Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E470 Review: Pros, Cons & More

Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E470

USD

9.2

Value for Money Score

9.5/10

Reliability Score

9.3/10

Performance Score

8.9/10

Specifications and Features Score

9.0/10

Design Score

9.1/10

Pros

• A perfect reliability
• Superb Sound and Vibrant visuals
• Award winning keyboard
• Web conferencing is easy
• Secure, light and perfect in design

Cons

• No LED keyboard backlight
• No USB Type-C
• Sealed battery.
• Keyboard is not backlit.
• Less memory life

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Verdict

With different positive and negative aspects, Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E470 can be your favorite travel companion as well as business guide.

To be specific and honest, this Lenovo laptop does not introduce anything new and innovative to get highlighted in the ThinkPad series. Still, ThinkPad Edge E470 is highly recommendable since it is available at a budget-friendly cost.

Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E470 & Related Laptops Price

Introduction

For your immediate laptop hunt, Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E470 will be a lucrative choice.

Based on processor variants, RAM and storage capacity, the laptop comes in several alternatives to allow the buyer to purchase the specific one from the list.

It has undergone a number of testing and experimental analysis to become credible to all sorts of buyers.

It is a reasonably priced laptop with brilliant battery backup and speed processor. The laptop is surely lightweight enough to carry in every business trip.

It comes in dual distinct colors – black and silver, allowing you to make a choice.

Buy For: There is an inbuilt fingerprint sensor in this device. In case you are too concerned about advanced security, you might consider this device. The laptop features an anti-glare display which has a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels.

Beware of: It is not initially equipped with an SSD. This means that the speed of data transfers isn’t great. A RAM of 4 GB is not enough to keep up with the speed of this generation.

Best uses for: Business owners, travelers, basic to moderate gaming.

The alternatives:

• HP EliteBook 840 G3
• Lenovo ThinkPad X260

Specs:

• Brand: Lenovo
• Hard Drive: 500 GB
• RAM: 4 GB
• RAM Type: DDR4
• Processor: Intel Core i5 6200U
• Processor Speed: 2.3 GHz
• Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 520
• Battery: 45Wh
• Screen Size: 14 inches
• Processor Brand: Intel
• Product Dimensions: 13.35 x 9.53 x 0.93 in
• Weight: 4 lbs
• Operating System: Windows 10

Reliability

The laptops belonging to Lenovo ThinkPad series are truly premium & utmost reliable. And there is sheer reason to make such statement.

The laptops have undergone military-spec testing rightly after being launched in the market and it is proven that they can endure the harshness of everyday work.

Besides, Lenovo laptops are more popular for their award-winning keyboard quality, multi-touch touchpad and first-rate track point to help every user perform at speediest rate.

From a wide spectrum of Lenovo series namely ThinkPad Edge, ThinkPad X, ThinkPad T, ThinkPad Yoga, ThinkPad L, ThinkPad P & ThinkPad 13, you can be utterly perplexed to choose the ideal one.

Every model offers some distinct features at reasonable price and hence maximum users place the brand at the top of their lists of choice.

Performance

Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E470 is designed with top notch processing power to perform at superfast level.

Its Intel Core i5-6200U processor accelerates the performance level of the laptop to greater extent. The laptop delivers uninterrupted & hassle-free performance to have your jobs done within few hours.

The processor has got the speed of 2.3 GHz – 2.8 GHz to handle all your workloads.

The device owns standard graphical power too. And the credit completely goes to its Intel HD 520 graphics processor.

Its integrated graphics engine supports a variety of graphically rich artistic activities, PC gaming and many other relevant jobs.

Therefore, ThinkPad Edge E470 is truly able to refresh your mind at intervals, apart from catering to your business needs as well.

Benchmarks

CPU

1. To determine how well this laptop can perform, you must observe the benchmarks for the processors. GreekBench 5 is a popular benchmarking scale used by many benchmarking organizations.

On this scale, the Intel Core i5 6200U is rated at 558 for single-core performance. As far as its performance with multi-cores is concerned, its score is 1333.

