Back in February Lenovo announced new Thinkpads L, T and W Series. The most important upgrades were the Intel Sandy Bridge and Core vPro processors, compatible batteries, secured hard disks and the much needed fingerprint scanner. Moreover Lenovo announced improved battery life for all the above mentioned laptops.

In a few words

Out of that major product release we got the Lenovo ThinkPad W520. It’s specs can be customized in nearly every way, with prices starting at $1500 and going all the way up to $4000, but what we got was one with the 2.3 GHz Intel Sandy Bridge Core i7-2820QM processor, the Nvidia Quadro 1000M graphics card with 2GB of RAM, 500GB Hitachi HDD and 8GB of DDR3 RAM. At first glance you might say this is a power station. Let’s have a closer look.

At this point we should clear things up by saying the Lenovo ThinkPad W520 isn’t a gaming laptop although the specs seem to point in that direction. At the moment there are 4 big names that manufacture business laptops: Fujitsu, Lenovo, Dell and HP. Fujitsu’s sales have dropped so this leaves the other three to battle for supremacy. There is another issue: business laptops are generally considered to be big 17? portable computers which take up all the space, but we consider 15? models to be the perfect choice for the business man or woman who occasionally has to carry the laptop around.

And if you’re the sort of person who’s into graphic design, video editing and rendering. Thanks to its specs the performance is (dare we say) without flaw and the connectivity possibilities are great. Although it doesn’t have the most brilliant speakers we consider this not to be a major minus, since people will look at the W520 and see a power laptop, not a multimedia one.

At 5.95 lbs it isn’t the most portable 15? laptop, but at least it is good value for money. One other feature you’ll enjoy is the battery life that can last up to 7 hours, depending on the settings.

Temperatures were pretty high when pushing the processor and graphics card to the limit. We recorded 176 degrees F when rendering a video clip. So if you want to buy the W520 you might as well go for an external cooler which will also silence the internal one.

Things we did like:

• Very good specs
• Very good graphics performance
• Good keyboard
• Good build quality
• Anti-glare display
• Data privacy software and hardware
• Ports

Things we did not like:

• Quite heavy
• Price
• Poor audio quality
• High temperatures
• Sometimes noisy

Specs:

Processor: Intel Core i7-2820QM clocked 2.3 GHz
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Display: 15.6 inch 1920 x 1080
Memory: 8 GB DDR3 – 1066Mhz
I/O: 1 Express Card/34mm, 1 x USB 2.0, 2 x USB 3.0, 1 x Firewire, 1 x VGA, 1 x DisplayPort, 1 x Modem, 1 x Kensington Lock, 1 x eSata/USB, 1 x Docking Station Port, 1 combo headphone/mic jack, Card Reader: 5-in-1, Fingerprint Reader, docking station slot.
Audio: HD Audio
Size: 37.3 cm (length) x 24.5 cm (width) x 3.6 cm (thick)
Weight: 5.95 lbs
Graphics: Nvidia Quadro 1000M – 2 GB GDDR3
Network: 10/100/1000 LAN, 802.11n WLAN, Bluetooth
Storage: 500 GB SATA 5400 rpm
Optical drive: DVD RW
Keyboard: full size

The geeky stuff:

The Lenovo power stations are considered to be the best in the market thanks to high performance, very good specs and excellent build quality. The Lenovo ThinkPad W520 is no exception and it features a lot of ingredients from which the case is made: carbon fiber, glass fiber, hard plastic and the metal chassis. The lid can open up to 180 degrees and it’s held properly by two well made hinges. We couldn’t find any weak spots and even the keyboard is rigid, though pleasant to type on.

As you would imagine the design isn’t it’s strongest feature, neither is its size: 245.1 x 32.8 – 36.6mm. The keyboard is nothing special, just the usual Thinkpad style we’ve got used to. We had no typing issues whatsoever and we also liked the multi-touchpad and its buttons.

Lenovo though users would eventually want to upgrade the W520 and built the laptop with two back doors for RAM and HDD upgrades. At the moment the W520 supports up to 16GB but in the future we may see a BIOS update which will allow 32GB of memory to be installed.

Since we took a look on the back let’s see what else is on the outside. On the left side we see the DisplayPort, VGA, 2 x USB 3.0, eSATA/USB 2.0, FireWire, Wifi On/Off switch.

On the back we spot: charging USB 2.0, RJ-11 (modem), batery, power-in.

Turning the laptop we see on the right side: ExpressCard 3/4, Card Reader, audio-in/audio-out port, optical drive, RJ-45, Kensington Lock Slot.

The front side has nothing but the latch.

The display on the Lenovo measures 15 inches and sports Full HD resolution. Although that may be great for multimedia activities, office users will find it too high to work properly. It offers up to 95% colors and it starts loosing the image quality when tilting it above 25 degrees. The viewing angles are fairly average but on the up side the display is anti-glare, therefore working in a very well lit environment is not a problem. The audio quality isn’t that good. Lenovo have placed the speakers very well but keep in mind this is not a multimedia computer. If audio quality is important to you we suggest buying a pair of speakers.

The really geeky stuff

We immediately realized why the Lenovo ThinkPad W520 was built for professionals. As we mentioned above the W520 came with the 2.3 GHz Intel Sandy Bridge Core i7-2820QM processor, 8GB RAM and the Nvidia Quadro 1000M with 2GB RAM. Although we had big plans for it the W520 didn’t manage to finish the 3D Mark 2006, 2005, 2003 and other similar apps benchmarks.Instead we got it to boot in 40 seconds thanks to the Lenovo Enhanced Experience 2.0 technology.

Here are the CPU-Z and GPU-Z benchmarks:

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Battery life was good also. The Lenovo ThinkPad W520 comes with a 9-cell 94Wh, 8.7Ah battery that managed to get 6.5 hours using the Reader test, while the Classic mode got the laptop to reach 2 hours of battery life. One issue we had with the W520 was the high temperature. When idling it hit 140 degrees F and when we pushed it to the limit it nearly caught fire at 176 degrees F.

Keep in mind the laptop weighs 5.95 pounds alone and if you’re going to carry the charger just add an extra 2.2 pounds.

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