The ThinkPad Edge 13 (1366x768 WXGA -- 16 : 9) is ultraportable and has a long battery life for a small price, with an AMD Athlon Neo X2 CPU, Radeon HD 3200 GPU and 2 gigs of RAM or you can choose for a Core 2 Duo SU7300 paired with the GMA 4500MHD IGP.

The tested version has 4GB of 1066MHz DDR3 ram, a HDD of 320 Gigabyte @7200RPM, Bluetooth 2.1, a LED-backlit 13.3 inch 1366x768 display, and a 6-cell Li-ion battery rated that will last for app. 8 hours, the OS is Windows 7 Professional x64.

The reviewer points out that the ASUS 13" (UL30Vt) offer with a bigger HDD, Nvidia G210M mobile video and an overclockable CPU has a price tag of app. $ 750.-, whic is $ 50.- less than the Lenovo offer with lesser components.

Display:

The review has a dedicated page that deals with the Laptop LCD Quality. Contrast, white, black, Color Accuracy and Color Gamut are benchmarked and compared to many other LED displays. The editor came to the conclusion that: the screen is disappointing in every way ending up somewhere in the middle of the other tested models in the benches. It is a well known fact that Thinkpad displays have allways been of a lesser quality.

Benchmarks:

3D mark 2003, 2005, 2006 and Vantage, x264 encoding, Cinebench R10, PC mark 2005 and Vantage.

Conclusion:

The ThinkPad Edge is a compromise between the business-like ThinkPads and IdeaPads. It ends up in the middle. Allthough competent and functional, it doesn't stand out and it's value is not particularly good.

Compared to the Alienware M11x and the ASUS UL30Vt & UL80Vt models, this notebook has a smaller HDD, no discrete graphics card and no overclockable CPU, this machine is not good at gaming while the Alienware is.

The AMD model with a price tag of app. $500 could be a better choice, but it only has a 4-cell battery, lasting for 3 hrs and the processor is a lot slower.

Compared To: Acer 1810T, Alienware M11x, ASUS 1201N, ASUS N61Jv, ASUS UL50Vf, Dell Studio 14z, Gateway NV58, Lenovo T410, MSI X610.