On friday, LAPTOP Magazine published their review of the Lenovo ThinkPad X61s. The ThinkPad X61s (very similar to the ThinkPad X61) is powered by an Low Voltage (LV) Core 2 Duo, has a 12-inch display (non-widescreen) and does not have an internal optical drive (which helps keep the weight down to under 3.5 pounds).
Excerpts from the review:
What’s new is the muscle, courtesy of Intel’s latest Core 2 Duo Low Voltage processor, which also delivers long battery life. Despite its surprisingly low Wi-Fi score (for 802.11n), standard-ratio screen, and lack of a built-in optical drive, you’ll be happy with this pricey pint-size performer.
Even better, this ultraportable doesn’t sacrifice performance for endurance. The 1.6-GHz Core 2 Duo processor, combined with 2GB of RAM, allowed the X61s to notch a very good PCMark05 score of 3,549. That’s above average for this class and provides plenty of horsepower to run Vista Business and Office 2007. Graphics performance was also above average, with a 3DMark03 score of 1,607.
Although we’d like to see a widescreen option, the ThinkPad X61s is an excellent choice for road warriors. We prefer the Panasonic Toughbook CF-W5 for its longer battery life, lighter weight, and integrated optical drive, but this system has a better keyboard, a more powerful processor, and more robust security features. If you want an ultraportable that performs-and feels-like a mainstream business machine, this is the one to get.