Design

The MSI GT660 series was designed in partnership with Dynaudio to create a gaming notebook chassis that also offers a “true-to-life sound experience.” The speaker housing structures, speaker circuits and overall position of the stereo speakers and subwoofer were designed to combine the extreme performance of a gaming notebook with the rich audio performance of a premium multimedia notebook.

Despite the heavy use of plastics, the exterior surfaces of the GT660R are covered in a scratch-resistant coating to improve durability. The screen lid itself is also covered in “MSI Color Film Print Technology” which is essentially in multi-layer printed image imbedded into the plastic. In this case you can see a faint honeycomb pattern in the lid similar to the texture used on the palm rests when you open the notebook.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Chiclet-style keyboard on the GT660R offers a reasonably enjoyable typing experience and is also fine for hours of gameplay. Individual keys are a little mushy and the center of the keyboard flexes inward under heavy typing pressure, but the individual key action still delivers acceptable feedback when pressed. The typical gaming keys of W,A,S,D feature special red paint to help you quickly identify where your fingers need to be during a game (just in case you didn’t already know). Each key is flat with a nice matte texture and a little extra spacing to prevent typos. A backlit keyboard would have been far more useful than lights next to the touchpad or under the edges of the palm rests.

The touchpad itself offers a quality interface with a lightly textured surface and excellent responsiveness. The touchpad itself feels just the right size for the notebook: any smaller and it would have been too small and any larger would have made this notebook even bigger than it already is. The touchpad drivers provide excellent accuracy and minimal lag with a range of options. The touchpad buttons are hidden under a single “rocker bar” and have a shallow press with audible “click” when pressed.

Performance

Starting with an Intel Core i7-740QM processor running at 1.73GHz and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 285M with 1GB of GDDR3 dedicated memory, this system easily ranks among the best gaming notebooks you can buy for less than $2,000. As impressive as that might sound, MSI wasn’t going to stop there.

The GT660 series features a complete system overclocking feature called TDE+ which overclocks the CPU and the GPU simultaneously at the touch of a button. MSI claims this “Turbo mode” provides a “16% performance boost” but our own lab testing shows the exact percentage of improvement varies greatly depending on a variety of factors.

Since this is intended to serve as a gaming machine, it’s important to point out that different games will react differently to the CPU+GPU overclocking feature on this notebook. In most cases, such as when we tested Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Shattered Horizon and Resident Evil 5, there was an obvious increase in the frame rates while gaming at the native screen resolution with detail settings maxed out. The bottom line is that the overclocking feature offers some added value for serious gamers but it isn’t a magic bullet for all your gaming needs.

Battery Life

Let’s be perfectly honest: No one buys a high-performance gaming notebook and expects it to deliver great battery life. Between the high-performance CPU, the high performance graphics, the dual storage drives and the giant cooling fans, there is simply a ton of hardware to keep running on a battery. In the “balanced” power mode with 75% screen brightness, the MSI GT660 lasted for two hours and 31 minutes of non-stop use while surfing the Internet and using a word processor. This is pretty pathetic for a general use laptop, but since many gaming laptops deliver less than one hour of battery life we can’t complain too much. You can also extend the battery life by dropping the screen brightness to the lowest useful setting.

Conclusion

The MSI GT660R is an impressive-looking gaming notebook with solid performance, great speakers and the ability to easily overclock the CPU and GPU at the touch of a button. The variety of ports including USB 3.0, the ability to upgrade to 12GB of RAM and the super-fast 1TB of storage make this an attractive choice for gamers looking for a strong system for $1,700 or less.

The weak battery and the thick and heavy chassis are par for the course when it comes to large gaming notebooks, but some consumers might not like the glossy plastics and the fact that the screen resolution is just 1366×768.

Design
Honey, they shrunk the Alienware! That’s the reaction we had when we first laid eyes on the Alienware M11x. This thin-and-light notebook looks like the company’s M15x spent too much time in the dryer. Like its larger brethren, it features a prominent Alienware logo on the lid whose eyes glow when the system is turned on. Our system came with a gray finish (called Lunar Shadow); consumers can choose Cosmic Black as well. Also like the larger Alienwares, the front edge of the M11x has an angled design reminiscent of the newer Chevy Camaros. The deck is a matte black plastic, which doesn’t pick up fingerprints, but the glossy black screen bezel shows every little mark.

