Lenovo 3000 V200
The Lenovo 3000 V200 laptop is both powerful and affordable.
Carla Thornton
If you've dreamed of owning an ultraportable but you blanch at the sight of the typical price tag, the Lenovo 3000 V200 is a happy compromise. It isn't as light or as sleek-looking as some models, but it is very nicely equipped for a reasonable price--so long as you don't need built-in mobile broadband.
The V200 starts at less than $1200, though our test unit cost $1550 (as of 9/12/07). The design is low-key but attractive, featuring a sloped front, a silver lid, and a dark keyboard. Except for very small arrow keys, typing is easy. Features include a built-in Webcam, a fingerprint reader, and an instant-on multimedia button that will play media without your having to boot Windows. The plentiful ports include three USB and one FireWire, and you get both an ExpressCard slot and a three-in-one media card slot. Including an integrated dual-layer DVD burner, our test unit's minimum weight came in at 4.3 pounds--that's on the heavy side for ultraportables, many of which don't have an integrated optical drive.Performance was very impressive; in fact, it was more like a full-size laptop's. Our Windows Vista Ultimate review machine, equipped with a top-of-the-line 2.2-GHz T7500 processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 160GB hard drive, earned a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 79, a result that was 46 percent better than the average score of 54 earned by 14 recently tested ultraportables. Its battery life of 4 hours and 4 minutes was 11 minutes short of average for this class of notebook. Still, 4 hours will let you get a good chunk of work done in transit.
If you've been looking for a nice travel notebook that won't drain your bank account, the light, comfortable, and capable V200 fills the bill.
--Carla Thornton
