Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13 review

Look and feel

Though the 1.2-inch thick Edge isn't as thin as some other modern ultraportables, like the inch-thick ASUS UL30A and ThinkPad X200, at 3.5 pounds it feels extremely light in a hand and it slipped nicely into a backpack for a weekend trip. Ports-wise it's a standard affair; scattered along the right and left edges are three USB ports, HDMI, VGA, Ethernet, a SD card slot and a hybrid audio plug for headphones and/or a mic. Like most other CULV machines, there isn't an optical drive.

Thankfully Lenovo has still kept the infamous TrackPoint, but for those who prefer a touchpad, below is a fairly large multitouch pad with two, firm dedicated right and left mouse buttons. Two-finger scrolling was quite responsive, but we disabled the pinch-to-zoom function since it was overly sensitive when we had two fingers on the pad at the same time.
The 1366 x 768-resolution 13.3-inch screen is surrounded by a seemingly unnecessary thick bezel -- which actually raises the screen up by an inch -- but the screen itself is sufficiently bright and vibrant. Above the display is a low-light webcam like the one found on HP Envy 15, which displayed our face fairly clearly during a video call in a dimly lit room. The creepiness of this function is not unchanged, however.
Performance, battery life and software

Like most ULV laptops the Edge lies somewhere in between a netbook and a higher-end Core 2 Duo laptop. The Edge notched 1,637 on GeekBench, whereas the Atom-powered Eee PC 1005PE scored 942, and the ASUS UL30A, which is powered by the same SU7300 processor, a slightly higher 1,705. When it comes to graphics the GMA 4500M card isn't going to be a gaming demon, but it was capable of streaming the Avatar YouTube HD trailer and a 1080p QuickTime video smoothly.
| GeekBench | 3DMark06 | Battery Life | |
| Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13 | 1637 | 905 | 5:12 |
| ASUS UL30A | 1705 | 765 | 6:25 |
| ASUS Eee PC 1005PE (Intel Atom N450) | 942 | 157 | 8:10 |
Lenovo's battery life prediction of seven hours is pretty on the mark. Its six-cell, 63Whr battery lasted 5 hours and 12 minutes on our video rundown test, and 6.5 hours with the screen at near-full brightness and WiFi on while listening to Slacker and typing in Microsoft Word 20078. Though it's not as long-lasting as some netbooks or the ASUS UL30A, it's still commendable for a 13-inch laptop.
Lenovo ships a pretty crapware free laptop, but does include its proprietary ThinkVantage wireless and battery tools. We discovered that our review unit was WiMax compatible while poking around the Access Connections wireless software; too bad there's no WiMax signal within miles of our location in New York, but this is a laptop review and not a Sprint/Clear one.
Lenovo ships a pretty crapware free laptop, but does include its proprietary ThinkVantage wireless and battery tools. We discovered that our review unit was WiMax compatible while poking around the Access Connections wireless software; too bad there's no WiMax signal within miles of our location in New York, but this is a laptop review and not a Sprint/Clear one.
Wrap-up

As far as we're concerned there's no reason to preserve tradition for the sake of it -- especially when you can save some cash by tweaking the formula. Sure, the ThinkPad Edge 13 may not carry some of the premium features of the X301 or other higher-end ThinkPads, but for a budget ultraportable we've got very little to complain about. Of course, there are other options on the market, like the $799 ASUS UL30A with slightly longer battery life and the $825 ASUS UL80Vt with discrete graphics, but this ThinkPad has the edge with a superb feeling keyboard, better build quality and comparable CULV performance.



























