My T420 review

As I promised over at the ThinkPads.com forum, I've done a full review of my new T420.

I hope this helps anyone who's considering the notebook. Please accept my apologies in advance for any mangled grammar or wince-inducing typos.

 

Awesome Review. You've help me make a final decision on purchasing the t420.

 

No pics?

 

Nope. My T420 looks exactly like every other T420. What is there to take pictures of?

Plenty of reviews to come will have the usual assortment of pictures. I was more interested in reviewing the stuff that users such as myself care about but that most reviews never seem to cover, or never seem to cover in enough depth.

 

I'd think the switch from 16:10 to 16:9 might merit a few snaps.

 

Picture the display assembly of the T410. Now picture it with a slightly shorter panel that's about the same width. There you go.

Kidding aside, I honestly don't think I can do a better job than Lenovo did with their press shots. There's really not much difference, and even if I did take pictures there's only so much that you could do with a BlackBerry's camera and low-power CFL lighting...

 

Really liked the review, pretty much agree with you on all points although I don't have a T410 for comparison. I'm coming from a T61 so it's quite a jump for me. This is actually the first laptop I've ever bought brand new and I'm very happy with my decision.

 

Thanks very much for your review. I will read it in detail over the next 24 hours. Rebuilding a W520 from the ground up at the moment.

I expect my T420s to ship tomorrow. So with any luck I'll have some detailed thoughts on it in about 2 weeks.

 

Nice review, thanks. Does your keyboard seem more glossy, than the one on your T410, because mine does, and the Caps Lock key does not seems as black as the other keys and the surface also seems different?

 

liked the review. especially the last part.

 

Rob,

How's the text quality on the display?

Ken

 

Excellent review! Thanks.

 

Rob, thanks for your balanced and thoughtful review.

(I like your T410 review even better. And your page formatting reminds me of the Netscape days.)

 

Enjoyed the review Rob. So I flipped a coin and got the T420 over the X220/T420s model today.

 

Nice review.

Btw -- flex free keyboard exists on Alienware M11x. So I guarantee the flexless keyboard exists - I have used it. (And no it didn't flex even a little.) Keyboard flex on M17x-R2 is also negligible compared to both X200 and X200t.

The X200 I used also flexed little and so does X200 t near the enter key (where the hard drive is, so I didn't want to put anything there if its messing up with the cooling). X200 keyboard flexed quite a bit actually - above the ExpressCard slot, near the trackpoint buttons and near the Enter key. It was still a very good keyboard - it's just I feel there's some small room for improvement.

 

Great review, can you post some picture of your new t420.

 

I'm glad you guys like the review.

The keys seem the same as on the T410, and there don't seem to be any differences between individual keys -- at least not to my untrained eye. Under a very bright light there are some color variations, but if I didn't think to look for them I never would have noticed.

I'm not sure what you mean. Text looks fine, and standard RGB subpixel anti-aliasing works fine if that's what you mean. Comparing it to my T410 is a bit tricky, since they have different pixel densities, but it certainly doesn't seem any worse or any better at displaying text.

I use my notebooks for coding, e-mail, IRC, and the odd bit of browsing. Nearly everything I do with them is extremely text-centric. If there were an issue with legibility, the above link would have led to a rant rather than a review.

Regarding the keyboard: the only consistently flex-free keyboard design that I have ever used was the Model M, specifically the generation immediately after Lexmark took over production. Every other keyboard, including a number of desktop ones, has had some area of "flex" given the right amount of force in the right spot. I'm not saying it's impossible to have a flex free keyboard -- but I think that a number of people have impossibly-high expectations in this regard.

But hey, what the hell do I know? Keyboard feel is one of those highly-subjective things -- even the "horrible" T400 keyboards had their fans -- so if you're considering spending a large chunk of change on a notebook, go find a unit and give the keyboard a try. Maybe you'll love it, maybe you'll hate it. Either way you'll have a lot better information than you can get from a review by some random dolt like myself.

 

Also, speaking of the keyboard - at least on the X series - I found the typing experience much better when the laptop is docked on the Ultrabase.

 

Great review. Thanks.
This guy really knows his thinkpads =)

 

Wow your M11X must have been WAY better made than mine. Mine had a ton of flex. Just one of many design flaws on the M11X. The biggest one being a sheet of glass in front of an already glossy screen.

 

Thanks for looking, funny my new keyboard reminds me a lot of the one I have on the T43P.

 

Thanks for the information. What I mean is the text looks sharp and clear. You said the screen has some grid line effect that is cause pxiel spacing is not tight together. Therefore, I assume the text might look a little blur and not sharp.

I will use my laptop mostly writing documents and so it's very important the text is sharp and clear. That's the reason why I'm looking for a higher resolution like HD+ on 14" screen laptop.

Ken

 

Great review Rob.
You say "...considering that the notebook shipped with Windows 7 (which I have yet to get a refund for...)" in the Windows section.
Is it actually possible to get a refund for the "Windows tax" from Lenovo?

 

Nice review!

