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Review Lenovo Thinkpad Edge E535 Notebook

Lenovo introuces the Thinkpad Edge E535 as the successor to the E525. Both devices are based on AMD's Fusion-platform. The E535 comes with a APU based on the new Trinity Architecture, while the older E525 was based on Llano architecture. Lenovo ThinkPad X230 charger The Edge E535 is available with different component configurations. Our test model is powered by an AMD A8-4500M-APU (quad core CPU, Radeon HD 7640G). The APU comes with 4 GBs of memory and a 750 GB hard drive on the side. There is also a DVD-burner onboard.

The competition is mainly found in the same family. The already mentioned predecessor Thinkpad Edge E525 (AMD A8-3500M) would be a good example of such competition. The Thinkpad Edge E530 would also have to join the group as the Intel-counterpart to the Edge E535. ThinkPad X230i charger A comparison with the Thinkpad Edge 530 that we already tested wouldn't be fair, because it has a middle-class dedicated graphics card (Nvidia GeForce GT 630M). The competition of the Thinkpad Edge 535 would have to be the Thinkpad Edge 530-variant, which only has intergrated graphics.

Case

Editor's Note (September 19, 2012): The following review has not yet been edited for grammatical errors. A final draft of the review will be released soon.

LENOVO ThinkPad X230 Hybrid charger The case is made completley of matte-black plastic and the screen is surrounded by a silver plastic frame. The overall stability of the case is acceptable. The hand rests for typing hold secure with pressure. The keyboard only gives in a little. In the number blocks area of the keyboard, which is positioned over the optical drive, there is a bit more strength. The stiffness could be better. If you were to take the open notebook and hold it by two opposite corners, it would turn slightly. The build quality is also not 100% well made. Lenovo S200 charger When you close the top of the netbook it doesn't sit flush with the bottom side. At this point one would have the impression that one of the internal hooks was missing or broken. Interestingly, the almost identical Thinkpad E530 left a far better feeling at this stage.

The reverse side of the lid is equipped with a layer of rubber (softtouch-surface), just like the other Thinkpad Edge models. Our test model sports a black ('Midnight Black') rubber layer. Lenovo S260 charger The Thinkpad Edge is also available in red ('Heatwave Red') and blue ('Arctic Blue'). The lid makes a decent impression, despite the fact you are able to twist it. The metal-finish lid hinges hold the dispay firmly in position with minimal movement. On problem we had with the Thinkpad Edge E525 was the loosely secured optical drive, and we find the same problem with the E535. The E535 has also seemed to have inherited the rattling battery.

Connectivity

Lenovo S280 charger In terms of connectivity Lenovo has changed a considerable amount from the Thinkpad Edge E525. On the left side of the device there are three USB-3.0 ports. The Thinkpad Edge E525 only uses USB-2.0 ports. You will also find VGA-output and an HDMI port. The eSATA/USB combo port from the E525 has not been used again. This is ok due to the USB-3.0 Ports. Optimally Lenovo would have turned one of the three USB-3.0 ports into a combined eSATA/USB-3.0 port.

Lenovo s220 charger The right side of the device sports a Gigabit-Ethernet plug and a fourth USB port, although this one is a standard 2.0. The optical drive and a audio-combo socket have also found their places on the right hand side.The Express Card slot of the Thinkpad Edge E525 has been done away with for the Thinkpad Edge E535. This is a shame as now the possibility of certain expansions is gone. A memory-card reader is found at the front of the notebook, which works with the usal types (SD, MMC, MS, MS Pro, xD).

Lenovo s230 charger Communication
Our test model comes with all the expected features of a communications device. There is a WLAN-module from the company Broadcom onboard the notebook which uses the standard 802.11 b/g/n. The module from Boradcom also includes a Bluetooth chip at the same time. For wired network connections the device uses a Gigabit-ethernet chip. Lenovo s270 charger Lenovo uses a chip from the well-known Realtek RTL8168/8111 family. Lenovo has also given a Webcam to the Notebook. This is located on the screen frame, surrounded by two microphones.

Security
The range of security features is quite weak for a buisness-notebook. Lenovo offers this device with a fingerprint reader, but not every variant of the device will come with one. The fingerprint reader can be utalized via the already installed software Authentic TrueSuite. This makes it possible to secure not only access to Windows with a fingerprint lock, but also access to internet services. Lenovo G770 charger The obligatory port for a Kensington-lock is also present, but otherwise that's all in terms of security. Neither the Thinkpad Edge E535 or the Thinkpad Edge E525 offer TPM or a Smartcard reader.

