Lenovo 3000 C200

The Lenovo 3000 C200 is like a Dodge Omni with a Hemi dropped in: Sure, it’s got dual-core horsepower, but it still looks and feels like an economy car. Performance and battery life were good, but the graphics scores and overall fit and finish of the system are tough to ignore.

 

The 6.1-pound C200 is chunky and plain, leaving us to wonder if someone actually designed it, or just figured out the dimensions the plastic shell needed to be to contain the innards. The 15-inch, 4:3 screen seems dated in this day of 16:9 widescreens. Worse, it’s a matte-finish panel, which makes images appear fuzzy. Worse still, its native resolution is 1024 x 768 pixels, which in a panel this size leads to poor font reproduction and jagged edges on curves. The Windows XP Professional OS (upgradable to Windows Vista Business for free) has the look of Windows 98 (for those who remember those low-res fonts and icons).

 

On the plus side, the keyboard feels excellent (cross-pollination with the ThinkPad line is a benefit here), and there are dedicated volume and mute buttons. On the other hand, there are no controls for playing back multimedia files, and you can’t play music or movies without booting into the OS.

 

Lenovo includes a lot of features for the price, including a multiformat DVD burner, a decent 80GB hard drive, and 802.11a/b/g wireless. Performance from the 1.6-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5500 was good; the C200 scored 223 on MobileMark 2005. Battery life was a respectable 4 hours and 32 minutes, though wireless throughput (just over 10 Mbps) was a touch low for a mainstream system. Both of these scores were second behind Dell’s Inspiron E1505, but graphics were among the lowest in the group at 1,328 on 3DMark03.

 

Lenovo delivers a fairly complete software bundle, starting with its LenovoCare utilities for system recovery, network connectivity, and performance restoration. You also get Corel WordPerfect 12, the Corel Photo Album 6 image editing and management package, and InterVideo and Roxio CD- and DVD-creation suites.

 

The C200 has the features users need to run Vista but lacks the multimedia chops to keep up with the competition. Other value-priced notebooks leave it in the dust.

 

Don’t miss our comparison product roundup: Dual Core Notebooks Under $1000.