Lenovo ThinkPad SL510 Laptop Review

Introduction:
SL series by Lenovo is headed for both, competent quality as well as bargaining prices. The looks for SL series may not be very extra ordinary, yet they are enough eye-catching! With Windows 7 Professional Edition as the default operating system, the new Lenovo SL510 presents you a classy experience.

Look and Feel:
With an overall weight of 5.6 lbs, the model is surely bulky! Still the SL510 thinkpad has got much to be proud of. The SL510 looks one and the same as the standard model notebooks, with the outer black plastic design and the black keyboard (with blue colored Enter key). The touchpad is a nice looking, matty surface with maintained optimum sensitivity. The ancestor model, SL500, had shining and glossy surfaced lids. The new SL510 lids however, are made of matty plastic. Though SL510 is missing then shine on the lids, it looks equally elegant as SL500.

The keypad, accommodated compactly, leaves enough space around it. The key-spring feels little jammed however, and gives a feeling of putting extra effort for pressing keys. The touchpad continues of the same matty look as that of the lid surfaces. Apart from the looks, the extremely sensitive response of the touchpad gives a smooth ride to your fingers on the screen. The new SL510 ThinkPad score substantially in terms of its looks.

The graphics chip score for SL510 is found to be much less (1012) as compared to the average in this class (3485). Thus, the interpretation is the classy outer look of SL510 is not well supported by the screen graphics.

Processor and Performance:
At the heart of the new SL510 ThinkPad resides a 2.53 GHz Intel Core-2 Duo P8700 processor. The processing is supported by 3GB of DDR3 RAM which is extendible to up to 8 GB. The SL510 offers RPM of 7200 to accompany a whopping storage of 320 GB HDD. This strong configuration assures instantaneous response to every operation. The booting time recorded with the 7200 RPM and 320 GB for Windows 7 is 1 minute and 1second, which may not be the best, but is acceptable.

The other performance factor is of course the data transfer activity, where it stands much above than the average in its class. It can copy a data of 4.5GB with mixed files into another folder on the same system, in just 2 minutes and 30 seconds, which calculates a data transfer rate of 29.1 mb/s. This is surely way ahead than the average rate of 15.8 mb/s, offered by other ThinkPads.

Storage:
As stated earlier, SL510 ThinkPad holds a base 320 GB HDD. As advertised by the manufacturers, the small business notebook SL510, suits to the requirements of a small business. The base storage space of 320GB is extendable up to 500 GB in the highest variant. This variation cope ups with the other attribute, the RPM, which offers 5400 and 7200 rpm drives.

Battery Life, Weight and Connectivity:
The battery performance of SL510 is comparable to the average figures in its class. It offers a battery life of almost 3 hours and 56 minutes, as against the class average of 3 hours 30 minutes. However this is a collective comparison and hence, hides battery performances by some of the superior ThinkPads. For instance, the original SL400 had a battery life of 5 hours and 20 minutes.

As mentioned at the beginning, SL510 weighs 5.6 lbs, which is definitely clumsy in carrying it for long distances.

The connectivity statistics is again comparable to its category. As per the test results, the SL510 is capable of transferring data at the rate of 19.3 and 15.8 Mbps to a router at a distance 14 and 52 feet, respectively.

Pricing:
The lowest price in SL510 ThinkPad series is $499, which rises as per added feature list.