Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E520 review

The laptop comes with the Professional version of Windows 7, which has domain support so is well suited to office use, but copies of Corel WinDVD and MovieFactory will let you play and edit films. There are plenty of connection options, with four USB ports, one of which also doubles as an eSATA port, HDMI and VGA video outputs and a multi-format card reader, which should be more than enough for connecting all your peripherals. It’s a shame there’s no USB3, but an ExpressCard/34 slot will allow for future upgrades or expandability.

Powered by an Intel Core i5-2410m processor and with 4GB of memory, the E520 is certainly no slouch – it flew through our multimedia benchmarks with an overall score of 49, which proves it should be able to handle even demanding 2D applications. Gaming shouldn’t be a problem either – the AMD Radeon 6650m dedicated graphics card isn’t particularly high-end, but it can more than handle itself in modern games. In our demanding Dirt 3 test, it managed a very smooth 39.8fps with anti-aliasing enabled.

Thanks to AMD’s switchable graphics, which change to the processor’s integrated graphics when you’re not playing games, battery life doesn’t suffer from the addition of a dedicated graphics card – the E520 still managed a very respectable six and half hours in our light use battery test. You should be able to get plenty of work done when on the move.

If you’re looking for a mid-range laptop that’s capable of more than just presentations and word processing, the ThinkPad Edge E520 is a great middle ground between home and business machines. It looks smart and has plenty of connectivity options, yet hides some powerful components and a competent graphics card. It doesn’t have the best screen we’ve seen, but there are few laptops that offer more for less than £600.