ThinkPad R52

PC World

  • Review
  • Specs
  • Images
  • User Reviews
  • Buy Online
  • Broadband Plans

If you've been waiting for a ThinkPad R51 with improvements, you'll like the R52, a very similar black business laptop with a slightly faster processor. Lenovo (which bought IBM's PC business) has updated the processor, but not much else with the ThinkPad R52. It does have a couple of new connections, including a ExpressCard slot, which takes the place of a second PC Card slot.

Pros

  • ThinkLight LED to illuminate keyboard in dark environments, solid battery life

Cons

  • Speakers not all they could be

Bottom Line

The ThinkPad R52 is a decent but bland Pentium M notebook.

Would you buy this?

  • Price

    $ 2,049.00 (AUD)

Special Offers

The R52 has dual pointing devices: a well-behaved touchpad and a comfortably squishy stick embedded in the keyboard, each equipped with its own deep-depressing mouse buttons. The keyboard is firm and quiet, topped by a launch button for Lenovo's excellent animated manual and a handy set of volume-control buttons; unfortunately, audio from the front-mounted speakers is not especially robust.

A squarish unit with a gently bevelled front, the R52 offers most of its connections on the left side, with a parallel port for legacy peripherals as the sole rear connection. A FireWire port is included for fast video downloads. The modular right bay can accommodate any one of three devices: an optical drive such as the combination DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive in our test unit, a second battery, or a second hard drive. A pop-out tab release built into each device lets you swap it in and out using one hand. The unit's hard drive and memory are user-upgradable, although only one DIMM slot is accessible.

No wide-screen wonder, our review R52 came with a sensible 14.1" screen capable of a native 1024 x 768 pixel resolution (models with 15" screens at 1024 x 768 or 1400 x 1050 are also available). The screen has one thing most others don't, though: the tiny ThinkLight LED embedded in the top edge to illuminate the keyboard in dark environments. The ThinkLight may not be the most exciting invention, but I find it quite useful.

On our benchmark tests, the 1.73-GHz Pentium M 740-equipped R52 performed like the typical 1.7GHz Pentium M laptop. The R52 earned a WorldBench 5 score of 77, which was near the average for notebooks using the same processor. Battery life in our tests was a solid 3.5 hours.

Keep up with the latest tech news, reviews and previews by subscribing to the PC World newsletter.

Be the first to comment.

Post new comment

Users posting comments agree to the PC World comments policy.

Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.

Most Popular

What's the difference between an Intel Core i3, i5 and i7?
Samsung’s 2013 Smart TVs: everything you need to know
How do I connect my TV to the Internet?
Laser vs. inkjet printers: which is better?
Windows 7 Home Premium vs. Windows 7 Professional

Compare broadband and save

Powered by

Need Help? Call 1300 123 935

Best Deals on PCWorld

NotebooksView all »
TabletsView all »
Desktop PCsView all »
Servers & StorageView all »
Software and ServicesView all »

Resources

Trend Micro Zone
Trend Micro SafeSync is an easy to use and good value cloud based backup service.
Broadband test
Is your internet really as fast as you think it is? Find out here.
Notebooks Product Finder
Find the product you're looking for with our Notebooks search tool.