Lenovo ThinkPad W700 First Look

by David Rasnake

If you've been in photography at the professional or even serious amateur level for any amount of time, you've probably already been "instructed" - either directly or by indoctrination - in what kind of computer you need to buy when the time comes: three syllables, starts with "M." You know, the one played by the hip floppy-haired guy in those TV commercials that used to be funny.

If Apple has been a dominant playerfor awhile now for graphics-intensive applications,with cross-platform compatibility no longer the concern that it once was, a photographer or graphic designer's choice to use a Mac versus a PC system is largely a personal - rather than a professional or technological - one these days. Many creatives stick to Macs because that's what they know, butfor graphics use there are some increasingly compelling options on the PC side as well.

As a photographer (and a longtime dual-platform user), I was intrigued by the announcement of Lenovo's new ThinkPad W700. With Lenovo's reputation for building ultra-reliable business notebooks, the decision to dive head-first into a high-end mobile graphics system like the W700 may seem like a strange one. And if Lenovo's targeting any single market with this device, it's unquestionably photographers: sure, if you work in any kind of design the W700 could be a great workstation companion, but with copious storage space, an excellent screen, a built-in digitizer, and an onboard color calibration system, Lenovo is clearly taking a direct shot at the relatively closed and insular pro photo market. To my knowledge, nothing else on the market offers the W700's concentration of photographer-friendly features.

Lenovo ThinkPad W700 Specifications:

• Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme Q9300 (2.53 GHz, 1066 MHz FSB, 12 MB L2 cache)
• Memory: 4 GB DDR3 SDRAM
• Screen: 17" 1920x1200 WUXGA TFT LCD
• Storage: 160 GB HDD (7200 RPM) x 2, RAID 0 configuration
• Optical Drive: DVD recordable
• Wireless: Intel Wi-Fi Link 5300 (802.11a/g/n), Bluetooth 2.0
• Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M with 1 GB
• Battery: 9-cell lithium-ion (84 Wh)
• Dimensions: 16.1" x 12.3" x 1.5"
• Weight: 8 lbs, 10 oz (with battery)
• Price As Tested: $4,333.30
• Starting Price: $2,531.30

Design and Build

We've jokingly billed the W700 "the laptop designed to make normal people feel small," and the name fits. With a footprint measuring a generous 16 by 12 inches, working with the W700 actually on your lap is not really advised. And forget trying to take it on a plane - we're not sure that the Lenovo would fit in the overhead compartment of a regional jet, much less on the tiny tray table. Likewise, finding a case for the W700 will almost certainly require shopping at the laptop bag equivalent of "big and tall" stores.

As with most graphics-friendly machines, the idea of portability is relative here. Think of it this way: the W700 is easier to haul along than your desktop, while still offering the majority of the tools you need for serious image editing or design work.

Build quality is everything Lenovo is known for, with tight fitment all around and an impressively small measure of panel flex for a laptop this large. Although it's certainly no lightweight, the W700 surprises for its size: at just under nine pounds,the ThinkPad isportly, though it's certainly not as heavy as it looks.

All in all, those in the creative sector more familiar with either the glossy finishes and flashy colors of PC based graphics notebooks or Apple's industrial minimalism may find the W700 to be a bit of an odd duck, aesthetically. It looks, as a rule, like any other Lenovo - like an engorged version of your typical matte gray business notebook. We know from experience thatthese machines tend to hold up well, however, and that their lightly textured finishes stand up to a fair bit of abuse and never show it. Hence, while the W700's looks may not immediately mark you as a photographer or designer, as a machine for getting day-to-day graphics work done, the Lenovo's basic exterior makes a lot of sense.

Display

Our review unit came packing Lenovo's high-end 17-inch display with 1920x1200 (WUXGA) resolution and 400 NIT brightness. Rivaling a good desktop display for brightness, clarity, and even size, the W700's premium LCD panel is one of this model's key selling point for power graphics users.

A built-in color calibrator (see the next section for more info) ensures, with a few minutes of profiling, that what you're seeing on screen is what you'll get through the rest of your workflow. We'll spend some time doing more extensive testing on the W700's color gamut and accuracy for the full review, but a quick side-by-side with my Pantone-calibrated desktop display suggests that at a basic level, anyway, the W700's colors and contrast are spot on.

