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Lenovo’s ThinkPad R500 is chunky for a 15.4in laptop. While this means that there’s room to fit both a CardBus and ExpressCard/54 slot, it also means that it weighs 2.9kg. As such, this is more a laptop for using around the home than out and about, although if you unplug it the battery life of five-and-a-half hours is decent. Unfortunately, the rest of the laptop isn’t so impressive. For starters, there’s only 2GB of RAM, where we’d expect at least 3GB. The 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo T6670 is a decent enough processor, but the R500’s overall score in our benchmarks of 59 was slightly disappointing. More memory would improve matters. It’s also disappointing that there’s no dedicated graphics chip, and the onboard Intel GMA 4500M HD graphics aren’t up to playing games. There are VGA and DisplayPort outputs, but you’ll need a DisplayPort-to-DVI or HDMI adaptor to use this with most monitors. We haven’t seen any displays that use DisplayPort yet, as it’s a new standard. The 15.4in display’s resolution of 1,280×800 gives you a similar amount of desktop space as the more usual resolution of 1,366×768 on the 15.6in laptops. The screen’s matt finish helps reduce reflections, but the backlight is uneven and viewing angles are poor, so we had to sit straight-on to get the best image quality. The R500’s keyboard isn’t quite as good as other ThinkPads we’ve reviewed, but it’s by no means bad and it’s comfortable to type on. It’s annoying that some keys aren’t in their usual place – the Esc key sits above the F1 key and the Control key has switched place with the Fn key – but you’ll soon get used to that. There’s a choice of touchsticks with a selection of tips and a touchpad. Both are accurate to use, although their buttons are a little spongy. The 250GB hard disk is disappointingly small. At this price we’d have expected at least a 320GB model, although 500GB would have been better.
The R500 is by no means a bad laptop, but long battery life is its only standout feature. Mesh’s Edge 15 is a better choice.
