New Thinkpads are out with Sandy Bridge - T/W/L series

Whoa, a bit jealous here but not much to make me wanna upgrade. The battery life though for the 6 cell should be like 5hrs in reality and 8hrs total with extra 3 cell. 5hrs of actual life sounds pretty good to me!

 

What GPU is the 4200M in line with?

 

see other people's comment.

 

Ill believe 15h battery life when I see one from actual reviews and first adopters rather than specualtions on paper, notice that chupacabras image shows 9h battery life, not sure if its for 9 cell or 6 cell?
IF the battery life numbers prove to be real then its good enough to make me wanna upgrade, but lets wait for X220

 

The 4200M should be an improvement over the currently used GPU. Somewhere I heard it would be more closer to the GTS 420M in terms of specs and graphical performance. This would be similar to how the NVS 3100M in the T410/T410s/T510 is close to the GTS 310M in performance.

That would mean about 2x the 3dmark06 score (graphical performance?), which would put it close to where the W510 is now. But what it would mean in reality, I guess we have to wait for the reviews.

GTS 310M info & performance

NVS 3100M info & performance

GTS 420M info & performance

 

In line with the 3100M would really be bad, its not much more powerfull than the ondie gpu

 

23 hours for the X220 according to
YouTube - LenovoVision's Channel at time 1:03

 

sorry i misread, i thought he was talking about the new Intel integrated GPU. So what i posted was incorrect.

 

I can't wait for the x220.. come on Lenovo - get it out there! Also, that promo video was awesome.. now I'm all hyped up!

 

Dolby Home Theater Audio in a Thinkpad. Wonder how that will improve from the awful sound on current T's.

 

they probably meant 30hours with the screen switched off, the wifi turned off, all the leds turned down, and what else... oh the laptop shut down.

I think that 30hours is just for the marketing. 20hours would have been something probably more realistic.

 

well considering my T400 got around 11 hours on a 9 cell when new, i'd imagine 15 hours on a 9 cell T420 is pretty believable. add to that an additional 9 cell slice and i feel like their claim is achievable.

 

I'll believe it when I see it. OEMs have been making outrageous battery claims for years and nobody holds them accountable.

 

Decent upgrade but I'm pretty content with my T410i. Increased battery life is nice though as my current config with 6 cell + 9 cell slice is a bit on the heavy side.

 

Any word on whether the Pantone colorimeter will remail an option on the W520?

 

Well there are some inconsistency between the picture on engadget press release with this one

http://notebooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/T420_standard_01.jpg

On engadget press release, on the right side of the laptop is clearly shown that there are no display port and VGA port. I cannot locate any of those ports on the rest of the pictures there. It seems that they have taken out those ports out from the new T. Can anyone confirm this?

Excluding a VGA port is a big no-no for our company, since we still use many VGA port projectors for our meeting and conference rooms. Yes, i know that they are slow and analog but we have so many of them and it works perfectly fine with the LCD and smartboard. And as far as i know we do not have ANY projector that uses display port.

Bummer...

 

I think you are confusing the right side for the left side of different laptops? Looking at the Engagt photos, the T420 series has both a VGA and Display port on the left side. However, the T420S it looks like, has them in the back? (which is shown in none of the pictures released i've seen)

Lenovo T Series press shots - Engadget Galleries

 

Wait...

is this the right side?

http://www.engadget.com/photos/lenovo-t-series-press-shots/#3904813

and this is the left side

http://www.engadget.com/photos/lenovo-t-series-press-shots/#3904809

No VGA there?

My humble apology to chupacabras, i think i compare two different laptops. Yeah you are right, for the T420s maybe the VGA is on the back.

 

Yeah you can see the whole different layout on the left side which is similar to T410s now. I thought i was loosing my mind too till i paid closer attention

 

Check out T420/T520 spec's page:
Lenovo - Laptops - ThinkPad - T Series - T420 and T520
It mentions up to 24h of runtime on battery, not 30h.
Then again, it also lists Windows 7 Home Premium as the top OS available

 

Hmm ... not 7 Pro? Wonder why?

Thanks for the links btw.

 

Page 3 of the PDF clearly lists Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate as options.

 

Does anyone know if these have HDMI?

 

HDMI - probably not (and from the looks of it NO). These are business machines no HDMI - you can always use DisplayPort to HDMI adapter though

 

Oops ... missed that.

 

Displayport supports audio as well?

 

Crazy

PDF/product page also lists 9h battery life on T410 with I dont know which battery, I hope its with the 6 cell battery and not the 9 cell.
Im sure Lenovo will offer every Win7 version on their refresh that is available on current models.
Given these small errrors I wonder whats the final battery life, weight and size number on refreshed models

 

Displayport technology support audio, but many vendors don't utilize it. I'm not sure w/ the t420, but the Dell E6410 does not have the audio enabled when you use a DP->HDMI adapter. Even though the DP can carry the audio signal, the laptop has to have the audio signal connected to the DP output.