More generally, the display is smooth and crisp with more brightness and appreciably better contrast than we're used to in a laptop screen. A light reflective coating protects the screen, but glare is well controlled (the screen's native brightness certainly helps in this regard). Backlighting appears even at first inspection. Viewing angles are excellent side-to-side, though only acceptable on the vertical axis.

Since display performance is crucial to the W700's primary applications, we'll be working up an in-depth analysis of the Lenovo's panel for our full review.

Color Calibrator/Profiler

That's right: you can leave your X-Rite and Datacolor spectros at home with your desktop. The W700 features a built-in X-Rite Huey system that includes a simplified software package for quick calibration and profiling as well as a spectrocolorimeter for taking the necessary measurements built right into the surface of the notebook.

Via that little electronic eye, the W700 is able to read the necessary color patches for automatic profiling and calibration when the lid is closed.

To get things rolling, simply launch the Huey calibration utility (it comes preloaded as a tray icon with Lenovo's factory OS install). From there, it's a simple process of following the on-screen prompts: when it's ready to calibrate, the W700 notifies you to close the lid. (You'll need to to make sure your speakers aren't muted at this point, as the W700 uses a series of tones to tell you that it's finished and it's safe to open the lid again.) A minute or so later, and the W700 has routed the display profile to the appropriate place and is ready for use.

The W700's X-Rite calibration and profiling tool is pretty stripped compared to many of the common utilities used for this purpose. You can specify one of three gamma options (including the common 2.2, of course), and select from a highly limited number of color temperature options. Still, as noted above, the W700 appears to produce accurate color profiles in need of little tweaking.

As with the detailed display analysis, we'll explore how well the W700 interacts with other profiling/calibration tools, and how well it integrates into a typical photographic workflow, in the final review, so stay tuned for that.

Keyboard, Touchpad, and Digitizer

Input options abound with the W700. For many diehard Lenovo fans, though, the world of input devices begins and ends with Lenovo's legendary keyboards. And the W700's equipment in this area isjust aswe've come to expect, with smooth key action and a quick, short stroke that makes typing on the W700 a pleasant experience. There's a hint of flex at the top right corner of the our review unit's 'board - up around the Backspace key - but otherwise the full-size keyboard and num pad feel securely anchored to the W700's subframe.

For a laptop this big, the touchpad area is a bit small: it's not like space is exactly at a premium on the W700's top deck. The pad features vertical and horizontal axis dedicated scroll areas, and top and bottom button arrayshave a soft click feel that's ideal for all-day use (try using a computer with hard, clicky buttons for more than ten minutes and you'll understand what we're talking about).

With lots space south of the keyboard that typically goes unused on larger notebooks to work with, Lenovo's designers opted to integrate a small digitizer into the W700 as well. The 3x5 inch tablet area provides a nicely sized work area: users coming from larger tablet spaces will find it cramped, but resolution is decent and moreover, having a digitizer that you don't have to pack along separate from your workstation will be a welcomed addition for many users.

The W700's included pen, which stows away into a silo in the righthand side of the notebook (and isn't easily removed from this position, it should be noted), isn't particularly enjoyable in use. It's small, and the buttons feel cheap, but compatibility with most Wacom-ready pens means the range of control options for the W700's tablet are nearly unlimited.

Performance and Benchmarks

As the specs detail above suggests, Lenovo supplied us with a high-spec (and, accordingly, high-cost) review unit,maximizing the W700's graphics potential. Ourtest modelcame speced with a 2.53 GHzIntel Core 2 Extreme Q9300 processor, 4 GB of DDR3 memory, and the upgraded NVIDIA Quadro FX3700M graphics processor option. File storage is courtesy of a pair of 160 GB, 7200 RPM hard drives configured by default in a RAID 0 arrangementthat yieldsa single 320 GB storage space.

Running a Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit OS environment further expands our test system's capabilities on the graphics end and provides some key upgrades (most notably, better color management integration) when compared to older XP systems.

Benchmarks

In keeping with its high level of specification, the W700 shows stout performance in our synthetic benchmarks. A WPrime time in the 15 second range is especially impressive, with raw processing power that comes close to what we've seen from some high-end desktop workstations.

Gaming is also easily within the W700's capabilities, with the system throwing up some of the best framerates we've seen from a notebook.Of course, if gaming is your primary concern, you can get performance near the level of the W700 for less bucks.