By comparing these scores to those of another processor of the same class, we can better understand the results. In terms of single-core performance, the Intel Core i5-6300U’s score (586) is a little bit better than that of the Intel Core i5-6200U’s.

But when we move toward the multi-core score, then we can find that Intel Core i5 6200U has a higher score (1319).

On a single-core basis, our Core i5 6200U is more powerful. The Intel Core i5-6300U, however, is more powerful when it comes to multi-core performance. The margins are small if we observe these scores carefully.

Based on these results, we can conclude that both of these processors can deliver similar performance. However, they aren’t very powerful. Performance-wise, the Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E470 and the Microsoft Surface Book can be considered in the same class.

2. 52.6% Average Bench has been achieved by the Intel Core i5-6200U in UserBenchmark, and this processor took the 715th place out of 1355 processors.

3. According to CPU Benchmarks, the Intel Core i5-6200U’s average CPU mark is 3012. Its overall ranking is 1685. This means we can’t count it in the class of the most powerful processors of this time.

As a consequence, it is not able to take a significant position in the chart of single-thread performance. Despite this, it is capable of handling multitasking tasks without any problems.

GPU

1. The average G3D Mark of the Intel HD 520, in the Videocard Benchmarks, is 865. ‘Average G2D Mark’ of this integrated graphics card is 211. Its overall rank is 945. Performance-wise it is not a very promising GPU. Its performance is not so strong to tackle the updated AAA games.

2. According to the UserBenchmark, the’ Average Bench’ of the Intel HD 520 is 4.25%. And it has taken 398th rank out of 681 options.

Design

If you are familiar with the features of Lenovo ThinkPad E570, you will discover a number of similarities between the E570 and the E470, basically in terms of design and appearance.

Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E470 is typically a minor version of the former E570. The chassis of the laptop is made of premium plastic material to assure long durability and withstand several kinds of outer damage.

The design of its keyboard and touchpad is standard enough to provide comfortable typing experience.

The laptop is truly slim and lightweight and hence portable to everywhere you wish to carry.

As far as its lid is concerned, the ThinkPad E470 laptop holds an exclusive feature. Its external construction includes black, matte & large lid with silky-smooth finish to add to its overall elegant design.

But the surface does not provide better-grip convenience and the oily fingerprints get easily smeared on it.

However, its single-hinge design is no less attractive than its predecessors. The laptop can be opened with one hand without any effort.

Moreover, its roughened plastic build feels utmost sturdy and renders a grill for additional airflow to last for years.

Display

ThinkPad Edge E470 sports a 14 inch high-definition anti-glare display with the resolution of 1366×768 pixels.

The screen offers spectacular viewing angles to benefit your eyes. With great pixel density, the display provides maximum brightness in the middle and average brightness across the entire surface along with minimum deviation.

Such display feature is convenient & work-efficient enough for both indoor and outdoor use.

It also owns decent contrast ratio before & after calibration. If you get engaged with plenty of color-sensitive works, this ThinkPad Edge can be your ideal tool to implement your planning in time.

The laptop screen also gives you a good perception of the sRGB color gamut coverage and color perfection as well.

Undeniably, the display assures absolutely crystal-clear visuals and supreme vibrancy in several colors under any lighting condition.

Storage Parts

The 2.3GHz Intel Core i5-6200U processor is associated with 4GB RAM and 500GB hard disk drive to boost up overall performance of the device.

Its 4GB RAM is standard for smooth multitasking convenience, but may not appear excellent if you do a large number of graphics-intensive tasks at a single time.

However, for general use, it will enable you to open multiple browsers and get involved with photo or video editing without facing any trouble or disruption.

The size of the storage is also good, but not the best. 500GB HDD may be sufficient or insufficient, typically based on the nature of your requirements.

Moreover, you may need the installation of additional hard disk storage in order to expand the capacity in the upcoming years.

However, you can easily create a huge library of files in this 500GB HDD which rotates at a speed of 7200 RPM.

Battery Life

The 14-inch ThinkPad Edge E470 accommodates 3 Cell Li-Ion battery to supply necessary energy to the device.