Maybe someone w/ a T410 can say if the audio is enabled on the displayport?

 

Has anyone figured out exactly what the discrete graphics are?

 

For the most parts yes. For the T series the bottom bezel is now much thicker which is noticible.

 

I think they said 33% better battery life than the previous generation, so if the T410 got 9 hours from the 9 cell, then the T420 should get 12 hours from the 9 cell. 15 hours would have been quite amazing, but 12 hours is still really awesome. I can't even imagine anyone needing the 9 cell slice battery because most people just aren't using their laptops for 24 hrs at a time or 24 hours away from a power outlet

 

On the blogs they mentioned the DP on the T410s supports also audio and I've seen a few people confirming it is working. However I haven't tried it yet personally and cna not even confirm if multichannel audio is supported.

 

On more sites I saw today and as it is more or less expected it should be the NVS 4200M with 1GB VRAM, mentioned here http://www./awesome-2011-thinkpad-t420t420st520-it-doesnt-get-much-better.htm

I suppose it will be the same for the T420, T420s and T520 in common and the graphics card should have a similar performance to the NVIDIA GT 420M

 

I don't know if this applies to the Dell, but on the 8740w, you need a specific DP to HDMI adapter to pass the audio. It's buried somewhere in one of the two 8740w Owners Lounge threads (old one closed due to size).

 

anyone who's interested in a thinkpad already knows what they're getting in the looks department

 

It was a rhetorical question meant to point out the upside to maintaining a predictable design.

 

Yeah, I figure the 4200M is a business branded 420m, but am not sure.

That would mean close to a 330m (like the Vaio Z), which is certainly a lot better than the 310m (3100) on the T410. And a decent upgrade from the reasonably able integrated Sandy Bridge graphics.

 

I guess the 4GB SSD option will offer some sort of hybrid hard drive. Hopefully it doesn't cost too much

 

No quad core on the T420

Some things I could live without (e.g. USB 3.0) but I could have really used a quad core on the 14 inch models.

 

Guys, is 30 hours when you dim the screen to 1%, turn wifi off, and leave it sitting on your desk? That's what I think. Technically... it's not lying.

 

why exactly do you need a quad core in a laptop?

 

My guess is Apple will probably announce 15 hr battery life in their new Macbook Pro's expected this week, so Lenovo decided to beat them to it so they are "First to offer...."

 

why not?
I use my 14" laptop for photoshop, illustrator, coding and processing data in addition to the usual writing or watching videos. I wouldn't mind having the extra cores.

 

Seems strange with no quads in 14" as batterylife is not an issue now :s

 

The 8440w/p offers up to 840qm, no reason to doubt their 8460w/p will also offer all but Extreme quad cores.

 

Hmm, well no 13" T300, T310, etc. like a few of us were hoping for

Oh well, most of us knew the 13" Thinkpad form factor was dead a long time ago anyway, it just would've been nice to see a new 13" Thinkpad from lenovo

Also, looking at one of the videos (this one here: YouTube - ThinkPad Enterprise Portfolio 2011) , in the Spec's it says it can take a drop 50% system drop improvement due to the latest generation roll cage (* compared to a 2 year old Thinkpad ). It would be interesting to see what's new and improved on the new Thinkpads roll cages.

 

My work requires a lot of statistical and numerical computation. This type of data can always (assuming the data set is large enough) use more cores. The data sets I work with are not so large that a computer cluster is needed - one workstation is fine.

Typically people in my field will have multiple computers, using a desktop for major computations and a laptop to collect data at research sites. However, with quad core laptops a lot of people (me included) could get away with just having one machine for work and play. The 14 inch size would be great because you get a portable weight and size and the screen/keyboard is big enough for me to use it for longer periods.

I'm not really a fan of having more than one computer. One laptop to do it all would be great.

 

It's just a shame they only offer a lower end workstation card (fx 380M) on those.

 

Yeah I was hoping for a 13in T series also as it has a few things that the X220 doesn't(optical drive is the key one). I am very happy with a 11-12in screen size, but the specs and battery life have me drawn to this, if the 1600x900 screen is acceptable for photoshop and offers good clarity and close to accurate color/tone.

I don't really need quad core, but I am in love with its performance of it. My mother has a Vaio F w/base i7qm and that thing is a beast. Sure it be nice to offer it on the T420, but I doubt I would want to spend the extra for it.

 

I believe the Dell E6420 will have a quad core option as well. So there are definitely options out there.

I never really understood why business computer makers put entry level discrete graphics in their 14 inch laptops. Even the 4200M in the T420 and the E6420 seem like they are only going to be a small step above the graphics built into the Core i7/i5.

If they can put such powerful graphics chips into their 14 inch consumer models, why not something better in the business models?