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CNET editors' rating:
3.5 stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 17 reviews
- See all user reviews
Product summary
The good: Excellent, sturdy design; very good performance and battery life; wide-screen display; integrated WWAN modem; 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, and solid performance and battery life, the ThinkPad Z60t is versatile enough for home and business users at home or on the road.
Specifications: Processor: Intel Pentium M (2 GHz); RAM installed: 1 GB DDR2 SDRAM; Weight: 4.9 lbs; See full specs
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 11/18/2005
- Released on: 09/20/2005
The ThinkPad has undergone a radical makeover in its latest iteration, with the thin-and-light Z60t. The formerly all-black laptop now features an optional silver-titanium lid, a wide-aspect display, and a low starting price--especially for a ThinkPad--of $799. Clearly, Lenovo has begun its pursuit of the consumer multimedia audience, in addition to the business market, and to good effect. Though we also like the more business-focused ThinkPad T43, we're more fond of the ThinkPad Z60t's design, and found our pricey high-end $2,299 test unit equally well cut out for productivity tasks and more entertainment-focused pursuits--on the road or at home.
The ThinkPad Z60t measures a wieldy 13.1 inches wide by 9 inches deep by 1.2 inches high, but the weight of the unit depends on how you configure it. With the traditional black-plastic lid and a 4-cell battery, it weighs a light 4.5 pounds; our loaded $2,299 test unit, which featured an exceptionally sturdy titanium lid and a 7-cell battery, weighed a pound more. For the sake of comparison, the 5.9-pound Dell XPS M140 costs $2,040, and the 5.3-pound Sony VAIO VGN-FJ170/B goes for $1,499. The ThinkPad Z60t's two-prong adapter adds just under a pound to its total travel weight.
Like the company's other thin-and-light, the more business-focused 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. There are four handy buttons for controlling the volume and summoning system help. Although the system lacks the dedicated multimedia buttons found on the XPS M140, the ThinkPad Z60t's arrow keys do double duty as disc-play controls when used with the Function button. In a nice design flourish, the Z60t has two drain holes underneath for accidental spills on the keyboard. 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 wide-aspect screen works well for watching DVDs and working with two documents side by side; the 1,280x768 native resolution is typical, though it lacks the glossy finish found on more multimedia-oriented thin-and-lights. The two speakers on either side of the keyboard sounded clear but flat.
Like the Sony VAIO VGN-TX670P, the ThinkPad Z60t has a 3.5-inch-long WWAN antenna on its right screen edge. The antenna helps the laptop's internal Sierra Wireless EVDO card connect to Verizon's cellular wireless network. In theory, it's a great feature that keeps you constantly connected wherever the Verizon network is available. Still, the feature suffers from the general drawbacks that plague WWAN: expensive service plans (Verizon's unlimited plan costs $79 per month if you don't have a voice plan through the company, and $59 per month if you do) and often finicky throughput speeds.
Business and home users 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 burner). A lone S-Video-out 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. Business users will appreciate the ThinkPad Z60t's security features, which include a fingerprint reader and an Embedded Security Subsystem, a hardware security feature that is similar to a Trusted Platform Module.
Our ThinkPad Z60t review system shipped with the Windows XP Professional operating system but without a productivity suite. Also included was the robust ThinkVantage utility, which keeps your data safe, helps you manage system settings, and more.
Our ThinkPad Z60t included a pretty high-end assortment of components with its high-end $2,299 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. The ThinkPad Z60t's big 7-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.
Standard warranty coverage on the ThinkPad Z60t lasts for the usual one year, during which you must send or carry in your system to an authorized service center for repairs; reasonably priced upgrades for longer terms and onsite repairs are available. Toll-free phone support is available 24/7 throughout the warranty period. You can also browse through a couple dozen troubleshooting topics listed on the support Web site, though we wish the site included other useful features, such as a customer forum and real-time chat with a support rep. For more detailed information about warranties and service plans, check out Computer Shopper's overview of 37 major computer vendors.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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BAPCo MobileMark 2005 performance rating |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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BAPCo MobileMark 2005 battery life in minutes |
Find out more about how we test Windows notebooks.
System configurations:
Dell XPS M140
Windows XP Media Center; 2.13GHz Intel Pentium M 770; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM PC3200 533MHz; Mobile Intel 915GM/GMS, 910GML Express 128MB; Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 80GB 5,400rpm
Sony VAIO VGN-FJ170/B
Windows XP Home; 1.73GHz Intel Pentium M 740; 512MB DDR2 SDRAM PC3200 400MHz; Intel 915GM/GMS, 910GML Express 128MB; Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 100GB 5,400rpm
ThinkPad Z60t
Windows XP Pro; 2GHz Intel Pentium M 760; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM PC4300 533MHz; Intel i915GM/GMS, 910GML Express 128MB; Toshiba MK1032GSX 100MB 5,400rpm
ThinkPad T43
Windows XP Pro; 1.86GHz Intel Pentium M 750; 512MB DDR SDRAM PC2700 333MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon X300 64MB; Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 60GB 7,200rpm
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