On the graphics development side, the latest version of Adobe Lightroom simply runs like a dream on our as-tested W700. We'll be loading up some portions of the Adobe Creative Suite over the weekend as well toevaluate how theLenovo comports itselfin its native environment: graphics work.If absolute top-end performance is your primary concern, though - whether or not you're looking to do illustration oredit photos- there's not much out there that we've looked at that bests this particular ThinkPad thus far in our testing.

wPrime is a program that forces the processor to do recursive mathematical calculations, the advantage of this program is that it is multi-threaded and can use both processor cores at once, thereby giving more accurate benchmarking measurements than Super Pi.

Notebook / CPU	wPrime 32M time
Lenovo W700 (Intel Core 2 Extreme Q9300 @ 2.53 GHz)	15.771s
Lenovo T500 (Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 @ 2.80GHz)	27.471s
Lenovo T61 (Intel Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2.0GHz)	42.025s
Dell Vostro 1500 (Intel Core 2 Duo T5470 @ 1.6GHz)	53.827s
HP Pavilion dv6500z (AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60 @ 2.0GHz)	40.759s
Systemax Assault Ruggedized (Core 2 Duo T7200 @2.0GHz)	41.982s
Toshiba Tecra M9 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @2.2GHz)	37.299s
HP Compaq 6910p (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2GHz)	40.965s
Sony VAIO TZ (Core 2 Duo U7600 @ 1.20GHz)	76.240s
Zepto 6024W (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2GHz)	42.385s
Lenovo T61 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz)	37.705s
Alienware M5750 (Core 2 Duo T7600 @ 2.33GHz)	38.327s
Hewlett Packard DV6000z (Turion X2 TL-60 @ 2.0GHz)	38.720s

PCMark05 comparison results:

Notebook	PCMark05 Score
Lenovo W700 (2.53GHz Intel Q9300, NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M 1GB)	8,207 PCMarks
Lenovo T500 (2.80GHz Intel T9600, ATI Radeon 3650 256MB GDDR3)	7,050 PCMarks
Lenovo T500 (2.80GHz Intel T9600, Intel X4500)	5,689 PCMarks
Lenovo T61 Standard Screen (2.0GHz Intel T7300, NVIDIA NVS 140M 256MB)	4,839 PCMarks
Dell Vostro 1500 (1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5470, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS)	3,585 PCMarks
Dell Inspiron 1420 (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS)	4,925 PCMarks
Sony VAIO FZ (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	3,377 PCMarks
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS)	4,591 PCMarks
Lenovo ThinkPad X61 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	4,153 PCMarks
Lenovo 3000 V200 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	3,987 PCMarks
Lenovo T60 Widescreen (2.0GHz Intel T7200, ATI X1400 128MB)	4,189 PCMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	4,234 PCMarks
Sony VAIO SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	3,637 PCMarks

3DMark06 comparison results:

Notebook	3DMark06 Score
Lenovo W700 (2.53GHz Intel Q9300, NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M 1GB)	11,214 3DMarks
Lenovo T500 (2.80GHz Intel T9600, ATI Radeon 3650 256MB GDDR3)	4,371 3DMarks
Lenovo T500 (2.80GHz Intel T9600, Intel X4500)	809 3DMarks
Lenovo T61 Standard Screen (2.0GHz Intel T7300, NVIDIA NVS 140M 256MB)	1,441 3DMarks
Dell Vostro 1500 (1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5470, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS)	1,269 3DMarks
Dell Inspiron 1420 (2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	1,329 3DMarks
Sony VAIO FZ (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100)	532 3DMarks
Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB)	1,408 3DMarks
Samsung Q70 (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 and nVidia 8400M G GPU)	1,069 3DMarks
Asus F3sv-A1 (Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz, Nvidia 8600M GS 256MB)	2,344 3DMarks
Alienware Area 51 m5550 (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7600 256MB	2,183 3DMarks
Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 (1.66 Core Duo, nVidia 7600Go 256 MB)	2,144 3DMarks
Samsung X60plus (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7200, ATI X1700 256MB)	1,831 3DMarks
Asus A6J (1.83GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB)	1,819 3DMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400)	827 3DMarks
Sony VAIO SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400)	794 3DMarks

HDTune storage drive performance test:

Battery Life

The W700 sports a nine-cell lithium-ion battery. With a screen this size, we weren't expecting much in terms of battery longetivity - though the question of how often you'll be taking this notebook away from a desk, and thus away from a power outlet, is a fair one.

