NEW DELHI: Lenovo’s Thinkpad lineup has maintained the impression of a first-class business notebook. With increased competition in the business segment, Lenovo has also aggressively updated its lineup. The Thinkpad Edge E420s is one such notebook that is sleek, lightweight, feature-rich and has virtually no competition thanks to the aggressive price.
The E420s has a distinct advantage because of the form factor. Weighing just 1.88kg and just over an inch thick, the notebook stands out with a magnesium alloy shell. The soft touch surfaces and polished chrome accents add to the sophisticated air. The soft touch surface (both the palmrest and top lid have it) makes the notebook comfortable to hold and also resists fingerprints. The 14-inch screen uses an ‘Infinity Glass’ display - Lenovo claims that it protects the screen from dust and improves the colors, brightness and contrast. The 1366 x 768 pixel resolution was more than enough to work on multiple documents or watch HD videos.
Keeping up with ThinkPad tradition, the Edge 420s comes with a comfortable Chiclet-style, spill-proof keyboard (no backlit option though), TrackPoint and trackpad for easy navigation. The placement of ports is reversed this time with the slot-in optical drive placed on the left side along with a card reader slot and charger point. On the right side is the USB, powered USB, HDMI out, mic/headphone port and the heat vent. At the back is a USB/e-sata combo port, D-sub port and Ethernet with another heat vent. Due to the design, the battery has been integrated in the body and is not user removable.
Our review unit had a second-generation 2.30Ghz Intel Core i5, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, Intel HD3000 graphics, 320GB of storage and Windows 7 Professional. With this, the notebook scored a 3.8 in the Windows Experience Index, a score mainly because of integrated graphics. For a business machine, the integrated graphics are more than enough, however Lenovo has made the provision for those who want a more powerful machine with optional AMD Radeon HD6630M graphics. Lenovo’s RapidDrive technology is also present using which boot and shutdown times have been drastically cut to about 15 seconds.
The E420s comes with a 720p HD webcam, which worked great across skype, Facebook and gtalk. Although, it is a business class notebook, Lenovo has included Dolby Home Theater audio with which the stereo speakers deliver crystal clear output. Music, movies as well as video/audio calls were loud enough to hear in a medium sized room. HD video playback was smooth with no random jerks or video/audio skip - again very impressive for a business class notebook at this price point.
The battery life came to just under 6 hours with Wi-Fi connected and screen brightness at 70%. In the same price range, there is no other notebook available with the same feature set. However, you can also consider a heavier (2.6kg) Acer Aspire 5755G (Rs 43,000) with a 15.6-inch display, Core i5 processor, 4GB RAM and 2GB dedicated graphics or you could go for the Sony Vaio VPCSB16FG - a 13.3-inch notebook for Rs 54,990, which runs a 2.3Ghz Core i5 Processor, 4 GB RAM, AMD Radeon HD5470, 320GB hard drive and weighs about 1.72 Kg.