The good: Excellent, sturdy design; very good performance and battery life; widescreen display; strong security features.

The bad: Loaded configurations are expensive; lacks a double layer DVD burner.

The bottom line: With an exceptional design, competitive features, innovative connectivity, solid performance and battery life, the ThinkPad Z60t is versatile enough for the home or on the road.

Read full review of the ThinkPad Z60t »

By Stephanie Bruzzese
Oct 26, 2005

The formerly all-black laptop now features an optional silver-titanium lid and, most notably, a widescreen display. Those features and the low US$799 (S$1,349.87) starting price of the ThinkPad Z60t indicate that Lenovo is starting to pursue the multimedia as well as the business market. But while we approve of the design changes, we found that the Z60t's especially poky mobile performance makes it too slow for anything but very basic productivity tasks.

Editors' note : CNET US has updated this review with new benchmark figures and ratings. Some models used for comparision may not be available in your country. Currently, the US$799 (S$1,349.87) ThinkPad Z60t configuration is available only for US retail customers.

Design
The ThinkPad Z60t measures a wieldy 332.74 x 228.6 x 25.4 mm, but the weight of the unit depends on how you configure it. With the traditional black-plastic lid and a four-cell battery, it weighs a light 2.25kg; our US$2,299 (S$3,884.05) test unit, with a titanium lid and a seven-cell battery, weighed 0.5kg more. For the sake of comparison, the 2.68kg Dell XPS M140 costs US$2,040 (S$3466.88), and the 2.40kg Sony Vaio VGN-FJ170/B goes for US$1,499 (S$2547.48).

Like the company's other thin-and-light, the ThinkPad T43, the ThinkPad Z60t is extremely well designed. Its excellent keyboard offers a comfortable layout, and like most ThinkPads, it has the traditional red eraserhead pointing stick and a sufficiently sized touch pad, both of which include an adequate set of mouse buttons. Four handy buttons for volume control and system help sit above the keyboard. Although the system lacks dedicated multimedia buttons, the arrow keys do double duty as disc-play controls when used with the Function button. Aside from the typical spinning of the internal fan when you start up the laptop, the system runs quietly.

The ThinkPad Z60t's 14-inch widescreen makes it easier for you to view two documents side by side, and its 1,280 x 768-pixel native resolution works well for both text and graphics, though the screen lacks the glossy finish found on such multimedia-oriented thin-and-lights as the Toshiba Satellite M55. The two speakers on either side of the keyboard sounded clear but flat--typical for laptops. In one of the ThinkPad's trademark design features, the Z60t has two drain holes underneath for accidental spills on the keyboard.

	Most of the ports are easily accessed from the side. (Click for larger image)

Features
Employees will find most of the ports, jacks, slots, and bays they need. The front edge features an IR port, headphone and microphone jacks, a Secure Digital card slot, and a Wi-Fi on/off switch. The right edge accommodates one Type II PC Card slot, a four-pin FireWire port, three USB 2.0 ports, and a swappable bay for the optical media drive you choose (our system came with a DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive). A lone S-Video port sits on the back edge, while the left edge includes 56K modem and Gigabit Ethernet jacks along with a VGA port. Helpful icons line the sides of the keyboard, marking the corresponding ports on the system's edges. Security features include a fingerprint reader to the right of the touch pad and an Embedded Security Subsystem, a hardware security feature similar to a Trusted Platform Module.

Our ThinkPad Z60t review system shipped with the Windows XP Professional operating system. Like most business laptops, the Z60t doesn't include a productivity suite. However, it offers the robust ThinkVantage utility, which keeps your data safe, helps you manage system settings, and more.

Performance
Our ThinkPad Z60t included a pretty high-end assortment of components with its high-end US$2,299 (S$3907.04) price tag. It was equipped with a powerful 2GHz Pentium M 760 processor; Intel's 915GM chipset, which borrows up to 128MB of main memory; 1GB of fast 533MHz RAM; and a big 100GB hard drive spinning at a quick 5,400rpm. One shortcoming: Where both the Dell and Sony offer double-layer DVD burners, the ThinkPad's is just a single-layer DVD burner. Nevertheless, the ThinkPad Z60t performed ably on CNET Labs' productivity tests, scoring on a par with the powerful Dell XPS M140 and ahead of both the Sony Vaio VGN-FJ170/B and the ThinkPad T43.

BAPCo MobileMark2002 performance rating (longer bars indicate faster performance)

ThinkPad Z60t (Pentium M processor 760 2.0GHz; 1GB RAM; 533MHz FSB) 232 Dell XPS M140 (Pentium M processor 770 2.13GHz; 1GB RAM; 533MHz FSB) 238 ThinkPad T43 (Pentium M processor 750 1.86GHz; 512MB RAM; 533MHz FSB) 215 Sony Vaio VGN-FJ170/B (Pentium M processor 740 1.73GHz; 512MB RAM; 533MHz FSB) 215

The ThinkPad Z60t's big seven-cell battery lasted for almost 4.5 hours in our Labs' battery-drain tests, a respectable time for a thin-and-light, though short of the XPS M140's 6 hours.

BAPCo MobileMark2002 battery life in minutes (longer bars indicate longer battery life)

ThinkPad Z60t (Pentium M processor 730 1.6GHz; 14-inch screen) 255 Dell XPS M140 (Pentium M processor 770 2.13GHz; 14.1-inch screen) 354 ThinkPad T43 (Pentium M processor 750 1.86GHz; 14.1-inch screen) 281 Sony Vaio VGN-FJ170/B (Pentium M processor 740 1.73GHz; 14.1-inch screen) 228

Service And Support
IBM sold its PC division to Lenova in April 2005, but will continue to support the ThinkPad series of notebooks. The laptop comes with one-year international carry-in warranty at the IBM service center. Singapore Post has an arrangement with Lenovo which allows its notebooks to be sent from any post office to the service center for free. Collection can be arranged from any post office without cost. Through the IBM Web site and phone lines, Lenova provides software support and troubleshooting.

Rate It Now

Rating guidelines

ThinkPad Z60t (Pentium M 1.73GHz, 512MB RAM)

Rate this product:
1 - Abysmal 2 - Terrible 3 - Poor 4 - Mediocre 5 - Average 6 - Good 7 - Very good 8 - Excellent 9 - Spectacular 10 - Perfect

Need help? Read our guidelines for what each number rating represents.

Submit your opinion

User Reviews

• Most Popular

• Upcoming

Latest Downloads

 

What's Hot