T430s or T431s, and a concerning question about T431s mSATA slot

T431s or T430s?

First let me apologize for my English, sorry if reading through this cause you any headache…

I gave away my T410 (bad bad decision) the day after I got a i7 Yoga 13 with 256G SSD, and bought a M4 256G which I planned to put in the free mSATA slot, only to find out i can't live with that yoga keyboard and that huge off-center touchpad which gets in the way all the time a few days later... anyway, end up returned that yoga13 and is using my heavily abused limping T500 now with a replaced motherboard... I was looking to go back to thinkpad and buy a T430s right away but Lenovo announced T431s one day afterwards. now i dont know what to choose, although leaning towards T431s a little bit.

things i'm looking for in my next laptop: first X1C is not an option for me, I can’t accept that screen with high dot pitch.
 weight: less than my T410, it doesnt have to be light as an Acer S7 or Samsung 9, just reasonably lighter, and as slim as possible.
 Processing power: doesn’t really matter, anything i5 or i7, M or U… all fine to me, I can run Lightroom, DPP and video processing applications on my desktop and I don’t play games. 8G or more RAM is needed.
 Storage: comes with 256GB SSD or user upgradeable to 256GB SSD is an absolute minimum requirement, but I really prefer any flexibility to configure a second drive, HDD or SSD, is a big plus, preferably HDD as the second drive.
 Screen: wouldn’t mind squeezing my eyes on a FHD screen, but I can only settle on a 900p, afterall I’m looking for a thinkpad, have to live with that screen, right?
 Tough… every one of my laptop gets dropped once or twice… many many times in the case of my old T410… so it needs to be tough…
 Not much else…

So, T431s is lighter, slimmer, user replaceable 7mm SSD, mSATA available ( a concerning question later), all good, and I like the new look. And I don’t care much about the indicators, lid lock, flipped logo or that new touchpad (I think I can manage, maybe…).

So what do I have to sacrifice if I choose T431s? removable battery, ultrabay for optical drive and HDD, full voltage cpu, and possibly a couple hundred dollars… since we don’t know for sure how much optional parts will cost in customized build, and of course the risk of buying an unproven, newly designed product. Did I miss any other key point?

If I didn’t miss many advantages that T430s have, I probably should go with T431s, it was all good until I found a video which shows how to disassembled a T431s ( T431s) and at about 4 mins in (screen captured image below), it shows that the WWAN card is secured by a single retaining screw in the middle on the outer edge, unlike typical mSATA SSD which should be secured on the 2 corners of the board. Does this mean users can no longer install a mSATA SSD on T431s? if so, I can only have one 7mm SSD instead of having OS installed on a 256G mSATA, and have a 500G HDD to store all the photos and videos, which I was intended to do, that maybe a deal breaker…



I don’t really understand these hardware upgrades, can some one please tell me for sure whether the mSATA slot on T431s, as shown in the video, can be used to intall a regular mSATA SSD. If I can, I’ll probably still struggle to make the decision, if it can’t be used to install SSD, T430s it is.

Any help is appreciated!

Kai

 

You can´t use a mSATA SSD with the T431s, because it uses already the so called "M.2" form-factor. This new form-factor replaces the mSATA SSDs.

 

I remember reading that somewhere, but then when i look at the datasheet, it says mSATA SSD: http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/t-series/t430s/T430s-datasheet.pdf

Im confused.

 

I spend whole day installing Win 8 on my T500 and it worked, sort of ...

so I'll probably get a T430s, or i can wait for haswell and new thinkpads that comes with it. probably at end of 2013? depends on how well my T500 with Win 8 serves...

thanks

 

The Yoga TouchPad is no further "Off Center" than most newer Lenovo's these days (Especially the T431s).

My guess is, you'd be better off with a T430s with the smaller TouchPad and real TrackPoint buttons.

That way you can shut the TouchPad off (which is what I do on all ThinkPads). Not sure if you can shutoff TouchPads with integrated Buttons and still have the buttons work (I would hope so).

 

while using Yoga, my left palm is off the touchpad when typing, but my right palm is right on the right cornor of it, it feels cold and uncomfortable and keeps clicking if i try to reach far keys like Y, 6 or 7.

I prefer windows 8 over windows 7 overall, but after a few days of reading on different forums, i find out that Power Manager on win8 no longer performs as it does on win7, and there is no confirmation that lenovo will put the function back, my laptop will be on my desk 80% of the time, when I need to go out usually my Surface RT would be enough, and I hate to have it charged my laptop to 100% all the time, especially with a build in battery

After installing power manager driver and dependency package on my T500, I managed to enable battery threshold function through modifying values in the registry, but it is not very practical especially when I need to switch mode from "best for my battery" to "best battery life", i'll have to modify registery settings and reboot everytime, and as far as I know, this trick doesnt work on all thinkpads, appearently not on X230

all of these is now holding me back from buying my next thinkpad... plus the rumors of haswell coming sooner with much better battery life... and probably a little bit more power from cpu.

 

Win8 runs fantastic on my "old" T420 (i5). I can 8 hours or so on the 6 Cell. Win7 ran fine too. I installed minimal drivers from Lenovo (Chipset, Buttons, PowerMgt, Trackpoint for the most part).

 

have you got your bluetooth and switchable graphic working? if so, how did you do it?

 

This T420 has No Bluetooth and only has Integrated Graphics.

I try to stay away from discrete graphics now, they cause nothing but trouble, you end up with driver issues in the long run.