ThinkPad E531 Evaluation

ThinkPad has long been a high expectation of consumers, as domestic brands, Lenovo has been committed to the ThinkPad product line to expand to seek diversification, no one brand products are unchanged, the ThinkPad E series although in the positioning of the T-series high-end, But it gives the average user more choice and gives the ThinkPad more possibilities.

Top cover appearance

The new e-series is further improved on the basis of the previous generation, which will cost more effective control in the acceptable range of ordinary users, more cost-effective. In the hardware configuration, the new E531 although not equipped with the latest Haswell, but is still the mainstream, this test prototype is i5-3230m, 4GB memory, 500GB 5400 rpm and the performance of a good nvidia GeForce gt740m independent graphics, Overall configuration is fairly balanced, compared to the previous generation E-series main models equipped with gt610m and gt630m have significantly improved. So what is the performance of E531 on the features of the fuselage?

Exterior design

Overall appearance

In terms of appearance, the ThinkPad E531 fuselage size is 15.6 inches, the gold size of AV Entertainment This should have little to question. The fuselage top cover uses the engineering plastic material to have the type skin coating, the overall feeling is good, the appearance stable atmosphere. And besides the top cover, it's going to look a little bit inferior, B, C and D are used engineering plastic materials, have to say that compared to the previous E420 series and E520 products in the C surface material and surface technology of the processor is indeed more mediocre, the skin-like coating to remove the whole body of the plastic feel stronger, It's the biggest deficiency in appearance. In addition, in the view of screen opening, the new E531 due to the use of sinking rotating shaft is limited, the actual angle is not large, but the usual use is certainly enough.

Screen display

Screen display effect and keyboard imprint

On the screen display, the ThinkPad E531 for consumers to provide the 1366x768 resolution fog screen, a good inhibition of reflective phenomenon, but also to provide users with 1920x1080 Full HD screen matching. But unfortunately, the screen panel material is only TN material, the actual visual angle performance is poor.

In addition, actually, the design of the foot pads around the screen seems a little thin, because the screen after the box will be pressed by the keyboard a lot of traces, the screen will be left with unsightly scratches, this has to say is a small screen bug, if Lenovo can improve on the subsequent models of the problem then, Users will be able to get a better use experience.

Keyboard design

Keyboard details

In the design of the keyboard, The new E531 is equipped with a full-size keyboard that 15.6-inch notebooks should have, the overall feeling of the keyboard continues the characteristics of the previous, the key and key caps of the soft and hard degree of the appropriate benefits, but the overall area of the key to use a little bit of the strength, and the FN function key position more suitable for the ThinkPad old users to use, for beginners to operate the wrong operation is It's inevitable.

Touch Board Design

Touch Board Details

Touch pad is the most important addition to the keyboard input equipment, E531 Touch Board on the surface of the treatment is more careful, no coarse sense of fine sanding texture. The overall feeling slightly soft, and the key process is very long, although the overall feeling is good, but the longer key and soft buttons always give people can not accurately find the key to effective instantaneous feeling.

Interface design

Fuselage left interface design

Fuselage Right interface design

ThinkPad E531 provides users with a richer interface design, which has 2 USB3.0 interfaces, 1 HDMI interfaces, 1 VGA connectors and 1 audio input and output interfaces on the left side of the fuselage. On the right side of the fuselage there are 1 USB2.0 interfaces, one Power extension dock interface, 1 RJ-45 network ports and 1 Dvd burning optical drives. One of the things worth mentioning is that the USB2.0 interface on the right side of the fuselage supports a shutdown charging function that can help users recharge their mobile devices during the trip. In addition, the front-end design of the fuselage has 1 SD card slots, the location is very convenient for users to plug the SD card, the design is very reasonable.

Bottom cover Design

Fuselage back cover

The design of the bottom cover of the machine is very characteristic, unlike many frivolous ThinkPad products, the bottom cover of E531 adopts very explicit modular design, each part is independent, for ordinary users, disassembly and upgrade is quite convenient. In addition, the front-end part of the bottom cover also designed the speaker components of the machine, the loudspeaker using a bar of soft engineering plastic mesh design, will not appear too abrupt.

Performance test

Windows System Assessment

PCMark 7 Test

This test ThinkPad E531 is equipped with i5-3230m processor, 4GB memory, 500GB hard drive and gt740m standalone video card. The overall configuration is very mainstream, or quite good. In particular, the performance of gt740m alone is still worth affirming. So is everything going as expected, and what about the main hardware? Here we focus on the CPU, the hard drive, the video card, and the overall performance test.

Processor performance

Cinebench 11.5 Test

We measured the ThinkPad E531 using the authoritative test software cinebench 11.5. Cinebench industry recognized benchmark software, in the mainstream media at home and abroad most of the system performance test can see its figure. It uses the cinema 4D special effects software engine developed for the film and television industry to test CPU and video card performance. The single core and multiple core tests are calculated separately, and in addition to the OpenGL test. The ThinkPad Tester carries the i5-3230m dual-core four-thread standard voltage processor, the default frequency 2.6GHz, and the core-frequency acceleration up to 3.2GHz. In the test of cinebench 11.5, we get 1.29pts single core score and 2.97pts multi-core collaboration score, overall performance is general, belong to the mainstream level.

Hard Drive Performance Test

Hdtune Hard Drive Test

In the hard drive test, we use hdtune this industry most commonly used test software, this test software's one big advantage is besides can observe the hard disk reads and writes the speed performance also to be able to see visually the hard disk stability. In the test this 500GB 5400 turn hard Drive performance general, read and write speed performance fluctuation is big, the highest can reach 111.1mb/s, and the lowest is only 20.7mb/s, average 82.7mb/s.

Graphics performance is the mainstream of the top

3DMark 11 Test

In the display section of the test we selected 3DMark 11来. The 3DMark 11 is a comprehensive benchmarking tool launched by Futuremark, which can give full play to the advantages of multiple graphics cards and multiple core processors. In graphics, the ThinkPad E531 is equipped with the latest Nvidia Geforce gt740m standalone graphics, and we use the 3DMark 11 performance mode test during the test. Through the test, the ThinkPad E531 's final score reached P1917 points. In mainstream household notebooks belong to the high level.

Endurance capability Test

Endurance test

In the endurance test, the author uses the windows of the self estimate, the system gives the estimated life of 6 hours 30 minutes, of course, the general Windows system with the estimate is very long, but presumably more than 5 hours should still be no big problem.

Full-Text summary: Domestic business can be addressed

ThinkPad products have always had a calm appearance and good business characteristics, today's e-series with the above two features, but also equipped with good hardware, so that E531 is a veritable cross-border products, for those who like the steady shape of student friends and performance-oriented business people, E-Series is definitely a cost-effective option.

Of course, E531 also has some deficiencies, the screen of the effect of a poor, plastic sense of a strong C-plane design in fact become E531 by a good notebook up to the perfect process of defects. The other 15.6-inch large fuselage, though more visually wide, will still be a barrier to mobile use, and it is better to consider smaller E-series models if you need to move frequently.