Accessories
The section on accessories is over and done with quite quickly. Apart from the power supply and a battery, the only thing you'll find in the box is a poster with a quick-start guide and guarantee information.

Lenovo G770A charger The device comes with an already installed 'Windows 7 - Home Premium' operating system. There is no Windows 7 DVD with the product, as reinstalling the system is done with help from a Recovery-Partition.

The amount of additional software is managable. Aside from many Lenovo-tools, the Google Chrome browser and Authentec TruSuite, the other pre-installed programs include Corel WinDVD SE, Corel Burn.Now and DVD MovieFactory. Lenovo G770E charger This begs the question, why are there these kinds of programmes already loaded onto a buisness notebook? What's more is that Windows already has functions itself to do the tasks that these other three programs do.

Furthermore, a 30 day test version of Norton Internet Security has found its way onto the hardrive. Also Microsoft Office 2010 Starter and the Windows Live Essentials are already installed. An alternative UI is offered by Lenovo through its Simple Tap feature. This is highly reminiscent of the look of a tablet-PC. Lenovo G770L charger Whether or not this feature should really be on a buisness notebook is also questionable. SimpleTap turns out to not only be quite useless, but also very annoying.

Maintenance
The Thinkpad Edge E535 offers great and comfortable maintenance possibilities. Compared to the Thinkpad Edge E525 there is noticable improvement. On the under side are two compartments. Through the smallest door you will find the BIOS battery and the WLAN module. Lenovo IdeaPad G770 charger Under the bigger door is where the RAM, Hard drive, CPU and cooling system are all hiding. The notebook has two slots for RAM, and one is unused. This means a very simple and cheap upgrade to 8GB would be possible. The Thinkpad Edge E535 supports up to 16GB of RAM. The hard drive can be quickly removed and replaced with another model. Also the optical drive is swapable. All you need to do for this is undo the screw and then pull the optical drive out of its slot. Lenovo IdeaPad G770A charger

The big improvement over the Thinkpad Edge 525 is that it provides full access to the cooling system. The user can can remove the fan for easy cleaning. You could even take the APU out and replace it with another model. We have to praise Lenovo here.

Warranty
Lenovo IdeaPad G770E charger Lenovo equips the device with a 12 month Bring-In Warranty. The customer sends the notebook directly to Lenovo in the case of a defect. This time frame is customary nowadays. When it comes to a buisness device you would however expect a warranty of at least 24 months. Lenovo offers the possibility to extend the warranty to 2 or 3 years. The cost of which is about 50 euros and 70-90 euros respectively. A three year on-site warranty would set you back 120 euros.

Performance

Lenovo IdeaPad G770L charger Lenovo advertises the Thinkpad Edge E535 as "a strong performing notebook for small and medium buisnesses". The components are therefore accordingly chosen. You are not going to get Multimedia or a gaming notebook here. As mentioned before, there are different component variations of the Thinkpad Edge 525. The differences are in the installed APU, the memory size and the hard drive. Lenovo G575 charger Furthermore, there are variants that contain a dedicated GPU (AMD Radeon HD 7670M) next to the APU intergrated GPU. These variants of the THinkpad Edge 535 will also master the latest computer games. In terms of other multimedia features, the Intel-version Edge E530 is also worth a look, where, for example, you would get a middle class GT630M GPU.
Processor
Lenovo G575A charger Lenovo designed the Thinkpad Edge E535 with a APU (Accelerated processing Unit; a combination of a CPU and a GPU) from the company AMD. This carrys the name AMD A8-4500M. The CPU part of the APU is made of quad-core processor which works at a base speed of 1.9 Ghz. The speed can be increased to 2.8 GHz (AMD Turbo Core).

Lenovo G575E charger Unfortunately, we could never actually register a speed of 2.8 GHz. Despite this, the Thinkpad Edge 535 still made good use of the turbo function. During Idle mode and while doing office work all four cores were running at a permanent 2.3 GHz. It also looked the same during the Cinebench tests, with all four cores running at a permanent 2.3 GHz again. Ocassionaly the speed of individual cores would sink to around 1.8-1.9 GHz. The Cinebench tests are somewhat dissapointing because they are on the level - or sometimes under - of the AMD A6-3410MX-APU (eg. in the Samsung Serie 3 305V5A-S01DE) from the previous generation (Llano). Lenovo G575G charger If the full turbo speed was utalized, we could expect far better test results. It was only in the GPU intense GL tests that that the A8-4500M-APU was able to prove anything to us. Similar when compared to the Thinkpad Edge 525. In the Single thread- and GL-Tests the Thinkpad Edge 535 performed a lot better. The Multi thread-Tests showed more favour for the Thinkpad Edge 525.