Of course, the standout feature of any Alienware is its innovative lighting. Two areas on either corner of the front edge, which have a honeycomb pattern, are backlit, as is the keyboard and Alienware logo beneath the screen. As with other Alienware systems, the colors of the lights are customizable; this doesn’t add anything to performance, but it makes for a visually exciting laptop.

Measuring 11.3 x 9.2 x 1.3 inches and weighing 4.4 pounds, the M11x is considerably bulkier and heavier than a traditional thin-and-light, or, more significantly, an ultraportable with a ULV processor, which is more likely to have an 11-inch screen. The Acer Aspire Timeline 1810T, for example, is a full inch narrower and weighs more than a pound less.

Keyboard, touchpad and screen
No chiclet keyboard here — instead there’s a relatively flat backlit unit with a tweaked layout designed for gaming. We’d be totally remiss if we didn’t spend some more time talking about the crazy AlienFX LED lighting effects — you can set the keyboard backlight, Alienware logo, power button, speakers, and even status indicators to be nearly any color you want, have them fade between two colors, or just blink incessantly. It’s totally unnecessary, and incredibly fun — we spent 30 minutes tricking out our tester in an Elvis-inspired hot pink-and-blue motif before settling into more aggressive red and orange scheme. Sure, it’s old news to anyone who’s bought a larger Alienware machine, but it’s fairly wild to see such a feature in a laptop that starts at $799.

We could have lived without the dedicated menu key and a smaller right Shift if that had meant a larger arrow layout, but overall the keyboard is quite nice, and you can certainly pull off WASD when it’s time to game. The trackpad is similarly nice: no mulititouch here, but we’ve always like textured touchpads, and tracking was nice and accurate. We just wish the buttons were a bit bigger — we found ourselves clicking dead plastic at the lip of the machine quite often.

We’ve been harping on crappy displays in cheaper laptops for a while now, but the M11x is the rare low-end machine in a company’s lineup that doesn’t compromise on the LCD. The 11.6-inch 1366 x 768 LED-backlit display is bright, sharp and has terrific horizontal viewing angles. The vertical viewing angle is a little narrower, but it’s easy to find the sweet spot — kudos to Alienware for using a good panel here instead of trying to lower the price with a substandard display. We just wish it wasn’t so, so glossy.

Ports and Webcam
For such a small system, the M11x has a lot of connectivity options. On the right edge are two USB ports, two headphone jacks, and a microphone jack. The left side, though, has an additional USB port, FireWire, Ethernet, VGA, HDMI, and DisplayPort. Rounding it off is a SIM Card slot and a 3-in-1 memory card reader.

In a Skype video call, the M11x’s 1.3-megapixel webcam accurately recorded video and audio; a caller said that colors looked accurate, and there was very little motion blur. Alienware’s Aliensense facial recognition software works well, too. When you first log into the computer, the webcam records your mug; each successive time you log in, it learns your facial features; by the second day of our using the M11x, it recognized our face and logged us into Windows in less than a second.

Performance
It’s important to remember that, thanks to its switchable graphics, the M11x is really two different laptops. When operating with Intel’s integrated graphics, you’re getting decent (though not gamer-friendly) performance and solid battery life. Switch over to the discrete Nvidia, though, and you’re looking at a surprisingly badass rig, albeit one that flames out more than twice as fast.

A note on the graphics switching: Nvidia recently introduced its Optimus technology, which makes jumping from an integrated to a discrete GPU totally seamless and automatic. Curiously, that’s not present in the M11x. It’s not a complicated process here to switch to the Nvidia GPU and back—just press Fn+F6—but the move causes the screen to go black and requires quitting out of certain applications. It’s not a huge burden, but it’s frustrating knowing that a better option is out there. So how does the M11x stack up? I ran two sets of benchmarks, in both integrated and discrete modes.

Both yielded about the same results on GeekBench—not surprising, since it’s a benchmark that focuses on processor and memory capabilities. It’s notable, however, just how much juice the M11x squeezes out of that SU7300 compared to other notebook PCs with the same processor. The where the GeForce GT 335M really makes a statement is, not surprisingly, in gaming capabilities. While the overall scores are mostly comparable, the Gaming subscore jumps from 1780 to 3264 when the Nvidia GPU kicks in. Even more impressively, PCMark Vantage recorded an average FPS of 23.368 on discrete graphics versus just 1.664 FPS with the GT 335M switched off.

