ThinkPad Z60m collapsed and open view (view larger image)Competing Notebooks to the ThinkPad Z60m.DELL M15x battery
It's always good to know what else is out there when looking at a particular style of laptop, if we consider 15.4" screen laptops then the ThinkPad Z60m comes up against some of the following competition: A42-G73 ,
That's certainly not an exhaustive list, but covers some of the popular 15.4" screen notebooks from major brands. The 15.4" screen notebook size is considered mainstream, it's what most first time notebook buyers go with. As widescreen becomes more and more popular, it's likely that 15.4" widescreen laptops will hold the greatest share of the notebook market. By 2007 it is predicted there will be more widescreen laptops sold than standard screen. Asus 07G016DH1875 ,
Comparison to Lenovo ThinkPad Z60t 70-NY81B1000ZAsus ,
Futuremark PCMark04 Scores
ThinkPad T43 (1.86GHz, ATI X300 64MB graphics) ThinkPad Z60m (2.0 GHz, ATI X600 128MB graphics) 90-NY81B1000Y ,
Multithreaded Test 1 / File Compression 3.33 MB/s 3.38 MB/s N75SL
3DMark Score 727 3DMarks 1682 3D Marks
CPU Score 3414 CPUMarks 3426 CPUMarks Gaming Tests
GT1 - Return To Proxycon 3.3 FPS 7.6 FPS GT2 - Firefly Forest 2.2 FPS 4.9 FPS G73 battery ,
GT3 - Canyon Flight 3.4 FPS 8.2 FPS
CPU Tests CPU Test 1 1.18 FPS 1.7 FPS G73J ASUS battery
Angled view of ThinkPad Z60m notebook (view larger image)
The casing of the Z60m notebook is made of a rigid and thick plastic typical of other ThinkPad notebooks. It provides a very sturdy scratch resistant build. There's no flex of the body, it exudes physical toughness and quality.TOSHIBA Satellite P750 laptop battery ,
The Z60m is all black unless you buy a configuration that has a titanium lid and then you'll have a metallic (silver) color lid with the rest of the body being black. I like the ThinkPad professional and iconic all black look, at worst you might complain it's too conservative. With the Z60m being thicker and larger than other ThinkPads, the black does give it a more imposing look. I'd guess that the look is going to appeal more to males than females, it's a rather masculine looking machine.TOSHIBA Satellite P740D laptop battery ,
As a note, several people have asked whether the titanium lid is a cover in the sense it could be taken off or purchased later and snapped on, it is not and you have to purchase the notebook with or without the titanium cover when you order.TOSHIBA Satellite P750D laptop battery ,
Screen
The screen on the Z60m being reviewed is WSXGA resolution (Widescreen - SXGA - 1680 x 1050) (click here for a notebook screen guide article). XGA is the standard resolution for notebooks,Sony VAIO VGN-BX Series laptop battery ,
but I really appreciate the higher SXGA resolution because it allows you to fit a lot more on the screen (important note -- higher resolution means smaller text). In the case of the Z60m the SXGA makes the notebook a very viable desktop replacement as you can easily fit two windows on the screen at one time. SXGA is beneficial when seeing more stuff on the screen helps you toSAMSUNG NT-RC520 laptop battery ,
be more productive, in my case viewing more code on screen when doing programming tasks is a real blessing. If you're a business user more rows and columns of a spreadsheet or simply more viewable forms is a plus.LENOVO ThinkPad W701 Mobile Workstation laptop battery ,
Less scrolling through web pages to see the entire story is always kind of nice. Be warned though, if you're hard of seeing then the smaller text size you get with SXGA might be uncomfortable for reading and if that's the case then you might be happier with the WXGA resolution. If you're looking to save a few bucks, XGA screens are usually a cheaper option to SXGA as well.Lenovo IdeaPad Y460 laptop battery ,
I was very pleased to find that the Z60m screen is brighter than the Z60t I reviewed earlier. Take a look at the pictures below to see how the screen brightness of the Z60t and Z60m compare when they're both set to full brightness:Lenovo IdeaPad Y460A Series laptop battery ,