Lenovo G575L charger Going against the Thinkpad Edge E530 (i5-2450M/GT630M) the Thinkpad Edge 535 has no chance. The CPU and the GPU of the E530 are playing in a different performance ball park. The competition in the Intel camp lies in the current Pentium processors. The single thread test results of the A8-4500M are under those of the Intel Pentium B960. In the Multi thread tests the AMD APU and the Pentium B960 are on par with eachother.

Lenovo G575M charger During our full stress tests (Prime95 and Furmark running parallel) while on mains power, the speed of the CPU fluctuated greatly. The speed levelled off around 1.4 GHz, with small up and down variations by individual cores (between 405 MHz and 2.3 GHz). The speed of the GPU moved between 500 and 655 MHz. While on battery power all four cores ran with a constant speed of 1.9 GHz. On the other hand the GPU has be throttled at 335MHz.

System Performance
Lenovo IdeaPad G575 charger According to the Windows 7 performance index, the Graphics chip is the weakest component of the system in reference to desktop performance. In every day use the hard drive is found to be a negative aspect. Launching applications, install routes and finding files should all be running a lot smoother. The results from the PC Mark tests are on the same level as the APUs (AMD A6-3410MX, Samsung Serie 3 305V5A-S01DE) from the last generation (Llano). Better results would have been possible. Lenovo IdeaPad G575A charger Also, at this point the lack of full turbo speed becomes noticable, as during the PCMark tests the CPU never worked above a speed of 2.3 GHz. The Thinkpad Edge 525 could be beaten. In terms of system performance, the Thinkpad Edge 535 can't win against the Thinkpad Edge 530. The combination of a Core i5 processor, Nvidia GPU and a somewhat faster hard drive bring in far better results in the PCMark tests (+30% PCMark 7).

Storage Devices

Lenovo IdeaPad G575E charger Lenovo has included a hard drive from the Scorpio Blue series from Westen Digital in the Thinkpad Edge E535. The hard drive boasts a capicity of 750 GB and runs at a speed of 5,400 RPM. The average access speed of 66.2 MB/s is in the middle and the access time of 19.3 ms is a bit too high. The execution of programs applications is a bit delayed. Lenovo provides hard drive protection with their own Active Protection System. A sensor percieves vibrations and, in the case of a drop (eg. if the notebook falls off the table), puts the read/write head into the 'park position'. Lenovo IdeaPad G575G charger Therefore, damage to the hard drive and to the data that is on it can be minimized.

The hard drive seems to be a bit oversized for a Buisness notebook. This is where Lenovo should have been putting the focus on speed. A hard drive with a 7200 RPM speed is what should be expected, or even a small Solid State Disk aswell.

Graphics card
Lenovo IdeaPad G575L charger The GPU part of the AMD A8-4500M-APU wears the name AMD Radeon HD7640G and is Graphics chip from the begginer class. It supports DirectX 11 and Shader Model 5.0. The chip operates at a regular speed between 500 and 655 MHz. The speed can also be reduced under this range, such as when the GPU runs at 200 MHz in idle mode. The results of the 3D Mark tests are on the level of beginner chips from other manufacturers - eg. Intel HD Graphic 4000. The predecessor Thinkpad Edge E525 is beaten in every test. Lenovo IdeaPad G575M charger

During our full stress, while using mains power, the GPU was running mostly at the full speed of 655 MHz. Every now and then the speed was temporarily reduced down to 500 MHz. When running on battery power the speed was permanently reduced to 335 MHZ.

Lenovo G470 charger performance, but also because of its intergrated video decoders (AMD UVD3 decoder). This takes charge of the bulk of the work when it comes to video playback. The decoder handles these tasks very well. We played a test video (Full HD resolution, H.264) and observed the CPU load. This turned out to be under 25%. With Youtube video playback of the same quality, the load was increased up to 40%. Lenovo G470A charger

Gaming Performance
The notebooks from the Thinkpad series are primarily designed as work devices. The Gaming performance comes in second here and the test results are reflective of this. The games that we tested could only be played smoothly with low resolution and low detail settings. With a higher resolution and/or detail setting the games begin to lag. In comparison to the Thinkpad Edge 525, the frame rates of the games we tested had been greatly improved. Lenovo G470AH charger Whoever wants to play computer games every now and then should probably take a closer look at the Thinkpad Edge E535 variant with a dedicated Graphics chip.