In terms of actual game play, I was able to get 130-210 fps playing Portal, though I was mostly at the lower end of that range. Scott’Soapbox did some more expansive real-world gaming testing, and found that the overclocked M11x was more than capable, especially with less intensive games.

Design
We loved the EliteBook’s sturdy design when we reviewed the 14.1-inch 6930p, but it’s especially apropos in the 2530p, whose 12.1-inch screen makes it ideal for road warriors. The 2530p, too, has a DuraCase lid, made of brushed anodized aluminum and magnesium alloy. The 3.8-pound 2530p feels a bit heavier than other ultraportables, owing mostly to its rugged build. For example, the Sony VAIO Z Series weighs only 3.3 pounds and features a larger 13.1-inch display. Nevertheless, the 2530p is plenty light for travel and is easy to hold in one hand.

On the inside, the palm rest and thin strip surrounding the touch-sensitive keys are a matching gray, but the keyboard is black. Because the keyboard extends to the edges of the 11.1-inch-wide deck, the keys were comfortable to type on, despite the notebook’s otherwise small size. As with the 6930p, the keyboard and touch buttons are quiet, and the rubbery touchpad has a good amount of resistance, but the touch buttons are narrow; HP also includes a pointing stick with its own corresponding set of mouse buttons. The stick was responsive and has a good rubbery texture.

Above the keyboard are touch-sensitive controls for Wi-Fi, volume, mute, HP Info Center, HP Presentation Options, and one to disable and enable the touchpad. The controls were responsive to taps, although the volume controls required a bit more pressure. In addition to discreet increase and decrease buttons is a convenient strip along which you can slide your finger to adjust the volume.

Screen and Audio
The 2530p comes equipped with a 12.1″ anti-glare widescreen with a typical WXGA resolution.  At 1280 x 800 pixels, this display is capable of displaying fine details without making things too small to work comfortably while on the move.  Of course, the resolution might be limiting if you plan to use this notebook as a mobile video and photo editing platform … but most people interested in a 12-inch notebook aren’t editing high-resolution photos on the road.

When viewing the screen from straight ahead, colors are rich and the contrast is excellent. Full-screen movies are look quite good with deep blacks and good viewing angles.  Horizontal viewing angles are particularly impressive so you won’t have trouble showing a presentation to multiple people sitting at a desk. The vertical viewing angle from above starts to wash out at extreme angles and colors begin to invert from below … but the overwhelming majority of users will never view the screen from high above or far below.

Features and Webcam
The 2530p has two USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, a VGA port, Ethernet and modem jacks, mic and headphone ports, docking and battery connectors, and a Kensington lock slot. It also has an ExpressCard/54 slot and an SD Card reader. Ideally, we would have liked to see at least one more USB port.

The 2-megapixel webcam captured sharp, well-lit still photos. Our VGA video showed delays, even when we captured video, which doesn’t involve a (potentially slow) Internet connection. When we made a Skype call, our friend noticed some latency around our mouth but, predictably, said the picture became more fluid as she shrunk the window.

Performance
Performance on little laptops, like the EliteBook 2530p, is not about how fast it goes, but rather can it do the job and how long the battery lasts. Our EliteBook 2530p came with the Intel SL9400 low voltage processor, with a clock speed of 1.86GHz, and 6MB of cache. For graphics, HP uses the Intel GMA 4500MHD integrated graphics chip. I don’t expect really high scores, but I do expect that it will be able to complete the tests.

Despite the above statement I still wanted to get an idea of the speed of the machine. As you can see from the numbers the speed is very low. The two tests I used are 3DMark 06 and PCMark 05. In 3DMark the EliteBook 2530p got 875 and in PCMark it did not get an overall score, but you can see the individual scores are low, but okay. These numbers are disappointing, but not surprising, hopefully it does better in the next test. The next test is a battery test and I used MobileMark 2007 for this. MobileMark does a good job testing battery life under working conditions because it runs programs like Office and Photoshop, all while keeping track of the running time. For the first battery test I used the MobileMark 2007 default power settings and I got 5 hours and 27 minutes. One thing I need to give HP credit for is their fantastic system restore disks. Rather than providing one disk that restores the system to factory settings, they provide two disks. The first one will do a clean install of the OS. The second disk has the drivers and applications, but you get to chose which drivers and apps it installs. This is a fantastic system that I hope finds its way into HP’s consumer products.

• Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor P8400 (2.26 GHz)
• Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium
• 14.1″ WXGA display (1280 x 800)
• Built-in 1.3 megapixel camera: MOTION EYE
• Intuitive Operation: Touch Sensor
• Touch and Feel: Glowing Luminous LED

Pet the Sony VAIO VGN-CS16G and see it glow! That’s the CS series’ selling point – aside from wowing you with graphics and functionality. So if you have the dough, declare your war against recession and stamp your name on this laptop.

The CS series is sleek, and it’s capable of providing above-average performance whether for gaming, watching a flick, busting your eardrums with rock music, or just doing boring office work. It’s hard to diss a Sony VAIO.

Same old beast
The obvious upside to a VAIO is, of course, its looks. But the VGN-CS16G has more to offer than dashing good looks. For starters, it has a 2.26GHz Intel Core Duo processor, a 250GB hard drive, two gigs of RAM and a 14.1-inch widescreen display powered by an NVIDIA GeForce 9300M GPU.

In simple speak, everything mentioned above translates to more brute power than a fashion-centric user could ever hope to utilize. It’s even good enough for HD videos and games, although don’t expect it to keep up with the gaming Joneses for more than a year or two, tops.

Light it up
What’s new with this latest VAIO incarnation, however, may trump all the techie mumbo jumbo we just spilled. Sony says it wants users to “experience the fun factor” with the VGN-CS16G. What did they mean? Well, the laptop has luminous LEDs underneath, which light up when you stroke the Sony logo behind the screen and when you’re playing music.

The LEDs emit different colors for different purposes. For music in particular, the color depends on how “cheerful” the track is. A novelty? Maybe. Psychedelic? You bet. Whatever the reason, we say it’s time to stand out from the crowd.

Design

Ever since Gateway rebranded itself as a more fashionable notebook manufacturer, the company has been on a roll in churning out good-looking budget laptops, and the NV7915u is no exception. The glossy NightSky Black lid, with its subtle Honeycomb pattern, isn’t as luxe as something like the HP Envy 15, but neither does it look cheap. However, the lid doesn’t hide fingerprints as well as the Midnight Blue color found on the NV5807u. Other design flourishes include a matte silver hinge with the power button built into the side (like Sony VAIOs), a glossy upper deck, and LED lights and touch-sensitive controls that glow red. At 6.8 pounds, this notebook is not one you’re going to tote around much, but it’s lighter than many desktop replacements.

The touch-sensitive controls responded to even the lightest tap. While there are volume controls and a mute button, there are no external controls for multimedia playback. However, there are buttons for Launch Manager, MyBackup (more on that later), disabling the trackpad, and enabling or disabling Wi-Fi. When you tap the Launch Manager button (a bold P above the keyboard), you can configure the notebook to automatically launch an application of your choosing the next time you press the button.

Display
The Gateway NV7915u has a massive chassis and weighs 6.8 pounds. The classy design offers some nice touches, however. In contrast to the smudge-prone glossy finish on the outside, the keyboard and wrist rest have a subtle matte finish. Above the keyboard is a row of status lights (Bluetooth, hard-drive access, etc) as well as touch-sensitive LED’s that let you activate data backup, Wi-Fi toggle, touch pad disable, mute and volume control. THe NV7915u also comes with a good but not spectacular set of interface and media features: a DVD drive, four USB ports, HDMI- and VGA-out, an SD card reader and network and modem ports.

The huge 17.3 inch screen is almost intimidating. It’s large enough for you to multitask effectively and view program windows side by side, which is a big plus for the Gateway laptop. The even brightness and good contrast make text very readable, but it’s not as sharp as on some of the best laptops. The widescreen format is also good for watching movies, but the nonstandard 1600 by 900 resolution may not look so good when you connect it to a monitor or HDTV. The home-theatre video performance will depend heavily on the scaling properties of your AV receiver and HDTV. The NV7915u has a solid screen, but it’s not worth making it the home-theatre.