Side by side screen comparison of Z60m (left) and Z60t (right), notice how much brighter the Z60m screen appears (view larger image)Compaq Presario V6700 battery ,
Multithreaded Test 1 / File Encryption 27.19 MB/s 28.13 MB/s Multithreaded Test 2 / File Decompression 23.4 MB/s 24.94 MB/s
Multithreaded Test 2 / Image Processing 10.88 MPixels/s 11.45 MPixels/s Multithreaded Test 3 / Virus Scanning 1914.17 MB/s 2025.38 MB/s
Multithreaded Test 3 / Grammar Check 2.82 KB/s 2.78 KB/s Compaq Presario V6500z battery ,
File Decryption 54.11 MB/s 57.15 MB/s Compaq Presario V6600 battery ,
Audio Conversion 2496.87 KB/s 2610.98 KB/s Web Page Rendering 5.27 Pages/s 5.4 Pages/s
DivX Video Compression 51.71 FPS 54.6 FPS
Physics Calculation and 3D 159.19 FPS 182.77 FPS Graphics Memory - 64 Lines 868.44 FPS 1635.2 FPS FUJITSU Lifebook S6210 Series laptop battery ,
Futuremark 3DMark05 Scores
Z60m (forefront) next to Z60t (background) angle view, you can see the Z60m has aFUJITSU Lifebook S6200 Series laptop battery , better viewing angle and brightness (view larger image)
Looking at the above picture you can see that the Z60t appears to use one backlight at the bottom of the screen while the Z60m uses two, one at the top and bottom -- with the bottom backlight being stronger (this is based on observation of the screen, I did not take the laptop apart!). The WSXGA+ screen is made by LG, the XGA screen is built by either LG or Samsung and the MaxBright XGA screen supplied by a IDTech.
The horizontal viewing angle on the Z60m is great, you'll find comfortable viewing from 45-degree angles even. This means gathering people around your notebook to show them something is easy to do, the people off to the side will still see the screen without issue. As is typical with LCD displays, vertical viewing angles are not as good as horizontal. Below are some thumbnails FUJITSU Stylistic ST503 laptop battery ,
of the Z60m at a perpendicular angle, then tilted back several degrees, and then tilted forward several degrees. You'll see that colors distort at very high or very low vertical angles of view, but this is typical of any notebook and the Z60m is actually better than the average notebook in giving you good vertical viewing angle.FUJITSU Lifebook S6220 Series laptop battery ,
(click images to enlarge the view of vertical viewing angle comparison)Acer as10d7e ,
The screen brightness and clarity is excellent, no complaints. Lenovo will be offering a MaxBright 300nit display option on certain WXGA resolution Z60m machines, the display on this review unit is 200nit. Acer as10d5e
I'm sure the MaxBright display would be impressive given the fact the standard 200nit screen is very good. Note, the MaxBright option screen is NOT the same as a glossy screen you see on many noteboks (such as Sony VAIO XBrite display), MaxBright is simply stronger backlighting.Acer as10d51 ,
Watching a movie on the Z60m screen (view larger image)Acer as10d41 ,
Sound
Stereo sound on the Z60m comes from two speakers, one flanked on the left and one on the right of the keyboard. Sound quality is really quite decent at mid-range volume levels, there's not much bass, but the Apple A1012 ,
clarity is good and absolutely better than your average notebook speakers. If you put the volume up to maximum level it does get very loud, but the sound is tinny and grating to the ears so you'll want to Asus A32-M50 ,avoid this. Overall though a thumbs up on speakers as they're, relatively speaking, very good for notebook speakers. You can get good enough volume and clarity for movie watching even from across the room. If you want to attain louder and more crisp sound then the use of headphones or external speakers will help, but they're not totally necessary with the Z60m.Asus 90-NWF1B2000Y ,
Processor and Performance Asus A32-X64
The Z60m being reviewed has the following specs that will directly affect the performance:Asus A32-N61 ,
Intel Pentium M 760 (2.0GHz) 2MB L2 cache, 533MHz FSB