Energy Consumption
The consumption of the Thinkpad Edge 525 in idle model can keep up with the E535. But under average stress the Thinkpad Edge 535 is going to use 8 Watts more that the Thinkpad Edge 525. Under full stress this is reduced to just a 2 Watt difference. Lenovo G470G charger Generally speaking, the performance increases of the Thinkpad Edge 535 create a subsequent energy use increase. The included 65 Watt adapter never reaches its output limits. The comparison with the Thinkpad Edge E530 also looks good for the Thinkpad E535. In idle mode the energy consumption is at a level (E530 with Intel HD 3000 by Nvidia Optimus). Once the notebooks are running at full performance, the Thinkpad Edge 530 needs more power, and this is no suprise. After all there is a dedicated GPU (Nvidia GeForce GT 630M) inside the E530. Lenovo IdeaPad G470 charger

Battery Life

Lenovo promises a battery life up to 8 hours for the Thinkpad Edge E535. Lenovo keeps this promise. In Idle mode the device lasted 8:26 h. The Thinkpad Edge E525 and the Thinkpad Edge E530 have respective battery lives of 6:24 h and 6:41 h. We test the idle mode with the Battery Eater Reader test. In the test the display uses minimal brightness, the energy saving profile is activated and the communications modules are disabled (WLAN, Bluetooth). Lenovo IdeaPad G470A charger

Under stress the Thinkpad Edge E525 and the Thinkpad Edge E535 have an identical battery life of 1:31 h. The Thinkpad Ege 530 brings a time of just 1:05 h here. In the stress test the notebook passed the Battery Eater Clasic test. In that test the display is set to a high brightness, high detail settings are used and communications modules are turned on.

Lenovo IdeaPad G470AH charger A single battery charge kept the WLAN test going for 4:48 h. The running time of the Thinkpad Edge 525 lies only 9 minutes unter. The Thinkpad Edge 530 ended up with a run time of 4:03 h. With this test websites are contacted automatically by scripts at 40 second intervalls. During the test the energy saving profile is activated and the display brightness is set at roughly 150 cd/m².

Lenovo IdeaPad G470G charger The Thinkpad Edge 535 scores a battery life time of 3:46 h in the DVD test. This is enough to watch two feature films. The Thinkpad Edge 525 and the Thinkpad Edge 530 scored battery times of 3:34 h and 3:11 h respectively. For the DVD test the wireless modules are switched off and the display is set to the maximum brightness. It is the energy saving profile being used, or a higher profile (in the case the movie doesnt play smoothly).

Lenovo B570 charger Overall, the Thinkpad Edge 535 has a better battery run time than both its predecessor and its brother. You can get even better run time from the device when you use a battery with a greater capacity. Lenovo offers a battery that fits that description (0A36311). The battery utalizes a capacity of 63 Wh. The run time with this battery should increase roughly 25%. The battery currently costs 80-100 Euros.

Verdict

Asus A42-G75 The Thinkpad Edge 535 has left us with a mixed impression - which relates it back to its predecessor, the Thinkpad Edge E525. Lenovo provides us with a work device in a robust case. The application peformance is more than sufficient for office tasks. While doing the work the device is always quiet. The display uses a matte black surface and provides a quite high brightness level. In terms of maintenance the device shows us great results. The input devices are also good quality. Whoever finds that these qualities tick off everything that is important to them will be happy with the Thinkpad Edge 535. ASUS G73-52

The device does however have negative qualities. Lenovo has built a very bright, but at the same time a poor contrast dispay. Should you choose to watch films or TV series regularly, you will find the screen doesn't make this fun at all. The build quality is not always as good as it could be (battery rattle). The Thinkpad brand name is associated with higher quality. The maximum CPU speed was not available. ASUS A42-G73 They have also installed a hard drive with lots of storage but only an average access speed. You really dont need such a hard drive in a buisness notebook. This is when the hard drive speed should be the priority. A more carefully considered approach to choosing the hard drive and the display would have left this notebook in a far better position.

For those who can't find the right device for them with the Thinkpad Edge 535 devices can also take a look back at the Thinkpad Edge 530, with an Intel CPU and (without dedicated graphics) a similar price tag. ASUS 90-NY81B1000Y Alternatively, many notebook manufacturers offer competition from similar devices, which are on the same price level as the Thinkpad Edge 535 (Samsung 300E5A, Dell Vostro 3555,...).