Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 13 review

Lenovo's ThinkPads have long been synonymous with seriousness and practicality, but the latest addition to the range dares to buck the monochromatic trend. The bold, "heatwave" red version of the ThinkPad Edge 13 will have ThinkPad purists choking on their coffee.

A glance at the price will be enough to put the smile back on anyone's face, however, as will a quick play with the device. It's the firm's most practical and sensible foray yet into the realms of the affordable ultraportable. It weighs a very reasonable 1.77kg, and the build suggests a laptop that's genuinely been designed to survive a life on the road.

The base is reassuringly stiff and solid, and while the lid won't win any awards for its slimline allure - one cruel member of PC Pro remarked that it looked rather like a cafeteria tea tray - we had to really prod at it before it caused any showthrough on the display itself. Some will take exception to the red lid of our review model, but it's possible to opt for a slinky gloss black or sober matte black model instead.

The Scrabble-tile keyboard looks nigh-on identical to that of the superb ThinkPad X100e, and in use it feels just as good to type on. The keys have a wonderfully crisp action, each one bounding back to its original position ready for the next keystroke, and the layout borders on perfection. The trackpad and trackpoint combination is as good as ever, with a huge, wide trackpad making the most of the extra space on offer.

The model we received for review (part code: NUE6WUK) is powered by an AMD Turion Neo X2 L625. Although you can specify the Edge 13 with an Intel processor, the 1.6GHz dual-core CPU here (coupled with 4GB of memory) is more than enough to keep Windows 7 Professional 64-bit running smoothly. A result of 0.71 in our application-based benchmarks puts it on level pegging with Intel's efforts, and the ATI HD 3200 graphics chipset even has enough oomph to cope with HD video playback and light gaming.

One thing we noticed during the course of our testing, though, is that the base of the laptop, just like the X100e, has a tendency to get rather toasty. Performance isn't an issue for the AMD processor but keeping cool certainly is; the noisy cooling fan spins with annoying regularity.