I highly, highly doubt it. And even if you were able to extricate some sort of refund from Lenovo, it'd probably not be worth it for your time and effort.

 

Since someone mentioned it I thought I would show the difference between 16:10 and 16:9. Both are 14 inch screens.

 

Ouch, when you put them side by side like that it's pretty significant.16:10 all the way. This move to 16:9 sucks.

 

AFAIK, it used to be possible back in the XP days due to Microsoft's EULA. The EULA has changed, and I haven't heard of successful attempts after XP -- but people have indeed gotten a refund for XP from Lenovo.

I did? I said it had a slightly grainy appearance, but my guess is that that's due to the coating. Pixel density certainly isn't a problem, and text is indeed sharp. The effect is really pretty subtle, and I might not have noticed it if I hadn't had AUO panels in the past that exhibited the same appearance. It's not a problem at all, more of an apparent peculiarity of that manufacturer.

I have a hard time getting all worked up about the move when the upshot is *more* screen real estate (1600x900 vs 1440x900).

 

I read documented efforts with Dell, some of which succeeded in getting a small rebate (although not the full "value" of the installed Windows OS), but I haven't read any stories of people successfully doing that with Lenovo. And, as you mentioned, the EULA has indeed changed.

That's my take on it. In the 14" segment, the highest available resolution used to be 1440x900. Now it's 1600x900. I'm quite fine with the marginally increased pixel density, for the new ability to comfortably lay two Word pages side by side.

 

There are a few: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Windows_refund#Lenovo

 

Interesting accounts. Kind of a hazy area, seeing as some people lost their suits/claims, whereas other people did receive some compensation. YMMV, it seems, although again I kind of doubt it's worth the time and effort to extract a refund.

 

Great review ThinkRob!!!!

Could you add some words on the heat/noise and the speakers?

Thx
Linux ftw!

 

It's more the principle of the thing really.

Heat: not enough to be bothersome. Warm after long parallel builds, never intolerable.

Noise: from a post I made over at ThinkPads.com: "Fan noise is, if anything, less than the T410. This thing is *quiet* -- it tends to idle with barely any fan speed (the fan's off as I type this), and even at full speed it's pretty quiet compared to some notebooks I've had."

Speakers: it's a business notebook, not a consumer/multimedia one. Take a guess.

 

I agree.

I'm more tempted to look at a Latitude E6410 through their Outlet or a T410 through Lenovo's than I was, just looking at those pictures. Resolution may be higher, but at the expense of screen height which is a bigger deal to me.

 

I don't know how I feel about the lower screen (height) but man that resolution is something I would love to have.

 

I'd like it too --just not at the new aspect ratio. It took me long enough to find a screen setup that works the way I want and my eyes aren't getting younger.

 

I must say that your benchmark is one of the most valuable in the day to day

 

I will say that I'm much, much more impressed with the Core architecture's implementation of SMT than I am with NetBurst's. It's a lot more useful for parallel builds -- enough so that I'll actually put jobs on the logical CPUs without fear of hurting build times (something which I could never really do back in the Pentium 4 days...)

 

it is indeed more reliable without the fear of corruption, it seems people only think about speed rather than what you get with the speed, just take a look at how the encoding in a gtx 460 is different from what you get with a intel HD3000 or with a AMD 6000, the quality is much worse on the former

 

I never saw SMT cause corruption of any sort. It occasionally caused a performance hit for some project builds, but I never had it break anything.

 

Rob, since you have the 6 cell battery, would you mind weighing it to see how much the T420 weighs?

I've seen 1.9kg and 2.2kg figures both for the 6 cell.

 

I too would be very interested in this please

 

My T420 weighs 2,2 kg, with dvd burner, WWAN card and two 4 Gb ram sticks installed.

 

What size battery do you have for that please?

 

Both, and quite well. Just as I expected, the lack of "Tubo Boost" simply doesn't matter for pretty much everything, and the extra battery life it brings is most welcome.

I continue to be impressed with the Core series' implementation of SMT. I'm seeing a substantial improvement in kernel build times even when not disk-bound (ex: using tmpfs for a build directory.)

 

Would love to see also
Anyone?

 

Rob, a question based on your review --Do you know if older keyboards are compatible with the T420?

I've found that the T60,T61, and T400 can swap keyboards (I'm guessing the T410 too but I haven't done it myself). Assuming that someone doesn't like the shorter throw of the new keyboard that you mentioned, I'm just wondering how easy it is to do a swap, especially with the older, solid-backed T60-T61 keyboards.

 

IIRC, the T410 and T420 share keyboard designs, but they are *not* interchangeable with previous generations.

There's no need to swap the keyboards though. The T400's perforated design was poor due to a lack of chassis support. That's not an issue with the T420; the keyboard is perforated, but the chassis support is excellent.

 

Tried any games yet? Like F.E.A.R demo or WoW on trial account at least?

 

I don't really game. Sorry. I can, however, report that it handles GameBoy and NES emulation just fine.

 

I don't think he can play games on his thinkpad because it does not have a dedicated graphics