T420 Impressions after a few days

Hey Everyone,

So I’ve had my new T420 for a few days now (upgraded from a T400) and I just wanted to do a quick review/thoughts about the machine.

Build Quality:

The first thing I noticed right out of the box is that this machine is significantly lighter than my old T400. Not only that, but it feels sturdier as well (maybe because the palmrest and rest of the top of the computer is now one piece). Hinges for the screen are wider as well, nice and tight, with absolutely no screen wobble. The 9 cell battery only sticks out of the back by around ½ an inch as well. Unlike my T400 9 cell, there is absolutely no wobble.

Performance:

The specs of my machine are in my signature. I upgraded mine by adding in a 4 GB G Skill 1333 MHz stick of RAM that I got off newegg and added a 96 GB Kingston V+100 SSD. After installing the SSD, I put did a clean install of Windows 7 64 Pro. The machine was very snappy and responsive. Boot times are ~20 seconds. Even with my stock 320 GB 7200 RPM Hard drive, the machine was very responsive and boot times were quick (<60 seconds). I have only tried two games on this machine: Crysis 2 and NBA 2K11. Both games run very fluently. Crysis was very playable at 1366x768 on gamer settings. In addition NBA was fluid at 1600x900, with all settings except AA turned on max. I was happy with the machine’s performance.

Screen:

I have an AUO HD+ 1600x900 panel in my machine. Personally, I found the screen to look very nice, and did not notice any of the graininess that other people were talking about (maybe because I was coming off of a T400 screen), but anyways it was a vast improvement from my previous laptop. The brightness of the display is very good and I usually use it at 12/15 indoors, as the max brightness is too bright for me to comfortably use. Viewing angles aren’t bad (hey it’s not an IPS display, what do you expect?). Overall, I’m very satisfied and found that the HD+ resolution is very nice for multitasking such as having two word docs or a word doc and a website open on each half of the screen.

Heat/Noise:

With the stock hard drive, I thought that the T420 was a little noisier than my old T400. Note by no means is this laptop loud, it is very quiet and you can only notice it when you’re in a dead silent room. After my SSD upgrade, I literally cannot hear a thing. There is minimal fan noise.
This laptop can indeed be used as a LAPtop. It remains cool to the touch during usage such as web browsing. It only gets a little hot while gaming, but not intolerably so.

Battery Life:

WOW. Is about all I can say here. I received a Sanyo 9 Cell battery with my computer. Just reading and editing word documents on a max battery profile, I could get 13 hours of usage. With web browsing in the mix, I could easily pull off 10 hours. This is at 6 brightness.

Quirks:

I have accidentally opened my optical drive on occasion when picking up the laptop. The button isn’t very well placed. By no means is it a dealbreaker, and by now, I have learned to avoid it.

A lot of people complain about the large bezel on the machine. You only notice it if you are trying to notice it. During normal usage and whatnot, it’s not even in the way.

Mine had a 320 GB Momentus Thin hard drive included. Hence, it shipped with 7.5 mm rails as opposed to 9.5 mm rails that my SSD needed. Thankfully though, I just took the 9.5 mm rails from my T400 and basically swapped them and everything works fine for me.

Also: The Ultrabay caddy from my T400 albeit is a little short, fits and works fine in my T420.

 

Nice review.

Have been giving this laptop some thought but with the Intel GPU for $620 no OS included.

 

Nice review!

 

Great to know you had some success with gaming.

As for installing the SSD, was it easy?

 

It was very easy (given that you receive the right size hard drive rails for it). All I had to do was remove one screw for the hard drive compartment, slide out the old drive, trade the hard drive rails with my T400 (which has 9.5mm rail needed for my 9.5mm V+100 SSD) and slide the drive back in. I believe rails can be purchased on eBay as well. Note that you won't necessarily receive 7mm rails with your computer and it all depends on your luck (7mm or 9.5) with what type of hard drive you receive with yours.