Lenovo ThinkPad W520 Review Discussion

The Lenovo ThinkPad W520 is Lenovo's upgrade to the W510 mobile workstation notebook. This 15.6-inch notebook is powered by up to an Intel Core i7-2920XM processor and equipped with up to a discrete NVIDIA Quadro 2000M GPU, switchable to Intel HD integrated graphics. Like last year?s model, the full HD (FHD) displays on the 1920 x 1080 resolution models have a 95% color gamut and a huey PRO color calibration system application. At the time of writing this review Lenovo has not yet announced if there will be an upcoming multi-touch screen option like last year or not.

In this review we will measure the ThinkPad W520 up with other workstations in its class by putting every specific detail of it to the test. Read on to find out if this is the laptop for you.

Read the full content of this Article: Lenovo ThinkPad W520 Review

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Thanks for the review.

How much does the review W520 weigh and how does it compare to the manufacturer's starting weight?

Also:

My take on the viewing angles is that the horizontal viewing angles are better than the vertical ones (which is normal for notebook screens).

John

 

You guys really need to address the HP 8740w 3DMark06 results. We have thoroughly tested many configs in the owners lounge and your results are clearly wrong. It should get about 13,000.

 

Hmm ... was surprised by the battery life! Although I have heard that the new i core cpu's have better power management in them....

 

Yeah, switchable graphics will do that to a power-hungry system.

 

Is this AUO B156HW01 v4 screen_

 

I find the results for the temperature a bit puzzling. The highest temperature that you recorded on the bottom was 90 degrees. Considering that this is a quad core 55 watt cpu coupled with a 55 watt GPU, that seems low. It is much lower than the 100 degrees you got for the T510, which had a 35 watt CPU and a 14 watt GPU. Also, the people over at LAPTOP magazine got a much higher temperature of 98 degrees. Are you sure about that temperature?

 

TDP and temperature are related but aren't proportional. It's possible that there is better cooling so even if there is a higher power consumption, the heat can be expelled more efficiently. Also, you cannot directly compare other people's results because there are many factors that can influence the result. To name a few: ambient temperature, stress test(s) used, and amount and application of thermal compound used.

 

If I'm not mistaken, the W520 doesn't have switchable graphics.
Improved battery life is probably because of the large 94mW battery and more efficient CPUs

+1
I'd like to know as well because I thought those were discontinued and were being replaced by B156HW02 or something. Seems to be a different screen though because you guys measured only an average of 207 nits while NBC recorded an average of 231 nits (as high as 257) for the W510. No matter since I already have one in my Elitebook

 

W520 does have switchable graphic units, two of them, Intel3000 on board (Sandy Bridge architecture) and NVidia 1000/2000 model.

 

ahh you're right... apparently I can't read.
I dunno if I should be impressed that that SB quad core can last 6.5 hrs (although it does have a huge battery) or disappointed that Nvidia Optimus only gives an extra 1.5 hrs of battery life. Regardless, no Arrandale quad core could ever dream of that sort of battery life.

 

I'd like to see how much of an improvement it would get with a new fast SSD.

Too bad such a fast processor has to carry around a ball-and-chain HDD. Who would spend that much for a notebook and not buy an SSD?

 

Great work! It's always so hard to find good reviews on the W series.

I could not wait for Lenovo to get in gear and bought an Apple instead, but I am sure I would have been equally happy with the W520.

 

Yes, we are sure, simply because our temperature testing procedures are inevitably different than any other notebook review website's temperature testing procedures. To arrive at our temperature readings, we run our benchmarks for 25 minutes and then take the readings (places are shown on the graphic in the review) with a Fluke 561 IR thermometer gun.

Thanks for the kind words about the review! I really appreciate it.

 

Is the audio from the integrated speaker really that bad? I thought all new series already equipped with Dolby audio?

How is it compared with T410? Thanks

 

Im interested in knowing what battery life is like with the slice and 9 cell.

 

Most laptop speakers suck (especially business laptops), even if it has a sticker that says Dolby audio.

Just extrapolate given the number of WHr in each when compared with the test sample?

 

How many threads were used for the 2920xm wprime measurements, 4 or 8? I was surprised to find that, on a 2720QM, using 8 resulted in a huger perf boost, from 14.4 sec to 9.4. It would be nice to know which measurement was done, and what the result is in the other configuration.

 

WPrime is multithreaded, so it would use all 8 threads, which means quad cores will generally perform better than dual cores unless there is a serious clock speed deficit.

 

Hi Amber,

As a current W520 owner, I'd appreciate it if you could mention somewhere in your review the various CPU throttling and power issues the W520 has been suffering from. I think anyone considering buying a W520 should know about it. You can visit the long thread on Lenovo's support forums: W520 TurboBOOST not working on battery or after up... - Lenovo Community In a nutshell, there are a few major issues when running on battery (CPU is clocked down and locked to Pentium 3 speeds, TurboBoost is completely disabled). There is a bug where switching power sources from AC to battery while the computer is in sleep mode will also cause the CPU to stay clocked down until a routine involving shutting down the system, taking out the battery and disconnecting/reconnecting AC cord is performed. Linux user are reporting the same throttling issues so the problem is clearly BIOS/HW related. Lenovo has recently released a BIOS update that was supposed to fix the problem but failed. They state they are currently working on another.