Keyboard and Trackpad
The keys on the NV7915u are flat, but close together. Even with a full number pad on the right-hand side, the keys were still large enough for us to type comfortably without making typos. The keys’ subtle textured finish made it easy to get a grip, too. At 1.8 inches, the touchpad could be taller, but at least its 3.3-inch width feels roomy. As far as touchpads go, the NV7915u’s feels smooth and doesn’t offer too much friction. On the other hand, although its mirrored design is appealing, we found the mouse bar uncomfortable; it’s a single button, and the strip is too narrow. It took us a while to get used to pressing the far edges of the bar to get better tactile feedback.

Performance
Gateway NV7915u The parts aren’t top of the line, but at least Gateway isn’t giving you a Celeron or Pentium equivalent. An Intel Core i3-330M processor is very respectable in terms of speed, right behind the Core i5s and the Core i7s. In video encoding tests, it fell 7-8 seconds shy of the Dell 1764 (5955IBU) (0:50) and HP dv7-3183cl (0:49), both of which run on a Core i5-430M processor. The NV7915u did really well in PCMark Vantage tests (5,182), breaking the 5,000 mark. All of the systems that run on Intel’s latest Core processor will ship with DDR3 memory only, and most of them run on 4GB—the NV7915u is no exception.

Unfortunately, the price of the NV7915u will only net you an integrated graphics chipset. But if you’re not a serious gamer or a CAD specialist, this isn’t a big concern. Pricier systems like the Acer AS8940-6865 and HP dv7-3183cl ship with Nvidia discrete graphics cards, which are known for their 3D prowess. Regardless of price, battery life will be underwhelming, because the sheer size of the screen eats up a lot of it. The NV7915u scored 3 hours 32 minutes, which fell in line with the HP dv7-3183cl (3:36) and Dell 1764 (5955IBU) (3:01). The size of the battery is important, too. But if you want to maximize battery life, you only have one option with the NV7915u: a 48WH (6-cell) battery. Meanwhile, the Dell 1764 (5955IBU) has an option for bigger batteries.

Gateway may not be the big household name it used to be, but it undercuts the competition without making too many sacrifices. The Gateway NV7915u runs on the latest line of Intel processors, comes with a 500GB hard drive, and has plenty of screen real estate—all this for only $600. It’s hard to complain, but if your budget is a little bigger, check out the Acer Aspire AS8940 series.

Specs

Price $599
Processor 2.13GHz Intel Core i3 M330
Memory 4GB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz
Hard drive 500GB, 5,400rpm
Chipset Intel HM55
Graphics Intel GMA HD
Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium
Dimensions (WDH) 16.2 x 11.0 x 1.4 inches
Screen size (diagonal)     17.3 inches
System weight / Weight with AC adapter     6.9 / 7.8 pounds
Category Desktop replacement

Design
There are two aspects to the Alienware that make it stand out when you first see it; its physical size and its design. It’s actually quite compact for a notebook with a 17in screen – I guess black really is slimming. The traditional Alienware ribbed effect is present on the notebook lid along with the Alien head and I was delighted to see the squinty eyes light up blue when the notebook is powered on. I know it’s rather shallow to be impressed by such small things but then it’s the little things that make the difference. If you want your machine to stand out from the crowd at Lan party or when friends come over, this will do the trick. It’s not just the look, but the feel too. The new ‘Stealth Black’ finish is well named, not only looking good but having a slightly weird absorbent, slightly oily feel to it. If Alienware claimed that the m9750 was radar resistant, I’d probably believe it. The laptop’s body is large enough to fit a full-size keyboard and separate number pad, along with a generous touchpad. The wrist-rest area may be the largest we’ve ever seen, but it almost pushes the keyboard too far back–there’s a full 5.5 inches from the front edge of the laptop to the bottom of the keyboard. It took a little getting used to, and some users may find it uncomfortable. A Webcam sits above the screen, and a series of touch-sensitive media control and quick-launch buttons reside above the keyboard, but the volume control is shunted off to a small wheel on the left side of the system–we’d much refer a volume control somewhere on the keyboard-tray surface.

