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Usually, ThinkPads don't come cheap: You expect to pay dearly for the classy keyboard, rugged chassis, and whatever top-notch parts lie under the hood. That's not quite the case with Lenovo's SL400 series of laptops. The SL400 configuration we received for evaluation was at the upper end of the series, selling for about $1223 as of October 23, 2008, and it's a fairly solid deal.
Inside sits a reasonably speedy Intel Core 2 Duo 2.26-GHz P8400 CPU backed up by 2GB of RAM and a 256MB nVidia GeForce 9300M GPU. Not too shabby. In our tests this combination performed well, garnering a score of 84 on our WorldBench 6 benchmark test suite. That's well short of the Micro Express Microflex JFL 9290, which notched a 92, but it's a strong enough showing for the SL400 to finish near the top.
The six-cell battery kept the SL400 working for a little over 5 hours on a single charge--that's plenty of juice to keep you at the keyboard nonstop during a cross-country flight. The laptop's layout, screen, and beefy-meets-boxy 6.1-pound case indicate that Lenovo was shooting for a "strictly business" approach here.
PCW Rating: 83
--Darren Gladstone