1,205MB of SDRAM @ 533MHz
100GB 5400RPM SATA hard drive ,Dell 312-0394
ATI X600 128MB dedicated VRAM
As you can see, you are able to purchase a Z60m with very nice components. If you don't need all that power and want to save money you can get a Z60m with an Intel Celeron M 1.5GHz processor, Intel integrated graphics and smaller 40GB hard drive (but still 5400 RPM) for under $1,000. You'll still get the same software and build quality as a higher config notebook, that's standard for any spec Z60m Dell 312-0393 ,
Assuming you go with a high end configuration such as our Z60m has, you're going to get excellent performance. In my experience there was never any hanging or lags even with multiple programs open, graphics were Dell XD736 ,drawn quickly, most programs opened instantly, playing games such as Half Life 2 or Pro Evolution Soccer 5 (pictured below) is no problem. The Pentium M 2.0GHz processor has proven itself in many a notebook at this point, even high end gaming notebooks, so for a desktop replacement style notebook you're really set with a processor of this speed Dell XD735 ,
Pro Evolution Soccer 5 being played on the Z60m (view larger image)FUJITSU FPCBP64AP ,
Bootup speed without any tweaks (such as removing startup applications) is decent, from pushing the button to getting to getting into Windows and being able to open a program took 60-seconds. Coming out of stand-by mode takes about 5-seconds (low power mode in which notebook state is recovered from memory). Coming out of hibernate mode (extreme low power mode in which notebook state is recovered from hard drive) takes about 22 seconds.FUJITSU FPCBP64 ,
Benchmarks
Instead of the subjective "it's fast" description of notebook performance, we also provide a few benchmarks so you can see how the Z60m stacks up against other notebooks in terms of speed and performance. Using the program Super Pi to force the processor to calcuate the number Pi to 2 million digits of accuracy, we find the Z60m takes 1m 41s to complete the task, below is a table of how this compares to other notebooks:FUJITSU FPCBP64Z ,
Notebook Time
Lenovo ThinkPad Z60m (2.0 GHz Pentium M) 1m 41s Lenovo l09s6d21 ,
Fujitsu S6231 (1.6 GHz Pentium M) 2m 6s Sony VAIO FS680 (1.86 GHz Pentium M) 1m 53s
IBM ThinkPad T43 (1.86 GHz Pentium M) 1m 45s HP 454001-001 ,
Asus Z70A (1.6GHz Pentium M) 1m 53s Fujitsu LifeBook N3510 (1.73 GHz Pentium M) 1m 48s
Dell Inspiron 6000D (1.6 GHz Pentium M) 1m 52s Dell Inspiron 600M (1.6 GHz Pentium M) 2m 10s
Sony VAIO S360 (1.7 GHz Pentium M) 1m 57s
HP DV4170us (Pentium M 1.73 GHz) 1m 53s Sony VAIO S380 (1.86 GHz Pentium M) 1m 45s HP HSTNN-DB53 ,
PCMark04 and 3DMark05 are also used to measure processor and graphics performance, below is a table with benchmarks and a comparison to the popular ThinkPad T43 thin-and-light notebook:HP HSTNN-OB53 ,
Conclusion Lenovo SU2300 ,
It's easy for me to recommend the Z60m as I can't find much of anything wrong with it. It basically just boils down to whether you think a 15.4-inch widescreen style laptop fits your needs and if it does, then I say this is a great option to be looking at. Fantastic build quality, great keyboard, nice screen, nice speakers, good port selection, easy to upgrade, backed by good tech support,Lenovo PP31AT128
excellent security software, superb hard drive data protection, professional looking -- it's all there. If you don't need top line performance you can get all this in a configuration for around $1,000, and that's an incredible deal for this very well built machine.Lenovo 57y6309 ,
If you want a speed demon configuration and all the bells and whistles, your cost will be over $2,000. This notebook isn't best for those that need to carry it around a lot or travel, but for a home or office where it will spend a lot of time on a desk and being carried short distances it's a great form factor. As the movie guys say, two thumbs up.modelfreelancer artician laptop artifolio fiftiz vibesconnect mcintyretrucking bralley mk2projects