LENOVO THINKPAD R61 REVIEW

Sleek, simple yet powerful is what sums up the latest offering from Lenovo, the Thinkpad R61. Promising at the first glance, we put the notebook through our tests to find out if its worth the shot.

Design
The design is a simple matte black, with rounded corners and an ergonomic design. The Thinkpad logo is embossed at the bottom right of the lid, giving it a stylish executive look. Weighing at only 2.5 kgs, the notebook is a decent company when you want to accomplish productivity tasks. The screen is a 14.1 WXGA+ with a maximum resolution of 1440x900. The screen was a matte finish too, just like the exterior. This actually helped in achieving decent viewing angles and minimized reflectivity. The notebook has been supplied with decent connectivity ports, which are ranged as Firewire, headphone/mic, VGA, modem Ethernet, Express Card slot, Card reader and 3 USB 2.0 ports.

Performance
The configuration of this notebook was decent with an Intel Core-2-Duo T7700 2.4 GHz, 2GB RAM, 160GB hard drive and Nvidia Quadro FX 140M. The scores in the performance benchmarks were good but nothing to write home about. PCMark 05 was 3798 and 3DMark 06 was 1621. These scores mean that the laptop is fairly good in performing business and productivity tasks and lets you do some gaming too, owing to the Nvidia graphics processor. The battery also lasted a decent round of usage, with 2.5 hours of DVD playback and more than 70 minutes of gaming. The good battery life came because of the significant improvement in the processor usage and the graphics system. The Nvidia Quadro makes a good effort in giving maximum output with minimum amount of energy.

Overall
A decent notebook, the Thinkpad R61 lets you perform and multi-task easily amongst various applications and also lets you game while you are out and working, just for that casual break. Suffering a bit on the simple design, this one still scores well with us.

Pros
+ Efficient GPU
+ Decent Specs

Cons
-Below average design
-DVI and HDMI missing

Value For Money

Our Rating