Digital Trends

Lenovo ThinkPad T61p

September 11th, 2007 | by Josh Norem

Widescreen Wonder

In keeping with the “top-of-the-line” theme of the T61p, its widescreen display is a marvel to behold. It is only 15.4” diagonally, but it sports the absolute highest resolution possible for a display of this size, which is an incredible 1920x1200. It should be noted that this is the same resolution common on most 24” displays, but on a 15.4” display. The downside to this insane resolution is that icons and text are very small, though incredibly fine. The display is not glossy, and has a matte finish to reduce glare. 

Video Power

No desktop replacement desktop would be worthy of such a title if it had onboard graphics, and true to form the T61p has discrete graphics care of NVIDIA’S QuadroFX 570M with 256MB of memory. It’s not the best mobile graphics around, but then again this is not billed as a gaming notebook. 

Battery Life

We have always advocated getting a big battery when buying a notebook, even if it’s your desktop replacement. You might not unplug it often, but when you do these supercharged notebooks are like gas guzzlers when it comes to battery life, so it pays to go big. Lenovo included a nine-cell battery in this unit, instead of the standard six-cell model, and though it sticks out the back a little bit it was not a problem. For the impatient types, we performed a battery test by playing music on the notebook while connected to the Internet (running the wireless radio helps drain battery life) and were surprised to find that it lasted three hours and 20 minutes. Though this number is most likely well under whatever Lenovo claims for this model, that’s damn good for a desktop replacement notebook. Anything over two hours is generally good for a notebook with this much horsepower. 

OS Situation

Since this is a notebook targeted at business users, it should come as no surprise that it ships with Windows Vista Business. Having sampled every flavor of business, we honestly can’t say what makes the Business version different than Home Premium, as it includes the Aero Glass interface. 

Touchpad and Nub

Whether you like a touchpad or the fabled ThinkPad TrackPoint, the T61p has them both so nobody can complain. The touchpad requires a very light touch to activate and felt very natural and accurate to our fingertip. It also allows you to scroll pages by clicking on the page and then rubbing your finger on the right-side edge of the touchpad. If you don’t like one or the other, you can disable either, or both.

Both a touchpad and TrackPoint are available

Biometric Security 

Like all ThinkPads, the T61p includes an optional biometric security feature that uses a fingerprint scanner for logging into Windows and protecting passwords. We’ve enjoyed this feature in previous Thinkpad reviews, and have found it works exactly as one would expect. We think the Password Manager, however, is buggy. For example, it’ll ask you if you want to use the manager for a password on some sites every time you go to them, regardless of whether you click yes or no.

Swipe your finger to log into Windows