15.6-Inch Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E545
via Amazon
Lenovo is a great brand for laptops and the ThinkPad Edge E545 20B20011US is a serious 15.6 inch notebook, designed with business friendly features, with the most up-to-date connectivity options, around 4 lbs weight, a spill-resistant keyboard, an anti-glare HD display, battery life up to 6 hours on a single charge, an impressive AMD graphics card that is anything but average.. It really is a great value for $ computer.
Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E545 has an AMD A series dual-core accelerated processor A6-5350M (1MB L2 cache) at 2.9 GHz that goes up to 3.50 GHz with the Turbo Core technology is quite good in terms of performance and speed for business and home use, 4 GB DDR3L SDRAM at 1600 MHz that can go up to 16GB (most laptops in the market can be upgraded to 8 GB), 320 GB at 5400 rpm HDD is sufficient for most computer users but would be better if it was at least a 500 GB one.
One of the best features of this Lenovo is that it comes with the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Pro pre-installed and a license to update to Windows 8 is included in the package. Now, this is something you will rarely come across, even when many consumers prefer their Windows 7 and need time to get used to the Windows 8. And from the Windows 8, you can install the 8.1 for free on the Windows website- it has some additional useful features.
15.6 inch diagonal anti-glare LED Backlit HD display with 1366x768 max screen resolution and AMD Radeon HD 8450G Graphics card offers very decent picture quality. The anti-glare function makes it easy for you work outdoors and the AMD Radeon is quite a reasonable graphics card, maybe not fit for the latest demanding games- but think again how much you're paying for this cool laptop. Sound quality is all right for this laptop's class and and all you need to do is to connect small speakers for additional volume and bass raise or a stereo system.
It looks modern and stylish, is quite light and portable with less than 4 pound weight and 1 inch thickness and offers more than 6 hours of battery life in a single charge with its 6-Cell 48 Wh lithium ion battery. In terms of keyboard, you have something special here- something you'd expect from Lenovo: A spill-resistant keyboard with a 10 key numeric keypad, a responsive and user-friendly multi-touch touchpad underneath and big keys that allow you to type accurately- with little errors. You'll find two LED power status indicators: On the 'i' of the 'ThinkPad' on the palmrest and the lid- which I think is kind of clever.
Connectivity options include 802.11b/g/n wireless, Gigabit Ethernet, 3 x USB 3.0 ports that are also 2.0 compatible for quick data transfers, an always-on USB 2.0 port to suitably charge your cell phone and other gadgets, a VGA port to connect to monitors, an HDMI port to connect to flat screen TV's, an integrated 720p webcam, an optical drive-DVD±RW, 4-in-1 SD card reader, a Smart Card reader, a 3.5mm combo headphone/microphone jack and Bluetooth 4.0 to be able to hook up wirelessly and automatically to other Bluetooth devices.
Conclusion: The ThinkPad Edge E545 is an overall great value for money computer- this is a Lenovo after all, one of the most innovative laptop manufacturers. When you purchase it and first turn it on, start with uninstalling some of the bloatware you won't use to save yourself some more space on the 320 GB hard drive, and maybe get an extra small speaker for better sound. So the bloatware, hard drive size (perhaps look into getting a solid state drive and use the hard drive as external) and the sound are the only weak points of this great laptop and all are easily fixed.
Other than these weak-ish points, you have a powerful processor and a graphics card, a decent anti-glare screen with wide viewing angles, an ergonomic spill-resistant keyboard and touchpad, a variety of useful connectivity ports, long battery life, Windows 7 / Windows 8 option included inside the package and other features that will impress you..
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