Digital Trends

Lenovo 3000 V200 August 7th, 2007 | by Josh Norem

Use and Testing

Once we had removed the V200 from the box, we were immediately impressed at how small it is. According to the spec chart it weighs about 4.4 pounds, which disqualifies it from “thin and light” status (that’s reserved for notebooks that weigh less than 4lbs.), but it’s still very portable, especially compared to any notebook with a 14” display. Even though the difference is just a few pounds between the V200 and a “standard” notebook, you feel if you tote the V200 around like we did to work every day. However, it may be too big for some peoples’ tastes. We let a female co-worker pick it up and she said, “I’d never be able to carry this around all the time.” To us, however, it seems very light and portable given its size.

We booted it up and marveled at the gorgeous display. Lenovo calls the LCD coating VibrantView, and it’s the real deal. We’ve seen our share of glossy displays over the past year or two and this is one of the richest displays we’ve seen.

Once we were up and running in Vista, everything ran like butter. With its 2.2GHz dual-core processor, 2GB of RAM and 800MHz FSB, the V200 runs as fast or even faster than a notebook should. Programs open in a second or two, and there seems to be no hesitation at any time within Windows. In fact, the only weak spot in this notebook, according to Vista’s performance index, is the onboard Intel graphics.

Vista index score screenshot

The system took just 1:08 seconds to boot, which is darn fast. The keyboard is also fantastic, which is not surprising given Lenovo’s reputation for having “perfect keyboards.” Take it from us, this is not an undeserved title. The keyboard is tight and precise, with very little action required to press a key and a firm, positive response to each keystroke. We’ve sampled many, many notebook keyboards, and can say definitively this is the best notebook keyboard we’ve ever used.

The included multi-burner burns both DVDs and CDs, which is useful. There is no pre-installed burning software, however, so you have to use the built-in engine in Vista, which gets the job done.

The integrated 1.3MP webcam that is built into the top of the LCD chassis is functional and easy to use. You can set it to capture for a certain amount of time, or just up to a certain file size. Like any captured video, the files get large quickly. A 0:35 second clip was 113MB in size. And there’s a built-in microphone so you can record audio as well as video.

The onboard Conexant audio is decent, and at full blast is actually quite loud for a notebook. Our only complaint is that there are buttons on the keyboard to adjust volume, but the sliders move painfully slow. You can also press Fn and F1 or F2, but we’d prefer a little dial.

The CPU fan isn’t very loud, and only spins up to the point where you can hear it intermittently, which is appreciated. Overall we’d say it was audible maybe 10 percent of the time we were using the notebook, which is very good. Nobody likes a noisy notebook.