Display
The 1,920 x 1,200 resolution is really something, giving plenty of desktop real estate and making this a real contender as a desktop replacement. A possibly downside is that squeezed into a 17in display text at normal sizes can be quite small, so you may have to zoom up at times. But let’s face it, this is a notebook aimed at entertainment, not shopping lists or boring spreadsheets, though it will of course be pretty good for those as well. In pure quality terms the screen is good. It’s averagely bright but perfectly sharp, and its ‘Clearview’ coating gives it a high gloss sheen, effectively boosting colour and contrast. It also boosts reflections too though, and if you’re working in front of it for extended periods in a brightly lit environment, say the TrustedReviews office, then it could prove distracting. If you’re locked into a dark secluded gaming dungeon however, this screen will be right in its element.

Keyboard
As you might expect, beneath the screen you’ll find the keyboard. In an elegant touch I liked the way the area containing the hinges for the screen curve upwards. Beneath this you’ll find shortcut keys for the usual suspects such as your web browser, your mail program and your media player. There’s also a TV button, which makes sense as there’s an integrated TV tuner to make the most of Vista’s built-in Media Center software. Above these there’s a row of blue backlight indicators for wireless, charging, hard disk activity and if the mouse pad is active, as well as scroll and number lock. Of course the power button of the right of this has a cool blue light too.

Ports
On the left hand edge you’ll find an Express card slot – not PC Card, and a memory card reader. You’ll also find one mini Firewire port, a USB port and a Gigabit Ethernet socket and right in the corner a security hook, should you need to keep it locked down. On the opposite side you’ll find one more USB port, and all the audio sockets, headphone and microphone and line outs for front, centre, surround coming from the integrated Intel High Definition Audio chip to give you 7.1 when hooked up to a compatible speaker set. If you prefer to output digitally to an amplifier, there’s an optical port. There’s also an analogue volume wheel, though I found it was a little insensitive requiring far too much scroll to reach the desired level.

At the rear you’ll find DVI and VGA connectors and a hybrid TV tuner, giving you either analogue or digital, but not both. There’s an S-Video input to accompany this and audio in for connecting up a set-top box. There’s a final USB port, taking the count up to three and even a modem connector. The power input is right in the centre, which is unusual and kind of cool. One aspect that should be noted is that Alienware has made no pretensions at making this a Santa Rosa machine – there’s no Santa Rosa CPU, no Turbo Memory, no Draft-N wireless.

Performance
As expected, the Alienware Area-51 m9750 and its dual GeForce Go 7950GTX cards pummeled the competition in our F.E.A.R. and Quake 4 tests, offering up 81.1 frames per second in Quake 4, even at a ridiculously high 1,600×1,200 resolution with anti-aliasing turned on. We looked at the low-end Alienware m5790 earlier this year, and that system’s single ATI Radeon x1900 pumped around half the frames in the same Quake 4 test. The twin video cards in SLI mode are clearly the system’s highlight, as the m9750′s Core 2 Duo T7600 CPU performed on par with other recent systems in more mundane benchmarks, such as CNET Lab’s Multitasking, iTunes encoding, and Photoshop CS2 tests (although the Alienware’s 7,200rpm drives helped it power ahead in the Photoshop test).

The (nongaming) performance differences between this and other high-end laptops, such as the HP Pavilion HDX or the Apple MacBook Pro, are small enough to have little real-world effect, and all these systems are near the upper end of currently available hardware–although Intel is currently prepping a Core 2 Extreme mobile processor and Nvidia has a new DirectX 10 GPU, the GeForce 8700M GT, both of which will no doubt be included in Alienware systems later this year.

The Area-51 m9750 ran for a mere one hour and 12 minutes on our DVD battery drain test, a short lifespan, even for a massive desktop replacement system. Of course, powering a 1,920×1,200 display and two GPUs isn’t easy, and we don’t expect laptop gamers to keep their systems unplugged for any length of time.