In spite of low expectations and a high-power screen, the ThinkPad actually performs surprisingly well "off the plug." Some light web browsing, word processing, and photo editing with the screen at a still relatively bright half power yielded 2 hours, 23 minutes of use time before the first battery warning advised me that it was time to reconnect to the grid. For a business notebook, we'd admittedly be disappointed by this performance, but for a behemoth like the W700, two-plus hours of unconnected computing isn't bad at all.

More to come ...

As noted throughout, there's a lot more to explore with the W700. We'll be digging in to the details of what this workstation has to offer in coming days: check back next week for a full review of the most unique ThinkPad to come our way in awhile.

 

WOW!!! love it

 

This computer looks almost square as if it was designed to hold a standard, not widescreen, display.

John

 

WOW! that's all I can say.

 

That's one hell of a machine.
I'm waiting for the Dell Precision M6400.

 

Thank God the display is centered! (yep I'm perfectionist and like my laptops to be equally proportional on both ends, and have no beef with those who are happy with their off-centered thinkpads)

 

It is an oddly square looking and feeling machine. The extra plastic in the screen bezel may be needed to help with rigidity, though, as the panel itself for this application seems to be comparatively pretty heavy.

dr

 

What a lappy that is. Nice review but I have one complaint...

Why in your comparisons for WPrime, PCMark, and 3dMark 06' do you compare the W700 to laptops nowhere near its specs. I think more people would like to see a comparison of say a 9800GT to the FX 370 or a C2D X9100 compared to the C2D Extreme Q9300

 

We'll get some more appropriate competition into the W700's comparison tables for the full review.

dr

 

Good to hear. I am looking forward to reading the full review as well

 

WOW!
thats one bbeautiful moster

 

So the screen is just "ok"?

 

Hard to say as yet. The screen is brilliant in many ways: probably the best I've seen on a notebook. But some other issues (viewing angles, especially) are giving us pause at least.

Of course, the real test will be at the extremes of its color gamut, as Lenovo's promise with this display is a level of color accuracy and range much closer akin to a good desktop monitor. On that score, we'll know more after some further analysis and comparisons.

I don't want to make it sound like the W700's screen is at all mediocre. There's simply no comparison to your typical laptop display, in fact. But when you're talking about a machine that prices out above $4K, the standards are and should be higher.

dr

 

Well written, thanks! Is it normal to have a small enter key on a full size keyboard like that? The small touchpad is another thing. And what professional would use the digitizer instead of a separate gadget? Somehow it does not really make sense to have expansive semi-mobile equipment like that when professional stuff is less expansive and not in need of being mobile anyway.

But then I admit these points to be minor and possibly motivated by my envy and small wallet.

 

One working on the road who doesn't want to have to carry along a separate tablet, I'd wager. Having worked as a road-warrrior graphic designer in a former life, I can see the appeal of not having to schlep another piece of equipment in your bag if you're tablet addicted - even if the onboard one is a bit small.

As for the enter key, it's the same size and configuration on the Lenovo as on the desktop keyboards here in our office.

The touchpad does seem unnecessarily small given the amount of space (it has appreciably less area than the pad on my 14.1 inch business notebook). I guess some folks find the smaller area easier to deal with?

dr

 

How big is the AC adapter and how many watts is it? I'm curious because I have a Dell M6400 on the way (a system very similar to this W700) and it comes with a 210 watt AC adapter!

 

It's enormous (3.25" x 6.5" x 1.5") and heavy (it weighs about three pounds, as I remember - I don't have a scale in front of me to confirm that, but it feels right), with an output of 170 watts.

dr

 

As a huge fan of Thinkpads and desperately wanting an extreme high end gaming machine, this W700 is now on my wish list.... of things to buy when I win the lottery. It sure would be a shame to not do some fraggin with this machine.

 

WOW!!!! 11,214 3dmark? Man this thing could eat anything thrown at it! People already have gotten this much with a 9800m GTS with overlocking this thing could probably hit 14,000+!

 

If I had lot's of money to spend....

I don't really need something like this, I just want one. Anyone wanna donate to the I want a ridiculous laptop fund?

 

I wonder how they dare to call this a laptop for photographers when they put a darned TN panel in it!

 

Yeah, and unlike Dell (M6400) -> no 100% Adobe RGB.

 

Lol this thing owns the 9800M GTX. 128 shaders . That is a full G92 core.

 

Still bitter about no IPS?

In all seriousness, point taken. If Lenovo really wanted to rival desktop display performance without question, they would have gone this route. The W700 seems to have one of the better TN panels we've seen on a laptop, but there's a baseline performance gap there that is, in some ways, hard to justify in a system costing this much.

