ThinkPad SL510 Reviewed: Long on Value, Short on Screen Real Estate

We’ve just posted our review of the Lenovo ThinkPad SL510 business notebook, the successor to today’s ThinkPad SL500 small business notebook. While we were impressed with the radical design of the original ThinkPad SL series, including both the ThinkPad SL400 and ThinkPad SL300 we reviewed,  the SL510 is a lot more conservative, forgoing a glossy black lid and flashy status buttons for a staid matte look with minimal bling.

Like its predecessors, the SL510 starts a low $529 (our review unit is list priced at $1024), and offers strong value for that price. It has a full size, comfortable ThinkPad keyboard, a multitouch-capable touchpad, speedy Core 2 Duo CPU, and plenty of ports. It comes with a choice of battery sizes, hard drives,  and discrete/integrated graphics options. However, at this point, the only resolution available is 1366 x 768, which offers less vertical screen real estate than the SL500 and SL400 have as both first-gen SLs are available with 1440 x 900 screens and the SL500 can even be configured with a whopping 1680 x 1050 display. Which left us wondering: is 1366 x 768 too low res for a 15.6-inch panel or just right?

Check out our review of the ThinkPad SL510 for more details. And let us know what you think of the screen resolution in the comments and poll below.