IBM ThinkPad R50p TJ227UK

Despite its sleek looks, the R50p isn't hugely portable, weighing in at a heavy 3.2kg. Granted, this isn't incredibly weighty, but a bit too much for taking everywhere as a matter of course. But if you do want to use it on the move, you'll find the battery life, as usual for a ThinkPad, is very good; the R50p managed almost two hours when hammered by our intensive-use test, and four-and-a-half hours under light use, which reflects the sort of life you'll achieve with standard word processing and email tasks.

In our application benchmarks, the R50p came in with an overall score of 1.45, making it one of the fastest 32-bit notebooks we've seen. More subjectively, the FireGL T2 adaptor gives excellent results under OpenGL. Its polygon throughput is amazing and its ability to render fully textured previews in LightWave was incredibly fast and smooth.

The thing about ThinkPads is it's hard to find anything serious to criticise about them. Certainly, the R50p has its flaws, notably the relatively disappointing screen, but overall it's up to IBM's usual standards of superb design and engineering. At £2,699, it's a machine that's only worth the money if you really need its power, particularly the workstation-class graphics. But high-end notebooks are what IBM does best and the R50p is proof positive that the company is a long way from losing its touch.

Author: David Fearon