As stated previously, though, I want to push this one to its saturation limits before making any final pronouncements.

dr

 

We need a Dell and HP to compare now...

 

Yeah, WOW . . . . .

Wish I could afford something like that . . . .

Looking forward to the full review

 

Personally, I still prefer the Sony AW. Lenovo's just look clunky and they always remind me of work. Dell's have the same effect on me too, though, so I'd never get one of those either at least for my personal use.

 

will you review HP ELITEBOOK W8730?

 

The lower part of the wacom pad will be hard to use , never the less its an innovative notebook and I welcome such designs .

I'm still turned off by the 80's style .

 

That's why I decided to order a dock station 45J7952 - not to carry this brick back and forth.

And the newest PhotoShop will harness all of them!

 

Can we have a full comparison of the Dell Precision M6400, HP 8730w Dreamcolor and this Thinkpad's screen?

 

I assume wPrime runs threads simultaneously on all four cores (versus "both" cores as mentioned in the review), correct?

Regarding battery tests, in your detailed review can you give us battery life using both discrete and integrated graphics?

One review of the W700 mentioned stuttering during DVD playback. Do you see any such effect?

Finally, something I'm concerned about with such a huge display/enclosure are hinges (particularly given that this is Lenovo's first 17" ThinkPad). They look so tiny compared to the rest of the W700. Do you notice any give or movement of the laptop structure at the hinges themselves? Do you notice any "play" in the hinges? What I mean by that is, with the display upright, can you rock the display forward and backward some small distance without any resistance stopping that motion? If so, then how large is that distance? There have been some reports of this, for example, with MacBook Airs/Pros, and it seems to become worse over time.

Thanks!

 

Yeah, I would also like to see that especially the HP EliteBook 8730w review.

 

+999999999999999

 

Correct, multithreaded on all four cores for the WPrime time. Sorry about the error.

We'll give detailed battery test info in the full review.

Haven't played a DVD yet, so can't comment on that. Again, we'll check it out.

There's no play in the hinges in spite of their size. The panel is surprisingly solid feeling given its size.

dr

 

Holy Crap!!!!! I want! but WAY WAY WAY to much money for me.

 

David,

What is the heat and fan noise like with the quad core and and 1GB FX 3700M ?

Perhaps full review will comment.

Thanks,
Laurence

 

I cancelled my M6400 order when I saw the ship date was 2nd half of Nov.

 

Anyone know the AC adapter weight for the M6400 and M4400 ?

 

But what is one reviewing. None of them have full availability (DELL, HP, Lenovo). One cannot order the HP and Lenovo with 8GB RAM. And the high end LCD screens don't even show up as an option. Even the options that are 'available' are not actually available due to mid-Nov ship dates. Might as well not order until Nov and by then the prices should have dropped a little.

 

really a rubbish big junk!!!

 

We haven't "done the numbers" yet, so I can only give subjective evaluations at this point. As you suspected, more to come in the full review...

The W700 is a little loud, and in my experience with the machine the fan has been running near-constantly.

Heat actually hasn't been that bad: the top deck/palm rest area seems to stay cool under load, and the bottom actually doesn't seem to run that hot, either. I used the W700 on my lap on Friday for about half an hour (about as long as anyone can stand having a machine this size on his lap, to be honest), and it really didn't get as hot as I expected - it was warm to the touch, but not hot.

Of course, I wasn't pushing the machine terribly hard either. We'll run it hard and use the thermometer on it next week.

dr

 

It has been on the Lenovo's blog that the screen is only 6-bit instead of 8-bit, which means the 75% gamut is useless. Whereas the full RGP color of Dell and Dreamcolor of HP are 8-bit.
I'm waiting for the full review, and I really hope that I'm wrong. Otherwise, Lenovo would be out of the list for me.

 

I believe that if it's a TN panel (which it is in the W700), then it's technologically restricted to 6-bit, unfortunately. Still, I wouldn't go so far as to say that the 72% color gamut claim is useless: if the dithering is good, the results may be very usable.

dr

 

So as I've heard the screens on HP 8730w and Dell Precision M6400 are LEDs.
I'm waiting for a confirmation, as for now, the Thinkpad's screen could be a deal breaker to many people.

 

I have a friend who was seriously considering the W700, but the screen has forced him to look elsewhere or wait for a little while.