Hehe Great visual pun - being on the edge.
Looks very nice.
@TikiTeko Cue Third Eye Blind's Jumper....
@TikiTeko
Yes, I, too, see what they did there.
@Joanna Stern Are you guys gonna do something about this itkbhshoe guy who keeps spaming every post?
@Joanna Stern right on Q. Thanks.
@TikiTeko
Even for the great visual pun it is, I would never risk putting any laptop on there.
@TikiTeko I was actually thinking Edge as in edges of the gap between ThinkPads and IdeaPads. Too far-fetched?
@TikiTeko It is pretty windy today too...
@TikiTeko - There's even another pun at the end: "...but this ThinkPad has the edge with..." Whether or not it was intended, I do not know.
@ndrwme good!
http://www.discount-laptop-battery.co.uk/ibm-laptop-battery.htm
@JW This fashionable small business ultraportable combines a great new keyboard with good battery life.Best of all, the lid and the deck feature a glitzy ThinkPad logo with a bright red light that serves as the dot over the letter I. The light fades in and out when the notebook is asleep. Not so shabby for a lenovo laptop: http://bit.ly/thinkpad-lenovo-edge-in-depth-details
It's good to see lenovo are starting to do some sleek redesign on the casing as well.
OMG
It looks like the Thinkpad has finally departed far enough from its IBM Thinkpad roots to make it all Lenovo and no more IBM. It was just a matter of time - it took longer than I expected. Of course, I haven't touched one and the review seems to be good, so my opinion isn't worth much.
@(Unverified) change is good. deal with it.
@glenskey
I'd personally doubt the fairness of this review, I think it might be a little biased to ensure engadget keep getting early models for review.
Change is only good if it improves, none of the changes I have a problem with do anything to improve the system such as glossy plastic casing, lack of screen protection, glossy screen, 6 row keyboard, this is Lenovo 3000/ThinkPad SL try number 3 and I predict it will have the same level of success : i.e. none.
Youd be better spending a bit more and getting a decent ThinkPad which I guarantee will last longer.
@(Unverified)
Change is good. I was a fan of the old thinkpads that IBM put out (1999?), great, solid and reliable
I still like how the kept the ol' nipple though. I still find that the nipple > touchpad in some occasions.
@(Unverified) Nope, that's not how we play it at all -- we've trashed plenty of products we've gotten early, and given great reviews to products we got late. I know you hate to believe it, but our primary objective in reviews is just to be honest about the experience of using the product, and nothing more.
We get products early because we have lots of readers, and we have lots of readers because we take our credibility extremely seriously. That's the only way to play this game, I promise you.
@(Unverified)
According to logic, almost every review would be bias. You realize most reviewers get the unit earlier than normal consumer so that they can advice them on it when the actual unit go on sale. It's like saying movies reviews are bias because they get to watch them before it open in theaters.
@Nilay Patel What happened to deleting unverified accounts?
@(Unverified)
I've got to agree, this is NOT a ThinkPad. I have ThinkPads, we also use ThinkPads at work. This laptop is the North Face vest that middle aged new york women wear to feel outdoorsy.
My T42, my age old T42, running a Centrino Pentium 4M, and a ATi Radeon 9600 64MB graphics card (which means: 9xxx < x800 < x1xxx < x2xxx < x3xxx < x4xxx < x5xxx, atleast 6 generations old and it was middle of the road then) still runs Windows 7 Ultimate at full bore faster than the brand new Dell OptiPlex desktops and Dell Latitude laptops we have at work run 7 Professional. There is a reason that my T42 still fetches upwards of $500 on eBay. It's because in true ThinkPads, form always follows function. What benefit is a glossy cover over a matte-finished metal one? Even the little luxuries you got on a true ThinkPad were still ultra-useful. The ThinkLight? I use it every night. The TrackPoint? I can't live without it. The fact that I can drop it, kick it, spill it, slide it, crush it, and bake it? Slightly more useful than the brand new Dell Latitude screen that I watched crack its self (unless there was some sort of gravity change while it was sitting on a conference table playing a movie while it cracked...). Lenovo warranty service? Excellent. Had a lightning storm take out a T60p, called Lenovo, they had a box here next day, had the laptop back in 3 days. All free.
Dell? "Sorry, we're having glitches in our system while we switch our call center over, so since we can't find record of your laptop existing (are you sure its a dell?), we refuse to fix it, though, if you want to buy a new display panel for it, we would be happy to sell you one for $200."
@Yoy0YO Yeah. But what's good about a glossy lid? Fingerprint magnet and scratches easily. My Dell is still unscratched after almost 2 years, though it is used a lot. My mums Mac Mini is badly scratched, though it is not moved at all, and nothing is placed on it. I have no clue where it has these scratches from. Same with any white MacBook. Glossy lids are useless fashion items that only look good when BRAND NEW.
And what about that glossy screen? Hope you can also have a matte one, because glossy screens are almost unusable and do not belong on anything with the ThinkPad name.
