Lenovo ThinkPad E520 review

Business laptops don’t usually fall into the budget end of the price spectrum, but the Lenovo ThinkPad E520 costs just over £500 and has a fairly decent set of components, including an Intel Core i3 processor, a 500GB hard disk and Windows 7 Professional. It’s also the only laptop this month that has an ExpressCard slot, which is ideal for adding extra ports, storage or a card reader. Plus, its battery lasted almost eight hours.

It’s one of the larger laptops in this month’s group, but, surprisingly, it’s also the lightest laptop too, weighing just 2.1kg. That, combined with its excellent battery life, makes it well suited to travelling. If you’re in the cheap seats when travelling, you’ll be glad to know that the lid tilts back more than 180 degrees so you can always get a good view of the screen, even if you’re struggling for legroom.

You’ll need the best angle possible because the E520’s screen has very tight vertical viewing angles. The matt finish reduces glare from reflected overhead lights, but it dulls colours. The backlight isn’t very bright either, and its contrast is fairly poor, but colours are fairly accurate, with only a mild red cast adding a bit of warmth to images.

Intel’s Core i3-2350M CPU is energy efficient, but it is of average speed. The E520 scored a respectable 46 overall, which means it should be capable of handling most applications. The integrated graphics chip can decode HD video content, but it’s not up to playing games. It only scored 17fps in our Dirt3 test, so you’ll have to lower graphical settings to achieve playable frame rates, even in the least demanding of games.

Business laptops often have a few tricks up their sleeves that consumer models lack. Windows 7 Professional supports old Windows XP apps and it also lets you join domains, which is useful if you need to connect to a network in a large organisation. It also lets you back up to a network storage device, which is very handy if you own a NAS or a media streamer with local storage.

As well as the versatile ExpressCard slot, the E520 has four USB ports, one of which also doubles as an eSATA port. Sadly, we didn’t like the fact that the USB ports are placed towards the front of the case where they might get in the way of an attached mouse. It also has an SDHC card slot and a single 3.5mm jack that supports headsets, replacing separate headphone and microphone ports.