|
Mobile workstations with dedicated graphics, big screens and the power to tackle professional CAD work often aren't light and battery life isn't a strong point. Enter laptops like the Lenovo ThinkPad W550s that use ULV Ultrabook CPUs combined with NVIDIA Quadro graphics to lighten your bag and significantly improve battery life. Does a 15 watt dual core i7 still offer enough computing power for SolidWorks and video production? The answer is a qualified "yes".
The ThinkPad W550s is the lightweight and longer running counterpart to the ThinkPad W541 mobile workstation. It's not significantly less expensive, and Lenovo hasn't turned the W550s into a budget alternative. It has the same excellent build quality, magnesium alloy roll cage, spill-proof keyboard, high-resolution display options and excellent ThinkPad Precision keyboard as the W541. In Lenovo lingo, the "s" at the end of a laptop model number means it's the slim counterpart to their standard notebooks. If you like the ThinkPad T450 but need dedicated graphics and a larger display, the 15" W550s could be the perfect machine.
What's Inside?
The ThinkPad W550s is available with dual core ULV Intel Broadwell Core i7 CPUs (your choice of i7-5500U or i7-5600U). Lenovo offers three display options: 15.6" 1080p TN non-touch, 15.5" 3K non-touch and 15.5" 3K touch (all have a matte coating to reduce glare). The non-touch machine weighs 4.92 lbs. and the touch model weighs 5.47 pounds. The touch model's display is slightly thicker at 0.92" thick vs. 0.88" for the non-touch model. Intel 7265 dual band WiFi 802.11ac with Bluetooth 4.0 is standard and there's a 3G/4G LTE WWAN option for $149. The machine has two RAM slots for a max of 16 gigs of RAM (more on that later), your choice of an HDD or SSD and it has a backlit keyboard. There is no built-in optical drive, so you'll need an external USB DVD drive if you need to install software from discs.
Ports abound thanks to the large chassis, and the ThinkPad has 3 USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, VGA, a full size SD card slot (the card doesn't stick out), mini DisplayPort 1.2, 3.5mm combo audio and an optional Smart Card slot. If you need HDMI, get a mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapter for $20 from your local electronics store.
Build and Design
The W550s looks like a classic ThinkPad: an unassuming matte black rectangle that's not wildly thin. The good news is that it's sturdy as ever thanks to Lenovo's rugged design and materials including the metal internal roll cage and a spill resistant keyboard. There's little to no deformation if you press hard on various areas of the casing, and the display panel doesn't flex. The machine's matte black surfaces do attract fingerprint oils, but they're easily cleaned with a damp cloth (add a tiny bit of Soft Soap if it's really greasy). The laptop has an abundance of air intake ventilation grilles on the bottom and a side-exhausting fan. The ThinkPad weighs 4.92 lbs. unless you get the touch screen, which adds a half-pound to the weight.
The backlit ThinkPad Precision keyboard is a dream with roomy keys and plenty of travel (noticeably more than in the ThinkPad X1 Carbon). Even better, there's a number pad, which isn't common on 15" laptops. Thanks to that number pad, the Synaptics trackpad is offset toward the left to keep it centered under the spacebar. The trackpad isn't particularly large, but as with most ThinkPad trackpads, it's accurate and responsive. Those of you who lamented Lenovo's switch to buttonless trackpads will be happy to hear that Lenovo resurrected the top buttons for TrackPoint use (the little red pointer stick embedded in the keyboard).
Horsepower and Performance
This is the most interesting and potentially confusing section since Lenovo went with Intel Broadwell 5th generation ULV 15 watt dual core CPU options rather than the usual quad core 28 watt mobile CPUs found in most 15" and larger mobile workstations. Clearly, with half the cores, the W550s lacks the computational power of the ThinkPad W541, Dell Precision M3800 and HP ZBook 15. It's closer to the ZBook 15u that also uses dual core Ultrabook CPUs. How much of a difference will you see in terms of performance? That in part depends on how well your programs use multiple cores; and many modern CAD, 3D modeling and video production programs do use all four cores on more powerful mobile workstations. But if you're working on a CAD design that has a few hundred parts, the dual core i7 with help from the NVIDIA Quadro K620M will do the job nicely. If you're working on a model with thousands of parts, you'll probably want a quad core. 2D designs for architecture are less demanding than 3D models, and the W550s should handle it well. Video editing and export for 1080p high bitrate video is pleasantly responsive and export times are good. 4K video? I'd rather have a quad core for professional work. Those of you who are buying this for software development will get good compile times and VMs run well with one or two running concurrently. If you need more VM instances, you might want to consider a quad core since you have to assign cores to each VM, not just RAM.
Speaking of RAM, the W550s has two RAM slots for up to 16 gigs (officially). Intelligent Memory makes 16 gig DIMMs (RAM modules) that are compatible with most Intel Broadwell Core CPUs and we tested their RAM in the ThinkPad for a total of 32 gigs. It worked perfectly. These DIMMs aren't cheap at around $325 apiece, but if you feel you need that much RAM, it's a godsend.
Lenovo offers the laptop with your choice of a 2.5" SSD or HDD, and the drive connects via a standard SATA connector. Ours came with a Samsung PM851 512 gig drive and performance numbers were good by SATA standards. The notebook has an M.2 slot for the optional WWAN card or perhaps a caching drive on HDD models. Can you put an M.2 SSD in that slot? Probably, but Lenovo doesn't specify that it will behave well as the boot drive.
Benchmarks
PCMark 8 (Home accelerated): 2842
3DMark 11: P2462
wPrime: 16.03 sec.
Geekbench 3 (single/multi-core): 3251/ 5953
Cinebench R15: Open GL test- 47.6 fps, CPU test- 281
SpecViewPerf: 1920 x 1080 SolidWorks test: 42.1 fps
|
