T430s owners'/would-be owners' thread.

I'm getting an T430s for university. It's quite an ideal balance between weight/formfactor and power. (has a thunderbolt port and non-ulv i7 to run a egpu) Personally, I think that there is a point where light becomes too light and that starts becoming flimsy. I like some weight to my devices, I like to make the comparison to a cell phone. I have one of those slim ipods and honestly, I feel like I could snap it if I really wanted to. There was some time ago where cell phone manufacturers were all about slimming down and minimizing the footprint and size of the cell phone, however now, it's about fattening it back up to incorporate bigger screens, larger batteries, better processing power and whatnot. I see the laptop (netbooks, ultrabooks whatever) under the same scope. I think the MBA is verging on too light, it becomes a little uncomfortable to work on, keypresses don't have much response and the T430s to be more ideal. But of course, I stress again, all personal opinions.

 

Add me to the list of i7 T430s orders that haven't shipped. Lenovo is now saying July 2nd to ship. The order has been "In Produciton" for about a week now. Order was placed June 14th. The W530 on the same order arrived a week ago.

 

Looks like it's either gotta be the i7 making the delay, or some part associated with it such as the Thunderbolt port, etc.

 

People, let's get one thing straight here. A Thinkpad T430s is NOT an Ultrabook and vice versa. If your main driver is portability and battery longevity, and your usage is light general computing, then an Ultrabook probably is your best choice. Ultrabooks however use a low voltage version of a regular mobile CPU. As a result they draw less power, generate less heat but also offer less performance.

If you want more performance however, you simply have to accept having to sacrifice portability and autonomy. Don't forget that for instance we are talking about a 18w TDP difference between the i7 3520M and the 3517U CPU. That alone makes reaching Macbook Air type battery times a challenge for the T430s .... You do however get quite a bit of performance increase in return ...

 

What is the rough daily battery of the t430s with a 9 cell battery and i7 cpu? I would go for i5 but it doesn't come with a thunderbolt port.

 

On my two batteries, I get anywhere from 5 to 6.5 hours, depending on usage patterns.

 

Yeah i see what you mean, i was to fast typing that, Thought and spelled a little wrong.

 

Just for clarification:
t430s 6+3=9 cell 75wh
t430 9 cell = 84wh (12% more)

 

heh - crap - my date just shifted to 2012/07/04

 

Where are you ordering? USA?

 

It's not just about style. The Asus Zenbook Prime packs an 1080p IPS screen, SSD, larger touchpad and longer battery life. It's simply a far superior computer for light work + entertainment. However, the T430s is far more expandable and have more space for heat management. It's probably better suited as a workhorse. And of course, it's much cheaper if you buy on sales.

I wouldn't put too much faith on "good built" or "reliability". The T430s simply feels cheap comparing to my T61p with flimsy bottom and palm rest. The left bottom corner is slightly higher. The form factor has inherently better heat management, but don't think it as an old school Thinkpad.

 

I feel I may have a breakthrough on my pending T430s with i7 order (placed 6/17). Finally today a pending charge was placed on my credit card.

Ordered 6/17 with estimated ship date of 6/24
On 6/25 the ship date changed to 6/28
On 6/29 the ship date changed to 7/4
7/2 Pending charge placed on credit card (hoping it ships!)

 

Indeed i agree what you say, IPS sounds good to have, but i'm not to very fussed about it, good for movies etc i know, but that will go on the lcd tv trough HDMI anyway. The screen on the T430s is good enough for me(seen some reviews) tbh since will only do schoolwork, web and some light cad/lightroom and microsoft office on it. The thing also with the t430s is as you mentioned, that i can swap battery/add, get an ssd and change to more ram etc and i like to have that option. 1.79kg i think aint to heavy to drag to university anyway. Readed also the keyboard is very good to type on and that i appriciate since it most likely will be much typing.
Thanks for the reply though, i didnt mean to be a doosh if you felt that.

