Lenovo T400 First impressions

I just received my T400 and I am very impressed so far. I hope this short review will help others deciding.

Before This laptop I used a Sony SZ4 for about 2 years


Performance- Definitely a noticeable gain from the sz4, I am glad I went with the 7200rpm drive, I get around 60mb/s in Hd tune, I got around 35-40 on my sz if I remember correctly, the p series cpu is amazingly efficient, and the the 3gb of ddr3 ram perform as they should, and show up as 3072mb under properties

Battery life- so far I couldn't test this so much, but at 37% it reported 3:45h with wifi on, this is VERY good in my opinion. I can get the power usages down to 6w with brightness all the way down, wifi off, and battery stretch on.
The wattage under normal web browsing is 8w reading a page, and 10-12w actually loading pages (so about 9-10w average)

update:under normal usage(web browsing) you should expect 7.5 hours(9 cell) with 60% brightness/wifi on... this is with a LED screen and a P series processor, this goes up to 10 hours if you go with the 9 cell/ultrabay. The max I pushed this was 14 hours with the two batteries, this hapens when you minimize disk usage/cpu usage, the wifi actually only eats .1w when at idle, so it doesnt matter if its on or not unless your using it(this is why Kevin's review got 10h). And an interesting thing is that there is a very small difference between lowest brightness and 80% brightness battery wise.

Screen- I got the LG screen, and so far I have no issues with it, its nice and bright, and consumes a small amount of power, the resolution is just perfect for this screen size. (I have been staring at it the entire day today, and my eyes dont hurt)
The only complaint I have about the screen is the vertical viewing angles, they are horrible!!!!! its actually difficult to find an angle in which both the top edge and bottom edge of the screen have the right contrast.

Keyboard- This is my first thinkpad, I've read a lot online about the keyboard flex, and I just dont see what the big deal is, I mean, its there but i probably would not even notice if I didnt know to look for it. It does not hinder typing at all. The keyboard has a nice feel to it, but my only complaint is that it is a bit noisy.
BTW, the sz keyboard flex is a lot larger.

Built Quality- The quality is what I expected from a thinkpad, it feels sooo much more durable than the sony sz, it also stays cool playing a game with the laptop on my bed(laptops always get really hot there). I can actually feel cold air coming out of the side, and the laptop is pretty silent also!

Sound quality- This surprised me very much, the sound from these tiny speakers is amazing, they are still laptop speakers, but they are better than the sz, which I thought had good ones.

Thinklight- does not blind me at all. but I thought it would lite up the keyboard a little more... I will probably never use this feature anyways, i can touch type.

Size- Its about as big as any other 14' notebook when I compared it to my moms macbook they were the same thickness when the t400 screen was open and the macbook was closed.

Software- I love the thinkvantage utilities, especially the battery and wifi. I have not had any wifi problems and the range on the 5300 is amazing, I can see two more networks around my house, and the signal on my router went up from 80%(on sz) to 99% on the t400. The only complaint here is that on first boot it is dangerously close to a 100 processes in vista, but this does not seem to hinder the performance or boot times at all.


Please ask if you have any questions about this laptop, I will do my best to answer.

If there is enough demand, I will take some HQ pictures and post them up here.

this is what I get with everything set to low power

 

Thanks for the review. I'm still looking at this one, or an Asus U6V (upcoming model), or maybe even a new MacBook Aluminium (I spelled Aluminum wrong for my brit amigo's around here )

 

my mom is actually upgrading her old macbook to the the aluminium one so I can do some compare shots or something for you when she gets it if you want.(not often that u see a macbook and a ibm/lenovo together ) they are kind of the opposite

I must admit thou, I was tempted by the new macbook, the things that made me get the t400 are, DDR3, better battery life, screen doesnt have glass in front of it, trackpoint

 

Nice review. How's the quality of the webcam? Thanks.

 

@pcharouz: what did you do with your new battery at first? I wonder whether we have to follow some specific routines to prolong our battery life when we use them for the first time?

 

congrats on that.

 

The webcam is pretty good actually, I will post a pic later, its dark outside now

I didn't follow the rules at all, I was so happy that I got it I just wanted to use it... it came charged up about 50%, I just used it for a couple hours until it hit 5% and then I charged it up to 100%.

I will probably set the thredsholds to 90-95% because the last 5% take around 50-60 minutes

 

Thanks for the review. Make sure to use a stand or a hard surface for the laptop when in bed, don't put it down on the bed directly. Since the surface is soft it can block vent ports and cause the machine to overheat along with getting dust into the machine.

 

here is a pic of my desktop it looks a little better when its a running video stream. This webcam is more than enough for casual skype calls..... (Its VGA btw)

This is exactly what amazed me, most laptops would get really hot. The T400 just keeps running cool to touch even while gaming!!, it never gets hot.
It has the vents from the side and back, so its not going to get blocked, and about the dust... I just blow it out once a couple months.

 

Not just T400 but T61 also stay cool in general.

 

how about a comparison between the SZ4 and T400's screen? just curious as I'm also an SZ4 user thats looking at a replacement in the near future

 

sorry.... I already sold the sz on ebay...

But they are about the same brightness, and the t400 has the advantage of being matte(less reflections), and the SZ has glossy(better contrast). I think you would be happy with the t400.

The t400 is also a lot heavier than the SZ.

 

update:under normal usage(web browsing) you should expect 7.5 hours(9 cell) with 60% brightness/wifi on... this is with a LED screen and a P series processor, this goes up to 10 hours if you go with the 9 cell/ultrabay. The max I pushed this was 14 hours with the two batteries, this hapens when you minimize disk usage/cpu usage, the wifi actually only eats .1w when at idle, so it doesnt matter if its on or not unless your using it(this is why Kevin's review got 10h). And an interesting thing is that there is a very small difference between lowest brightness and 80% brightness battery wise.

 

Hey guys, I got a problem with my T400's LED screen. It's LG and has no dead pixels. However, both of the lower right and left corners of the screen look a little bit darker than the rest of it (I don't have a camera here right now to take a picture though). Is this normal or some types of defectiveness? Thanks!

 

how much darker do they look? I dont have this problem... try looking at the screen from a different angle

 

I found a good example to demonstrate my problem. Here is a picture from the review of Kevin:

Do you notice that the lower right corner of the screen is slightly darker than the rest of it? However, the lower left one is still normal.

But as to my screen, both of them are darker