Oh goodie goodie! I received my Lenovo ThinkPad W550s in the mail for review. I’ve been a consistent Dell M6500 and M4800 laptop user for the last six years — a result of my company’s efforts to make me lose weight by toting these monsters around every day. Don’t get me wrong, I beat the heck out of my Dells and they have been very functional machines. In fact, I never had a real problem with any of them. But, if I had a choice, I would be looking for a much lighter, more feature-rich laptop for my engineering tasks. As it turns out, I recently left that job and needed a new workstation-grade laptop for contract work, 3D printing and commuting between offices. I am adamantly against workstations in their traditional tower configuration — unless I need the absolute top-of-the-line performance and mobility is not a concern. But we live in a mobile world, and I just don’t see a future for towers. So, that’s me, that’s where I am coming from and that’s why I’m excited to let readers know how this new W550s stacks up against engineering needs and engineering tasks.
The W550s is pretty well stacked with an Intel i7-5600 2.6 GHz CPU, which is very snappy. It could be customized for a snappier version, but this does a good enough job, and I did not notice any considerable lag in some of my larger assemblies. My tester came with middle-of-the-road options: 16 GB RAM, 512 GB hard drive, no touch screen, and a fingerprint reader. I still could not find fault with most of the performance. Let’s go over the main features of this machine and where we can go even further with it.
The Look
I had seen the W550s around and heard good things, but I never had the opportunity to work on one for an extended period of time. The quality of the machine seems high. The appearance is polished, sleek and minimalistic. Some may classify it as traditional. It does seem to have avoided curves at all cost in its casing. That’s not a bad thing, but one should not expect an iPhone look or superior ergonomics and aesthetics. This is a workhorse, and it has the look of a get-down-to-business machine. Many might say that is how it should look. The track point (red mouse button in the middle of the keyboard) provides a significant ergonomic/speed capability that was very helpful and very efficient once I got used to it.
Traces of red offer the only contrast to the overall matte black appearance of the W550s. The track point and a flashing red light on the back side of the screen are really the only detractors from a very monochromatic look. The only other colors are the aluminum-like ThinkPad logos near the keyboard and on the lid. I’m a big fan of black, and I don’t need flashy looks. The only time I found all black to be a problem was when I tried to find the ports on the side and they didn’t stand out.
I won’t get into the details of the display and resolution too much. The W550s comes with an NVIDIA K620M GPU. Most engineers will not need super high resolution and advanced color control, but I need something that is certified by my CAD vendor, and this fits the bill. As long as I can tell the difference between my parts, my FEA doesn’t look like an ’80s video game and I can watch an occasional video without it pixelating, then it is a winner in my book. I didn’t get any sense that this wasn’t more than capable for my needs. Similarly, audio. The speaker needs to allow me to hear a video and error beeps. Other than that, if I want good sound, I’ll use some expensive headphones. With that said, the W550s puts checks in those boxes.
The Feel
The feel of the device is comfortable. The lid has a bit of a rubbery texture to it, but it is still a very hard plastic type of material. I am generally skeptical of rubberized components, as they always seem to wear faster than a hard plastic. Lenovo has developed a good combination of grip and hardness that I appreciate.
The keyboard was better than what I am used to. It was softer, with a nearly silent touch, but still very responsive to my needs. I did find fewer key inputs than usual. The backlit keyboard is vibrant without being overpowering. One thing that was hard to navigate was the function button on the bottom left of the keyboard. I am used to conventional keyboard layouts that have the CTRL key located on the bottom left. This caused quite a few mistakes when attempting to copy and paste. I suppose that this would be a learned new practice, but I found myself missing a more traditional layout. It also has a nice amber mute indicator that reminds me of why I can’t hear anything.
One thing that I was hoping for that I did not get as part of my test model was a touch screen. I have had these in the past and found them to be a very intuitive option for interacting with PCs. Lenovo does offer it as an option, and I would highly suggest it to potential buyers.
Size and Weight
At 15 x 10.2 x 0.92 inches and weighing 5.47 pounds, it’s very thin compared to what I am used to, and very light compared to Dell’s Precision lineup. It’s not quite as small and light as the HP ZBook 15u G2 at 14.8 x 10 x 0.84 inches and 4.23 pounds, but that’s a minor difference. I was most appreciative of the massive improvement over the Dell Precision M6500 at 15.5 x 11.2 x 1.6 inches. The most comparable Dell model in size and weight would be an M3800 at 14.65 x 10 x .71 inches and 4.15 pounds.
The Beating
While I didn’t have enough time to really slam this around (and who would want to?), I will convey one small misfortune. About an hour after I received the laptop, I broke the power supply. I don’t blame this on Lenovo. It fell from my coffee table and landed in a way that kinked the connector that plugs into the laptop. I contacted Lenovo and had a new one the next day. Everything was right as rain after that.
Aside from my incident, I had no problems at all with Lenovo’s military-standard 810G durability. This means that it can withstand -4 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, 98 percent humidity, UV radiation and other things that I probably would never test — although it’s good to know that it’s capable if needed. It also has a carbon fiber reinforced body that helps keep weight low and strength high. I didn’t toss mine down the stairs, but I didn’t even get a mark on it from my coffee table drop, and it feels solid enough to take much worse than that.
Awesome Stamina
The W550s battery life is awesome. The aforementioned Dell mobile workstations gave me two hours of battery life if I was lucky. My experience with the W550s was near futuristic. I loved it. It comes with a three-cell front battery, which won’t last very long (really intended for battery swaps), and the rear battery will let you surf the web for nearly 16 continuous hours — thanks to Lenovo's Power Bridge technology. Amazing!
Connections
Pretty standard stuff here. Docking stations available: SD card, Ethernet, headset, VGA, power and three USB 3.0s. Perhaps the one nonstandard port is the DisplayPort, which is proprietary to ThinkPads. So, if you want to connect to a big display for a presentation, you will need to use a converter to adapt to a more common HDMI or DVI interface. The W550s includes a VGA output, but VGA displays are becoming less commonplace. Webcam is standard with 1280 x 720 resolution. Again, all pretty standard stuff. It’s nice that a USB 2.0 isn’t mixed in with a 3.0 so that you don’t have to worry about which is which.
How Much?
I used Lenovo’s handy online customizer to provide an idea of the range of costs for some variations. These are all “Web prices” with discounts I found on one day. Prices may vary.
Top of the line: $2,307.60
Touch Screen, 32 GB of RAM, 512 GB SSD, 17 hour battery, fingerprint reader, Intel Core i7-5600U Processor (4 MB cache, up to 3.20 GHz)
Middle of the road: $1,938.60
Touch screen, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, 17 hour battery, fingerprint reader, Intel Core i7-5600U Processor (4 MB cache, up to 3.20 GHz)
Lowest cost: $1,196.10
Base screen, 4 GB RAM, 500 GB 7200 RPM, 15 hour battery with no front battery, Intel Core i7-5500U Processor (4 MB cache, up to 3.00 GHz)
Conclusion
I am seriously considering this as my replacement workstation. It is extremely capable and portable, well-constructed and has plenty of scalability for RAM upgrades on most of the configurations except its highest. I can’t see engineers wanting much else. Some might get hung up on the lower-level video card compared to some high-end versions, but it would take substantial justification for that to matter. My suggestion is to keep this in the mix of your options. It can get the job done really well for a very reasonable price.