Digital Trends

Lenovo 3000 V200

August 7th, 2007 | by Josh Norem

Features and Design

Lenovo is known for its ThinkPad line of notebooks, which are fantastic, but let’s be honest, a bit plain. To remedy this, Lenovo has crafted a new lineup of notebooks that do not share the ThinkPad brand, but include everything we love about them with added color, elegance, and style. Dubbed the 3000 series, they are silver, bare no ThinkPad logos whatsoever, and offer every next-gen component available.

Under the hood

The V200 is powered by an Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, which is a Core 2 Duo CPU running at 2.2GHz. This model is using the new Intel “Santa Rosa” chipset, which is the fastest mobile chipset available and ups the front side bus speed from previous Intel chipsets from 667MHz to 800MHz.

This model was outfitted with 2GB of PC2-5300 DDR2 RAM, which is the maximum capacity. It’d be nice to have a 4GB max capacity, but in the real world 2GB should be more than enough for quite some time, especially on a machine that is not destined for LAN parties. It should be noted that unlike XP, Vista’s Super Fetch feature will gobble up 1GB of RAM in order to launch applications faster, but that still leaves you with a 1GB for applications, which is more than sufficient. 

Ports and connectors

The right-side of the V200 sports an integrated SD card reader, 8X DVD+R/RW/CD-R/RW optical drive, dial-up and Ethernet ports, a USB port, and the power connector. 

The right side of the V200

The left side of the notebook features headphone and microphone jacks, a mini-1394 connector, VGA-out, another USB port, and the CPU cooling exhaust. We like the fact that there are USB ports on both the right and left side of the notebook, instead of in the back where they are harder to access.

The left side of the V200

You can order the V200 with either a six-cell or three-cell battery, and since the battery takes up most of the space on the rear of the unit there are no ports. This is fine for an “ultra portable,” since you most likely won’t be attaching it to LAN cables and such as your desk. It’s also nice to have all the ports on the sides since it makes connecting devices much easier. Our test unit came with the upgraded six-cell battery, which can be seen poking out the back of the unit, whereas the three-cell battery is flush with the rear of the notebook.

The left side and back of the V200 (notice the large six-cell battery sticking out)

The Big Screen

A lot of notebook users consider screen size, and quality, to be the most important spec to consider when purchasing a notebook, and we heartily agree. For any laptop to even be considered “portable,” it has to be either 12” or 13,” and then desktop replacements are 15” or larger. In our opinion, we love a high-res 12” display, as it strikes the perfect balance in terms of portability, and visibility. That said, we really like the V200’s 1200x800 widescreen 12.1” display, and think it’s one of the finest notebook displays we’ve ever sampled, in every way. First, since it’s widescreen and has a 16:10 aspect ratio, so it’s not as tall as a 4:3 screen but you get more real estate. Second, it has a glossy sheen, which makes everything look better. We think it’s the perfect blend of size, resolution, and picture quality. To put is simply, the display on the V200 is one of the best, if not the best, we’ve ever seen. 

Onboard video

Since this system ships with the fancy new Santa Rosa chipset, aka Intel 965M, it features Intel’s newest onboard graphics, dubbed the GMA X3100. The big deal about this is that Vista requires a semi-beefy videocard to handle its Aero Glass animations and translucent windows, and the X1300 handles it with aplomb. It does not have a dedicated amount of memory, however, and shares system memory depending on what you are running. We found that when we were just running the Aero interface, it would gobble up 150MB or so, with a maximum limit of 358MB. 

Battery life

Prior to purchase, you can select one of two configurations of the V200. One includes a three-cell battery, the other includes a six-cell battery. Sadly, there is no information on Lenovo’s site regarding the actual battery life of either unit, so it’s a guessing game. However, Lenovo sent us some marketing materials with the unit and it says “estimated 4.4 hours.”

We tested battery life by running it at the default half-brightness level, playing music and surfing the web. We performed two runs, netting a time of 4.5 hours on the first run, and 3.5 hours on the second run, for an average of about 4 hours, which is superb. In fact, it even outpaces the battery life of the much more portable X61s we evaluated recently, which has an 8-cell battery!

Given this notebook’s size, weight and battery size, we think the average 4-hour battery life is great, but remember this is with the six-cell battery. Also, the V200 does not sport any battery-saving software like the ThinkPad line of notebooks.