Spec
Alienware Area-51 m9750
Windows XP Media Center Edition
2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7600
2048MB DDR2 SDRAM 667MHz
512MB Nvidia GeForce Go 7950GTX
300GB Seagate 7,200rpm

Design
At 15.0 x 9.8 x 1.5 inches and 5.6 pounds, the ThinkPad SL510 is a bit bulky to carry, though it’s lighter than many other 15-inch notebooks. In terms of style, the system has the familiar black plastic ThinkPad design theme. Its black keyboard has a light blue Enter key, as well as the familiar red trackpoint nub in the middle. Status lights and the power button appear to the right of the keyboard, while the volume buttons sit on the left.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard was very comfortable to type on and felt very similar to the keyboards on the T-series ThinkPads. The layout is different, missing the extra row of function keys at the top, but the main area has been left intact. Key action was great, with a soft spring movement, giving off a mild click when pressed. Key spacing is nearly identical to regular ThinkPads, with barely any difference noted switching between my T60 and the SL510. The biggest difference is the newer keyboards are slightly quieter. On the left side of the keyboard are some quick-access buttons, used for muting system volume or the microphone, as well as adjusting volume levels.
The touchpad is an ALPS model that looks and feels identical to the newer textured ones seen on the latest ThinkPad models. It is flush mount to the palmrest, and given a soft texture that is supposed to help with traction under varying conditions. I am personally a fan of the old matte plastic style, but given enough time the newer one might grow on me. In general I found the touchpad to be as responsive as the Synaptics model found on higher-end ThinkPad models. The only weakness I saw was tap to select, where the cursor would sometimes not let go of a selected object without a very deliberate click. This is common with many ALPS touchpads, but can be avoided most of the time.

Display and Audio
The system’s 15.6-inch, LED-backlit screen is available in either glossy VibrantView or Antiglare matte varieties. Our review unit came with the matte screen that produced sharp images, but colors were muted, and viewing angles were poor. Even from 45 degrees, colors washed out significantly. When the screen is tilted down slightly—as you might have to do if you’re looking across a conference table at someone—the color change is even more dramatic. To be fair, the system is probably too large to fit on a tray table in the first place.

Ports and Webcam
The SL510 comes with a standard array of ports, including VGA, HDMI, audio in/out, Ethernet, ExpressCard/34, and four USB ports, one of which that doubles as an eSATA connection. A 7-in-1 memory card reader also allows you to get data from cameras and other devices. The 2.0-megapixel webcam provides workable, but unremarkable image quality. When we used it to make a Skype call from our office, the smooth video was accented with somewhat muted colors.

Performance
The SL510’s 2.53-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU and 3GB of DDR3 RAM allowed the system to achieve 3,493 on PCMark Vantage, a benchmark that measures overall system performance. This score is slightly higher than the mainstream notebook category average of 3,225, and well ahead of the HP ProBook 4510s. However, the original ThinkPad SL400 scored a very similar 3,411, and the ThinkPad T400 notched a higher 3,576. In casual use, the system was smooth and responsive as we navigated the desktop and composed documents in Microsoft Word.

Graphics
The SL510 is available with both discrete and integrated graphics options. Our review unit came with an integrated Intel GMA X4500 graphics chip that returned a weak score of 1,011 in the benchmark 3DMark06, which was about a third of the category average (3,413). However, the HP ProBook 4510s did even worse (831), though the SL400 (2,251) did better—likely due to its discrete graphics chip.

Battery Life and Wi-Fi
On the LAPTOP Battery Test, which involves continuous Web surfing over Wi-Fi, the ThinkPad SL510’s 6-cell battery lasted 3 hours and 56 minutes, which is 20 minutes longer than the category average for mainstream notebooks. However, the HP ProBook 4510s lasted 4 hours and 31 minutes, and the original ThinkPad SL400 lasted 5 hours and 20 minutes

Key Specs
Processor: 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8700
Memory: 3GB RAM
Storage: 320GB hard drive
Optical Drive: DVD±RW
Screen: 15.6 inches (1,366×768 native resolution)
Graphics: Integrated Intel X4500MHD
Weight: 5.7 pounds
Dimensions (HWD): 1.4×13.5×9.7 inches
Operating System: Windows 7 Professional (32-bit)

Conclusion
The Lenovo ThinkPad SL510 proved to be a reasonable compromise between price and quality. While it doesn’t offer the nicer touchpad or rugged build quality of the T-series, it retails for almost half the starting price. The SL-series is a good option for users looking for only basic qualities in a notebook like a standard WXGA screen or integrated graphics. It still offers a great keyboard and extended batteries if you plan on typing documents all day without breaking the wallet. Overall if you are looking for a notebook that will be sitting on a desk most of the day and staying out of harm’s way, the SL510 is worth taking a look at.