The battery rated at 45Wh ensures highly efficient and long-lasting performance to bring you utmost working ease.

It also claims to deliver a power backup upto 9 hours even with Wi-Fi turned on. Hence, the laptop promises reliable battery life to finish all the essential corporate workloads maintaining the deadline as well.

You can check out that these aspects though offer a back up but still it should be added that it is not at all enough. In fact this is considered as a con for this set. It is truly letting you down.

Additional Specs

Ports and connectivity option is an essential specification for any business laptop. Check out Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E470 manual.

Though ThinkPad Edge E470 lacks some crucial ports or connectivity options, for instance, VGA port, USB-C 3.1 connector etc, the overall configuration is not so substandard at all.

The right side of the laptop is home to SD card reader, a 3.5 mm audio jack and two types of USB connectors – USB 3.0 and 2.0 while the left panel accommodates another USB 3.0 connector, DC charging port, HDMI and RJ-45 port as well.

The interior build of the laptop features hard plastic which is no less than anodized aluminum on the basis of reliability.

The interior material feels highly rigid and is too strong to be flexed as well. Its keyboard shares wide key assortment with comfortable & silent clicky experience.

The keyboard is typically spill-resistant but lacks LED backlight. The touchpad is also perfect, standard and responsive.

Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E470 comes with too many upgrade and maintenance options.

The laptop consists of plenty of upgrade able components to make the task easy for you in near future.

At the same time, it packs a high-quality heat pipe which connects the cooling fan and the heatsink sideways for ensuring fantastic & effective cooling system inside the laptop.

Furthermore, the laptop comes with a 720p HD webcam for seamless video calling and taking prominent selfie shots as well.

The webcam is located on the front panel to work well. The device contains Dolby Advanced Audio technology based stereo speakers to produce HD sound quality.

However, it offers no optical drive option to enable you to burn CDs or DVDs.

Variants

You can check out that there are so many variants in case of this laptop. You can see from here that these variants are having common three types of processors, 3 types of RAM and 3 Types of Hard Drive which are used for the configurations.

Each of these variants is too good to handle. More or less all the variants and combinations are available in the market. It definitely add a perfection in it.

What Do Users Think?

User opinions always do matter to making a detailed review of any device or product. Existing users will learn about the working conditions of any device better than mere online viewers.

As for Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E470, a large number of customers have set positive reviews as they have achieved wonderful experience by making a complete exertion of the laptop.

But some of the users have revealed their discontent for the limited space of storage and RAM in the device.

Although manifold customers and business people rely on longer durability and world class keyboard of Lenovo laptops, this particular device is not credible to many for limited storage upgradability and lack of SSD slot.

According to some users, it is a compact and good budget business solution.

Our Testing & Analysis Report

The Intel Core i5 6200U processor of the Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E470, on testing, scored 558 points for its single-core performance on the GeekBench 5 test. The multi-core performance score is, however, 1333 points.

We also tested it on UserBenchmark and found that it achieved an average bench score of 52.6% and on the CPU Benchmarks, it scored 3012 points as its CPU Mark.

We further tested the processor on Video Card benchmarks and found that its average G3D Mark is 865 and average G2D Mark is 211.

All these findings by our technical analysis team point out that the CPU is good but not very powerful enough in its performance to handle the high-end Triple A games.

It is also due to the fact that the integrated graphics chip of the system is also quite lowly in its performance with an average bench score of only 4.25% on the UserBenchmark, which we found during our testing.

The display quality is pretty good with significant pixel pitch and density and pretty good viewing angles.

We recorded its maximum brightness to be 260 cd/m2 and a color deviation less than 20% and temperature being 6400K on our Delta E color accuracy ad deviation tool. The contrast ratio is also quite good.

The keyboard and touchpad are both good but not excellent. The adequate key travel and tactility, need for actuation force being pretty low offered a good typing experience when we use Word and other apps and software.

The battery on our battery rundown test was found to be just above average lasting for about 8 hours on a single charge when we used the system in average settings with and battery saving mode and Wi-Fi turned on and screen brightness reduced to 120 nits.

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