my left hand is slightly raised as to not touch the touch pad. I really wanted this to be my new work horse laptop, but it became so frustrating that I stopped using the Edge to blog for over a week.
But I really love the keyboard. I love the light weight, the simplicity, the perfect size, and the battery life.
Overall review? I give the ThinkPad Edge a solid 8 /10.
Feel free to ask questions in the comments, I’m happy to answer. The loaner doesn’t go back ’till April so I’m happy to test something for a reader or two.
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Why does no-one mention that the touchpad on the Lenovo edge models is so crap?
The reliability of these is,at best intermittent, and , for one, would not consider relying on the in-built touchpad as I can guarantee that it will fail in the middle of some important presentation. I always carry a USB mouse which always works well.
One expects that with the advent of a new operating system that at least the human interface tools might actually work but no .. just some more hastily cobbled together junk that would’nt pass muster in any seriously organised production organisation
Ian,
I’m just slightly confused: are you emphasizing the point I made, or did you miss it? I definitely gave the touchpad a scathing review.
If you’re agreeing with me, I’m with you 100%. Most of the other reviews I read regarding the Edge said very minimal about the touchpad. I don’t understand it. Maybe most people default to the red nub, or like you said, an external USB mouse all the time.
hi!
thank you for commenting on the touchpad, i thought it was me or something. i have the edge since some weeks and this goddamn touchpad is sooooooo annoying!! do u have any solution for this problem? i dont wanna smash my new edge on the wall trhe next time this stupid touchpad is unresponsive.
regards,
thomas
Hi Stili.st,
I don’t have any solution to the problem, other than to completely uninstall the touchpad drivers and software in Add / Remove programs. Windows will then just recognize it as a touchpad without all the fancy junk. It’s a little bit better, but it still isn’t 100% better.
Maybe, if Lenovo releases new drivers, they can fix it.
Best,
-Dave
Maybe they’ve addressed the touchpad drivers by now? I’m using a 3g / win 7 pro 32 bit release – I think the 4g config is a 64 bit system, so perhaps that’s what’s going on, but on my unit I’m able to use only the trackpoint, never the touchpad.
I generally hate touchpads, and this is one of the most annoying on the market, but for me, setting the touchpad to off and trackpoint to on is working fine.
The Ubuntu netbook remix works very nicely on this laptop as well. There’s a small issue with getting the headphone jack work correctly, a line needs to be added to the alsa.conf file to get it happy, but once that’s done, I’m pleased.
I use linux primarily on this laptop, and appreciate win7 so I can learn my away around it in a non-production environment.
I actually do prefer the older keyboard style on my work x60, but for 700 bucks and a little over three pounds, having the pointer and 5+ hours of battery runtime is great. I may decided to get the higher cap battery and the EVDO/Wimax antenna down the road. I still need to find out if I can get that antenna and a pay-as-you go contract for it from ATT rather than a monthly plan.