Lenovo ThinkPad W550s: Heavy, But a Battery That Lasts Nearly All Day

MojoKid writes: Mobile workstation notebooks typically offer a fair degree of performance but usually at the expense of battery life. It comes with the territory for machines that are configured with higher-end processors with discrete graphics chips, as well as high-end displays that take more power to light up. Lenovo, however, seems to have found a way to strike a better balance with their new ThinkPad W550s, which comes equipped with an Intel Core i7-5600U CPU, an NVIDIA Quadro K620M GPU, and a 15.5 inch IPS display that sports 2880X1620 native resolution. With that kind of horsepower and that many pixels to push, you would think untethered up-time wouldn't be its strong suit but Lenovo configured a snap-in extended battery for the W550s. The 6-cell extended battery, in combination with its 3-cell internal battery, was able to power the machine for over 18 hours of light-duty web browsing in real-world testing (Lenovo claims up to 20 hrs of battery life). The machine also lasted over five hours under heavy-load Battery Eater testing, and the extended battery is unobtrusive, tilting the keyboard up slightly toward the user but keeping well inside the machine's footprint.

Comments

Rather than extra battery how about a power cord?

[mykepredko]

I use a laptop a lot for going out to customers and giving demonstrations and the ideal (for me) would be about 6 hours of so of battery life but I think I would be at the high end of the power curve (requiring active WiFi and Bluetooth as well as the processor/display fully up). For the average laptop, the life I get seems to be around 3.5hours. But, I can't see a larger/heavier laptop with more life would be an big advantage for me.

What would be an advantage to me would be reasonable life (and 3.5hours seems to fit that need for a single meeting/session) with the ability to plug into an outlet (there's always an outlet around where I am) and car would be of more use to me than a big honking battery that takes a long time to fully charge. This would make travel simpler (don't have to bring along the brick) as well as search into the depth of the bags in a meeting when the seven minute warning comes up on Windows.

Re:so?

[damn_registrars]

So..my Mac is light and the battery lasts all day.

But does your Mac have NVIDIA Quadro graphics? This is a workstation replacement laptop, not designed for just average use.

It also has a vastly superior pointing device (trackpoint rather than only a touchpad) and keyboard (lenovo rather than jello) when compared to your Mac.

I don't get the weight thing

[fluffernutter]

I really don't get why weight matters in a laptop. If 5.47 pounds is too heavy for you in any situation, you really need to stop worrying about it and maybe start lifting some weights.

Re:I don't get the weight thing

[godrik]

5.47 pounds is WAY to heavy for a laptop for me. My current laptop is 3.14 pounds and I still find it too heavy. Why? Because I primarily use it for traveling to conferences: I'll be transporting it from the hotel to the conference, from the keynote room to the session room, to the break rooms, to lunch, to diner, to visit the city while I am there. So essentially, I'll be transporting it all day long with everything else I need (cell phone, wallet, charger).
5 pounds in a shoulder bag is too much (it offsets your center of gravity too much which causes back problems), which means I need a backpack. But shoulder bags/messenger bags/men-purses are much more convenient in a city setting. Last year, I was in Munich and I opted to leave my laptop in my hotel room the days when I could afford to only bring a tablet with me.

Almost perfect but the keyboard is off center

[eviljav]

I'm glad they fixed many of the issues with the previous keyboard.

Would have been the perfect new laptop, if they had centered the keyboard.

Yabut ... Lenovo

[Rudisaurus]

Superfish

Should be all that has to be said. There should be a price to pay.

Re:Yabut ... Lenovo

[damn_registrars]

No, there is nothing to be said about superfish, as Lenovo never installed superfish on a ThinkPad. As awful as superfish was for many reasons, it was never on any ThinkPad, ever. Period.

Re:Yabut ... Lenovo

[thegarbz]

Rather that telling us why we should avoid Lenovo, how about suggesting where we should go?

Every company at some point has screwed over customers. If we shunned every product over every poor company practice then we may as well retreat into the forest and lock ourselves into a cabin away from the world.

Also Superfish was NEVER installed on any business product and the Thinkpad is no exception. So if we were to vote with our wallets isn't this exactly the product we SHOULD be buying? A product that people have been wanting, a product which has remained untainted within the cesspool which is consumer laptops?

Vote with your wallet people, send a message and BUY THIS.

Re:so?

[NJRoadfan]

Whats odd is this model is a downgrade over the refreshed W541. Unless you really need a Broadwell CPU, the W541 offers Thunderbolt, Expresscard, and double the memory capacity of the W550s. Heck, the optional battery for the W541 is higher capacity (99WHr) than the one for the W550s (72WHr).

Re:5.47 pounds

[ChunderDownunder]

It would be nice if someone had converted that to metric.

~ 2.5kg.