No doubt this will be a decent device for the price, but does it deserve the ThinkPad name? Don't think so. IdinkPad maybe? ThideaPad? A real ThinkPad this is not.
wasn't this just leaked? how... wha..
@glenskey
Lord Toplotsky has some sekrets!!!
@Jeff
Joanna Stern also writes for LAPTOP Magazine (and Gizmodo), and was News Editor for 2.5 years at LAPTOP until recently (according to her LinkedIn page), so she probably has mad connects as well.
@gadgetfanboy She does have mad connects as well. I did used to write for LAPTOP and for Gizmodo, but I'm an Engadget girl now!
I think I'm going to buy this.
Very smooth, Engadget. Announcing leaked laptops when you had one all along... Clever.
@Lando Calrissian We posted the leak while we were frantically trying to get Lenovo to lift the embargo early -- not much else we could have done.
@Nilay Patel You could have taken some blurry cam shots and anonymously sent them to Gizmodo and let them do your dirty work for you.
@Edobe
Blurry camshots tend to attract wandering sheep.
@Yoy0YO - "Honest, officer, I was just helping the sheep over this fence."
They should just put a Model M keyboard in the laptop and call it a day :D.
@The Shadow
Or a butterfly keyboard, either way.
Fantastic review! I've been really impressed by all of the recent notebook/netbook reviews Joanna has done. Keep it up!
If the base model come with an AMD proccessor how is this "a thin, light Intel ULV powered laptop ... that starts at $549"?
@Wolfticket
Ya, and the Intel chips aren't Arrandales.
So how is this different from any other CULV, other than the nipple?
Don't get me wrong, I might still buy one, but I am quite disappointed in the lack of arrandale CULVs here, and I may just end up getting an Arrandale Macbook Pro 13", seeing as how it has the same footprint, is only slightly heavier, and seems to actually be a better value.
@Wolfticket When Lenovo puts up its Edge configuration page we should know more about the cheapest available ULV config. We had the highest end Intel CPU in our review unit. My guess is the cheapest Intel unit will be around $650. I'm very interested in the AMD performance since its using their new platform as well. Only problem there may be battery life.
@Joanna Stern
Are these using Turion II CPUs? If so, then they might be decent enough, and strong competitors to CULV, with the advantage of a much much better GPU and a cheaper price for only slightly worse battery life.
If not, then they are probably using the Neo processors... which suck. Neos are 65nm, Core 2/Turion II are 45nm, and Arrandales will be 32nm. The Neos are ancient by comparison, and as to the Core 2, I don't understand why Lenovo would ship a laptop with a CPU that will be obsolete 2 days after it is released.
HOT.
Wait, did this intro just say:
"We like Thinkpads, but they're too expensive."
"Lenovo just made a cheaper Thinkpad!"
"We're going to review a model that's several hundred dollars more expensive."
Wait, what? Why would you applaud a cheaper Thinkpad, and then invalidate your own argument by speccing it up and making it more expensive?
@(Unverified) I didn't read (or write that). We were sent a $899 configuration. Regardless, it's significantly less than the X301 which is now listed for over $1,800 on Lenovo's site.
@Joanna Stern
Did you just compare this to an X301?
Its not in the same league imho, one is a ThinkPad, the other is generic Chinese crap with a ThinkPad logo and a TrackPoint added as an afterthought
While the X301 is the only proper ThinkPad with a 13" screen, I think a fairer comparison (as the X301 is very much a premium product) would be with the X200, which is only slightly more expensive and will pay for itself in no time, proper ThinkPads last and have better resale value.
@Joanna Stern
The Lenovo T400 is currently listed for $749 on the Lenovo US site, 2.40 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo Processor. Comes with a 14" screen but I have a hard time believing any prospective Thinkpad buyer would rather pay more for the Edge 13 when they could have the T400.
@MGDdrinker The T400S is definitely a viable alternative to the Edge 13 or 14, but its thicker, gets less battery life and is more expensive when spec'd out (with the same hard drive, battery and RAM as the Edge 13 in this review). You're right though it is faster and has a bigger screen. It's all about tradeoffs.
My problem Joanna is that this thing is 1.2" thick. This is certainly pushing the boundaries for a "thin 'n light" or ultraportable. I'd be inclined to suggest it ISN'T ONE. Its about as thick as the thinkpad I'm typing this on, which has a full speed processor, a DVD bay, etc.
I'm not sure exactly what constitutes an ultralight but I'd have said it has to have a screen
Certainly is a nice keyboard.
It looks like it wants to jump. You guys must really abuse those poor review products.
Why does it have a nipple and a touchpad?
Just pick one god dammit.
@John Hinds
because nipple = thinkpad
and there are no "multi touch" nipples out there..
try and use your brain before commenting! :o
@John Hinds
There are benefits to having both. On my Thinkpad, I use the Trackpoint to navigate when typing simultaneously. It's much more efficient to not take your hand off the home key and move directly back to controlling the mouse. Whereas, when browsing and all one needs is clicking, then the touchpad becomes convenient. Besides, the trackpoint is far more accurate than a touchpad.