Lenovo ThinkPad E550 (Core i7, Radeon R7 M265) Notebook Review

Depending on the configuration, the E550 ships either with a simple WXGA (1366 x 768 Pixel, 100 ppi, 200 cd/m²) or - as in our case - with a FullHD-Display (1920 x 1080 Pixel, 141 ppi, 220 cd/m²). Aside from an increase in sharpness, it's the effective doubling of the workspace which makes the higher-resolution display a much more compelling choice in our opinion. Users who need to work with large Excel spreadsheets or who want to be able to view programs side-by-side should definitely consider the high-res model.

Even though the display specs have remained the same since our last review, our test candidate features a different panel (Innolux N156HGE-EAB vs. AUO B156HTN03.6) - obviously Lenovo has more than one supplier. From a quality standpoint, our verdict unfortunately remains negative: the maximum brightness of only 188 cd/m² is simply not enough for bright offices or working near windows; the just average black value of 0.46 cd/m² results in a rather modest contrast ratio of 424:1 as well. The display is consequently quite anemic-looking, which won't matter much for office-type tasks, though games and movies would look much better on a higher-quality IPS display. At least the brightness distribution is quite decent and there's absolutely no flickering, since the backlight doesn't use PWM.

Also not a strength is the panel's color accuracy. As shipped, the display exhibits a noticeable blueish cast and the color space coverage is fairly restricted at 38 % and and 59 % for AdobeRGB and sRGB, respectively. The former is rectified fairly easily with a calibration, but the latter is a deal-stopper for professional photo and graphics editing. Even with our optimized ICC profile enabled, some colors - which are obviously outside the reproducible color space - show DeltaE deviations of far more than 5. The graylevels are pretty decent, however.

What is true for most lower-priced TN panels applies here as well and the screen content only appears unaltered if the user is located directly in front of the display. Even small deviations from the ideal vertical to either above and below change the brightness significantly and decrease the already pretty low contrast. It's also advisable to refrain from shallow angles in the horizontal plane, although the margin is quite a bit larger here.

Although the soon-to-be-released successor likely will incorporate CPUs based on the current Skylake-generation, the E550 still uses Broadwell chips introduced early 2015. Our review notebook is equipped with a Core i7-5500U CPU, which is one of the fastest dual-core ULV model with a 15 watt TDP. Thanks two two cores plus Hyper Threading, clocked from 2.4 to 3.0 GHz (2.9 GHz for both cores), the 5500U promises to have more than enough performance for typical office and multimedia tasks. For additional details, please check our CPU database.

In addition to the processor-integrated HD Graphics 5500, Lenovo equips some of the models with a dedicated Radeon R7 M265 (384 shader @ 825 MHz, 2 GB DDR3 @ 1000 MHz / 128 Bit) from AMD as well. Interestingly enough, this configuration contradicts what the manufacturer mentions in the offical spec sheets, which list a Radeon R7 M260 (384 Shader @ 980 MHz, 2 GB DDR3 @ 1000 MHz / 64 Bit) instead. That's good for potential customers though, since the R7 M265's doubled memory bandwidth makes more than up for the loss of MHz.

Given the price of the E550, 8 GB of RAM (1x 8 GB DDR3L-1600, single channel) and a 1000 GB hard drive can be considered decent, but far from outstanding. As far as expansion is concerned, only the RAM is upgradeable thanks to an open DDR3 slot; M.2 or mSATA slots are noteably absent.

The Core i7-5500U takes full advantage of its maximum clock speed during the Cinebench R15 test and remains more or less at a constant 3.0 GHz. Both cores sustain the maximum of 2.9 GHz only for about 30 seconds, however - after that time, the processor drops to around 2.6 to 2.7 GHz (both with the notebook plugged in and running on battery). It seems like we've received a rather inefficient review notebook with a high leakage current, which already hits the 15-watt limit at a lower frequency. The Broadwell CPU managed slightly higher benchmark scores during earlier tests - see for example the review of the Dell Latitude 3550. Overall we can't complain too much about the performance: compared to the Core i3-5005U, the Core i7 is between 30 and 50 % faster; the performance plus compared to the Core i5-5200U is about 10 to 15 %.

Obviously the budget wasn't quite large enough for Lenovo to outfit the E550 with an SSD or at least an SSHD, so the notebook comes with a standard hard drive instead. The particular model is a member of Western Digital's "Blue Mobile"-series with a capacity of 1 TB and a rotational speed of 5400 RPM. With access times of 19.2 ms and a sequential transfer rate of 91 MB/s, the performance is - just like expected - fairly average, which in turn impacts the response characteristics of the whole system. At least it should be fairly easy to swap out the hard drive for a faster model.

The AMD Radeon R7 M265 is a lower middle-class GPU with performance similar to a Nvidia GeForce 830M or GeForce 930M. The Radeon outperforms the integrated HD Graphics 5500 by about 100 - 150 percent, since the frugal Intel CPU is best suited for simple 2D tasks. AMDs Enduro-technology automatically switches over to the dedicated GPU to execute 3D applications and games, although this behavior can be adjusted individually for each program.

Unfortunately it's not possible to modify the behavior of the Radeon R7 M265 on battery power: while we recorded 825/1000 MHz (core/memory speed) for the GPU when the E550 was plugged in, we saw a drop down to 400/600 MHz away from the outlet. This results in a performance reduction of about 50 % and a 3DMark 11 GPU score of 1068 points.

Despite the mostly passive cooling, the ThinkPad doesn't get hot during idle and only reaches about 30 to 32 degrees C in most areas. Users who work with office programs and similar programs or browse the web can operate the E550 on the lap without any problems.   

The rather conservative cooling approach has a much more pronounced effect under load conditions, since the notebook heats up more. In one area in particular - in the back on the left side - the temperatures climbed to above 40 degrees C after a fairly short time. Foruntately the handrests aren't affected much and remain much cooler.

The CPU and the GPU maxed out at 82 and 76 degrees C during the stress test, which is far from critical. We didn't observe any throttling, although the Turbo didn't reach its full potential either with the cores only running at 2.5 GHz. The likely explanation is once again that the TDP limit of 15 watts was reached at that point.

At a purchase price of 1000 Euro (~$1100), the top-model in the E550-series can't be considered entry-level any longer and accordingly, expectations run pretty high. Unfortunately, the ThinkPad can't quite measure up.

The most significant drawbacks are the TN panel, which is average at best, the slow hard drive and the very short warranty of only 12 months. The other models in the series are affected by the same shortcomings, but they usually also sell for a few hundred Euro less. Our configuration as such isn't the most convincing, since part of the budget was obviously allotted to pay for the more prestigious Core i7 CPU - which doesn't really offer any significant performance benefits over the much more cost-effective Core i5 processor.

Our recommendation is to consider a pared-down, less expensive model instead.

All things considered, the E550 is a solid workhorse with superb input devices and a very low noise level. Of course there are some differences in quality in some areas compared to the higher-end L and T-series models, but considering the much lower price, those differences seem acceptable. Patient users might want to wait until the Skylake-equipped E560 hits the market, since the E550 might turn into a real bargain in the upcoming months: discontinued ThinkPad models are often sold at very attractive prices.