Review Lenovo ThinkPad W530 N1K43GE Notebook

[Redaktion]

Refresholution. In this year's ThinkPad refresh the mobile workstations that now carry the name W530 are of course a must-have. Updated components, changed details and a move away from the legendary ThinkPad keyboard are the essential improvements, which can speak for or against the current model. We tested extensively whether Lenovo has succeeded with this intervention.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Lenovo-ThinkPad-W530-N1K43GE-Notebook.80062.0.html

[BiasREVIEW]

how is it that apple products gets almost 100% score in workmanship whent eh thinkpad got only in the 80's? to mee the thinkpads are built much better. Also there were many reports that the bottom of the macbooks gets very hot when underload... a little bias going on here!!!!

[name]

well it is 800 grams heavier than retina 15 inch macbook pro with amazing display (though not as good as W530, retina macbook does have a good display). It is about half the thickness. As far as speed goes, GT650 is faster than K2000 in most applications (and supports direct compute and physicX which K2000 does not).
To sum it up, nearly 1 kilo lighter, half the thickness, slightly faster and only £200 more... There is still a way for improvement.
Personally I would reinforce the cage of W530 with carbon fibre, make it slimmer as much as possible, reduce th-e weight by 300-400 grams at least (look at 2KG Sony SVS-S15 with IPS display) and most importantly - keep the georgeous display it has got but MAKE IT TOUCHSCREEN!!!! as Windows8 can't shine w/o touchscreen device.

[ken]

The other (besides the Retina's awesome display) big difference between this and the Retina Macbook is the W530's expandability.  The Macbook is factory build only, so you have to pay Apple's prices for memory, SSD, etc.  With the Thinkpad, you can add/remove whatever you want later, including parts as they wear out.  When the Retina wears out, you send it to the factory to fix it or you throw it out...

That said, Lenovo should have kept the old keyboard layout but kept the chiclet keyboard...the new layout is terrible for software developers.  The screen also should have been improved w/ better vertical angles, but instead they kept what's basically a 3-4yr old panel :-P

And they really should have allowed the system to run in degraded mode when a 90W battery is connected so we can travel w/o the giant 170W brick...disable the K2000M discrete graphics..prevent the CPU from overclocking.  Check out the size of the tiny brick that the Retina Macbook uses :-P

[saddam]

GT650 certainly is slightly faster in games but it's just a consumer graphics not suitable for work in any CAD/CAM/DCC 3d packages. K2000m comes from QuadroFX line with special set of drivers optimized for AutoCAD, 3ds MAX and many other design packages. K2000m in 3ds max is a lot faseter than my desktop GTX480, so there is no point to compare it to GT650m. The same in AutoCAD. Consumer graphic carts are just not good for this type of work.

[Mechali]

The lack of numpad in keyboard layout is a great drawback for lenovo laptops, and their conservatism do not let them to add this feature.

[MobileCAD]

I have been using the W530(3920XM/K2000M/1920x1080/32GB/SSD) for PTC Creo2 modeling and working with assemblies of approx 1000 parts.  PTC Creo2 with full AA and high quality shading w/ edge & tangent lines still gives great frame rates with large models on this laptop.  PTC Simulate is fast (just compared to my previous workstation).  The HD screen is beautiful and the colors are amazing!  The slow down when running on battery is very noticeable - but, the battery life is impressive for a portable CAD workstation.  The docking station is VERY nice (very good multi-monitor support) and the add-on battery is very useful for long, productive plane rides (doubles the run time, but is heavy and large).  I am very happy with my W530 and it's available accessories.

[rzp2003]

how is it that apple products gets almost 100% score in workmanship whent eh thinkpad got only in the 80's? to mee the thinkpads are built much better. Also there were many reports that the bottom of the macbooks gets very hot when underload... a little bias going on here!!!!

I also found this strange as thinkpads have passed seven military tests while mac has passed none.

[Brendon]

Considering the review of the display and color, is the "Color Sensor" offered worth the additional cost? From my read, it seems it may not be that effective?

[B Vincent]

Terrible cracking and poping noises when used with Lenovo Docking station.  Use your web search to go to "Lenovo W530 cracking noise"  This will lead you to an article on Lenovo's own community discusson website where this problem was reported in July 2012 and is still being reported on new W530's shipped in December 2012 6 months later.  In that community page Lenovo techs believe this due to a defect in the Motherboard design meaning it affects all W530s and the only way to repair is to send the unit to a service depot for several weeks where they will remove and replace the motherboard.  While this only presents when the laptops is used with a docking station, its unknown if the issue shortens the life of the unit or will lead to further complications.

[Ken_B]

 >:(I ordered a w530 partially based on this review which I'm sure would be accurate if the computer actually ran. Pronounced DOA by customer service in Georgia US. It was out of the box about an hour. Back to Dell I go.

[Alex74]

We bought Lenovo Thinkpad at our University I think 10 of them on the frame of a three year European project. I would say the choise was very wise. First of all I would like to tell you how to install Windows in an empty disk. The only driver you need to install at first is the network driver. Install windows 7 or 8 64bit normally and then go to the Lenovo site and download the think vantage program updater. It will automatically detect the precise model you have and instruct you to download the drivers, install the critical and optional drivers and wait for it to finish. When the system restarts it will have all drivers. Actually go to device manager and see that everything is installed and there are no question marks of a device not recognized. Very professional of Lenovo it spares you a lot of trouble. I highly recommend this product to a serious professional. Be careful to know what your memmory requirements are what processing power you want and what graphics card you want. This Laptop can be used as a Desktop with a docking bay. Highly recommended I have two one at my office and one at my home. So I can take work from home to the office and from office to home. I have installed 32GBs of memory (yes you can reach the memory of a server), I have a full HD monitor at home and work and can work as if I was using a Desktop. The problems with Laptops is that they accumulate dust inside them and so far I know of no Laptop that offers a free service to get cleaned inside every year. Also Lenovo should seriously think of making their product line Linux friendly. THey are loosing a lot of buyers and there are a lot of complaints from colleagues that really quited their effort of installing Linux on them. I am using Microsoft Windows and I have plenty of Linux while connecting at the server but many people simply want Linux. Thats my two points. If you are a Windows user and want a portable solution for your work like I do then Lenovo W530 is highly recommended.

[Justin]

I believe the CPU will not be throttled to 1.2GHZ while on battery if you only use the integrated GPU.

[DT23]

just received the w530 today. Somehow the screen frame feels a little flimsy with some gaps between the screen and the frame more towards the bottom portion of the screen that has potential to collect dust. This is my first w530 and just wonder if there is how they are design. The screen doesn't feel sturdy. Any thoughts?

[stefan heitmann]

I'm very disapointed with my new w530, I'm a professional architect, and i hoped this notebook would work better than my amd workstation (amd fx 8150, 16 gigram, firepro v4000), but it doeesnt, or did i made my workstation damn good  or theres something wrong with the assembly, i upgrade it to 32gram, 128 ssd, and still offers to many delays, unaccurate 3d working space, an to many slowdowns that makes me no longer want to work with it. The display seems to white (like paleness) to me and its not fixable, i do not know how to accelerate it,  when you dont have control over bios or over performance, when suposedly it handles by him self.  Its to early in the time for auto performance control technology.
Maybe since the ssd is too small, and you could install win and a few programs, the interaction between ssd an normal hard drive is what slowering me down.   
I'll have to try with a larger ssd to hold everithing i'm working on on it, ore eles the damn delays will make me give away this notebook.