Lenovo W700ds Review: Dual-screen laptop for graphical pros

Once you go through Lenovo W700ds review, there will be no doubt in your mind that this dual-screen laptop cannot be considered a replacement of the original (W700). Rather, it’s an upgrade for the same basic platform, which makes good on the rumored promise of Lenovo for launching a notebook having dual display. With a 10.6-inch sliding display popping out from space behind the 17-inch panel of W700, W700ds still does not have real estate (in terms of screen) of 2 full-size desktop displays. However, it serves the original platform with an edge over the rivals.

Build & Design

Although the basic chassis of Lenovo W700ds appears unchanged, the addition of the second slide-out display behind the primary one can be felt in a line. This portion is thicker than some slender notebooks available in the market. When closed up, W700ds measures slightly above 2-inch in thickness, with its rubber feet supplementing another 1/4-inch to the machine when kept on a desk. Once you press gently on the lid’s right-hand side, its second display will emerge out its spring-loaded compartment. After extension, there is an addition of 7 inches on the right side, which will use the personal space of those sitting next to you on airplanes or coffee shops. The system is relatively portable. Still, the weight of the extra monitor (making it 13 lbs) may add some discomfort while carrying it around.

Build quality of W700ds will give an overall picture of what Lenovo is recognized for. It is provided with a tight filament and an impressive small panel flex. Again, you wouldn’t find the design mechanism flimsy even with the presence of second screen, as the second panel exhibits little flex at the point of attachment.

Screen

Primary Display

Similar to the original W700, Lenovo W700ds comes with a high-end 17-inch primary display, which has a WUXGA (1920×1200) resolution along with 400 NIT of brightness. The display is smooth with better contrast and brightness than the previous model. There is a light protective coating for protecting the screen. However, glare and backlighting have been well controlled. Again, you will find the viewing angles from all sides except the vertical axis. The LCD panel, with excellent size, brightness and clarity, continues to be amongst its key selling point, especially in case of power-graphics user.

Secondary Display

A feature, which distinguishes W700ds from W700, is the secondary screen. The second 10.6-inch 1280×768 screen has been mounted on a portrait orientation into the recess on the back of the primary display.

With almost similar vertical resolutions (1200 on the primary and 1280 on the secondary), you will not find difficulty in dragging windows across both the displays.

Keyboard & Touchpad

Although there are several input options for you in the Lenovo W700ds, the world of Lenovo lovers starts and finishes with legendary keyboards of Lenovo. Keyboard on W700ds is provided with a smooth key action and short, quick stroke, which makes typing quite pleasant. Apart from the slight flex around the Backspace Key, the full-size keyboard of the system feels perfectly anchored to the sub-frame. There are dedicated buttons for speaker control. Again, you also get the ‘ThinkVantage’ button that is used for basic maintenance and configuration of your system. For a large laptop, touchpad of Lenovo W700ds is quite small. It features horizontal and vertical axis dedicated areas for scrolling. Dedicated scroll/right/left buttons flank the top area of the touchpad with standard right and left click residing beneath. Apart from the keyboard and touchpad, designers have provided the notebook with Wacom digitizer (3.5-invh tablet area) and a Wacom-ready pen.

Performance & Benchmarks

Lenovo W700ds is available with similar ‘under the hood’ component as its predecessor. The 2.53GHz Q9300 quad-core processor from Intel, 4-GB RAM and FX3700M discrete graphics from NVIDIA (similar to what was there in W700) is sure to give similar performance. The only change is the inclusion of couple of 250-GB RAIDed hard drives, which is a benchmark number on all machines equipped with Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit. When tested with Photoshop CS3 (Graphics Performance Evaluating Tasks), it rendered 10,000-pixel gradients within 2 seconds.

Battery Life

The 9-cell lithium-ion battery of Lenovo W700ds powers the machine for more than an hour (106 minutes), when unplugged and used for DVD playback. The battery life is adequate considering the system uses the battery for powering two screens simultaneously.

Lenovo has gone a long way with their dual screen technology in W700ds. If only they can work on getting better battery life, Lenovo W700ds will be tough to beat.

Specifications of Lenovo W700ds

Processor: Core 2 Extreme, Q9300, 12MB L2 cache, 2.53 GHz & 1066 FSB from Intel

Graphics Card: Quadro FX 9700M, 1GB from nVidia

OS: Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit

Memory: 4-GB SDRAM DDR3

Display: 17-inch WUXGA LCD (1920×1200) & 10.6-inch TFT LCD (1280×760)

Hard drive: 259 GB X 2 RAID 7200rpm

Optical Drive: DVD Recordable

Battery: 9-Cell lithium 84Wh

Weight: 15oz (With battery)

Dimensions: 16.1in x 13.3in x 2.1in

Pros: Desktop-like performance, Excellent primary display (with inbuilt color collaborator) and wonderful keyboard

Cons: Terrible Wacom Digitizer and Poor battery life (106 minutes on full load)

MSRP: $3,663 (Base Price)