Once the mainstay of many a corporate employee, IBM's ThinkPad range (now under the Lenovo banner) would, you might assume, have been put out to grass by now, what with its austere matt black finish and angular construction: all very old hat compared to those nice shiny, silvery, new notebooks out there.

But - and it's a very big but - ThinkPads have always been about usability, performance and battery life, something the new X60s ultraportable has in spades. And now, somehow, the matt black finish makes a welcome change to all that grey and silver.

The X60s is the latest in the Lenovo ThinkPad X series and is a refresh of an old favourite, the X41. It improves on its predecessor with better performance, thanks to its Intel Core Duo processor support, and an upgrade to its feature set.

With a combination of a T2400 Core Duo processor (rated at 1.83GHz), Intel i945GM chipset and 512MB of PC2-5300 DDR2 memory, our review system scored a respectable 195 SYSmark04SE points, so there's more than enough grunt to perform everyday office duties. And with the Core Duo chip, multi-tasking is made a lot easier too, although if you plan to use a lot of memory-intensive applications such as video editing tools, then an upgrade to 1GB of memory (£125 + VAT) might be a good idea if your budget allows it.

Nearly identical in size to the X41, the ThinkPad X60s measures 26.8 x 21.1 x 2/2.8cm and weighs a mere 1.3kg (including the 317g AC adapter) so it goes without saying that you won't struggle when carrying it around all day. Where the X60s does fall behind its competitors is in its lack of a built-in optical drive. Instead, the DVD drive is built into the media slice (an additional £129 + VAT). Contrast this with the smaller and lighter Sony Vaio VGN-T2XP and Fujitsu Lifebook P7120, which have optical drives built in.

The graphics performance is what you would expect from a laptop of this class; great for office work, pretty much hopeless for any games playing, as the ThinkPad X60s uses Intel's integrated GMA950 graphics sub-system. The 12.1-inch display has a native resolution of 1,024 x 768, which is just enough to perform your office tasks on. Tucked inside the lid is a little lamp that illuminates the keyboard so you can use the X60s in dim lighting conditions.

One of the areas in which a lot of ultra-portables disappoint is the keyboard, but the X60s follows the ThinkPad tradition of having a great keyboard. The keys are relatively large and comfortable and have a really responsive feel to them, while the TrackPoint pointing stick is firm and easily controlled.

Sitting under the keyboard are three mouse buttons and a fingerprint reader, part of the impressive security setup of the ThinkPad X60s. Above the keyboard there is a blue ThinkVantage button that provides a shortcut to system maintenance, other utilities and connectivity, which comprises a modem, 802.11a/b/g WiFi, Bluetooth and a Gigabit Ethernet connection.

When it comes to battery life, the ThinkPad X60s is simply outstanding. When tested with MobileMark 05's productivity test the X60s had a battery life of a staggering seven hours and 56 minutes, while the DVD playback score was an equally jaw-dropping six hours and 35 minutes.

As with all other ThinkPads, the X60s comes with a whole host of security and recovery utilities: PC Doctor diagnostics, Symantec Client Security 3.0 (with 90 days of virus definitions), ThinkVantage Fingerprint Software, ThinkVantage Productivity Center, ThinkVantage Rescue and Recovery and ThinkVantage System Update.

Verdict
The ThinkPad may have been overshadowed by flashier looking notebooks but it's back (if it ever went away, of course) with a bang. The combination of great performance, portability and stunning battery life make the ThinkPad X60s a winner, although you do have to pay for the privilege.

Company: Lenovo

Contact: 0870 608 4465

Tags: thinkpad ibm gigabit ethernet intel core lenovo pointing stick wi-fi laptop