Yust a guy who never have had a thinkpad before or even a laptop. Only self build pc's.

 

I would of course like an IPS display on the T430s and would gladly pay for it...but with that said, the Thinkpad features are just what I need and no other notebook can match them. I've got a desktop with an IPS display for photo/video editing, movies, etc. The Thinkpad is purely a mobile workhorse, mostly for work applications.

 

The display is not that bad. Not great, but not bad.

 

Just placed an order for the ultrabay battery directly from Lenovo. Hopin it's worth the $102 extra I just payed!

 

There is some irony in comparison of the "finish and feel" of the two; the T61p may "feel reliable", but its days are numbered due to its video card while the T4x0s has no such death sentence...

I'm not saying that your particular T61p is going to die soon... just that (IMHO) you can't really judge a ThinkPad by its cover. (Except the ThinkPad Edge 15. Judge away. )

 

Given that T430s just came out, I am not sure how else you can judge it. Plus, Lenovo does not manufacture many of its major components, so the main thing it is responsible is the build quality and services, which is not all that impressive in the case of T430s. Not that T60p is particularly good either.

 

They don't assemble all of their laptops either, but that's not my point. My point was that trying to judge reliability based on perception of fit and finish is not, in my experience, a terribly productive endeavour.

 

Quick question: Some pages back, it was recommended to set the computer to start charging below 65% and stop above 90%. what's the use of that?

 

to maximize the battery life.

 

Why not just use "Automatically optimize for battery lifespan" ??

 

A little question before i order, i readed that to choose the i7 over the i5 gives about 10-20% boost in performance. Though the price will be pritty much higher, is it worth it?

I dont need the thunderbolt port, and the thoughest programs i'm going to use is some light CAD/3d and photoshop lightroom for some photos now and then, word and powerpoint probably in many cases.

 

With your usage I would purchase the i5 laptop. Lightroom may be more demanding, but overall I would choose the i5. I would also think that it will produce less heat/noise compared to the i7.

That said, I just bought a T430s i7 today . I have some devices that I hope I can use with the thunderbolt port (Apple thunderbolt display and a Promise Pegasus R6)

 

For what it's worth, in a similar situation, I purchased an i5 T430s. I use Photoshop extensively, but for the additional $200, I upgraded the RAM to 16GB and bought an mSATA, which will hopefully be far more noticeable in day-to-day use.

I'll be posting a full review with benchmarks in the next few days, so you may want to look out for that.

 

Something else you may want to consider .. it seems like folks who've order the i7 are experiencing some significant delays in shipping. I ordered mine on June 11th and the estimated ship date has been pushed back to July 4th.

 

So, July 4th is tomorrow, I don't mind having my new laptop shipped tomorrow

 

Thanks for the respond gyes, much appriciated. Though did my decision, and think i got most my answers from this thread and some reviews.

Ordered the i5 version(Intel Core i5 3320M / 2.6 GHz).
With the 500gb HDD, 4gb ram.

Will be upgrade to 8 or 16gb ram in a mounth and a samsung 8 series 256 SSD.

I will post my impressions of the pad when it arrives in a week or so.

 

How can anybody who uses photoshop extensively possibly even consider doing their work on the T430s display?

 

There, I fixed that for you. External monitors...

 

Lightroom yes. Screen It's not the best, not the worst but good enough as iv'e seen, it's only photohobby.

 

If I am not mistaken, my original comment was on "good built" and "reliability".

Then why are you getting a laptop?

 

Just an update on my T430s with i7 CPU. It just now says it shipped!

Ordered 6/17 with estimated ship date of 6/24
On 6/25 the ship date changed to 6/28
On 6/29 the ship date changed to 7/4
7/2 Pending charge placed on credit card
7/4 Website states an actual ship date of 7/2 (when card was charged). UPS tracking is blank.

 

My T430s has also finally shipped. No tracking number yet, but it is scheduled for July 10th delivery.

 

Mine shipped last night too !!

Because search is being a pita and not working for me - is there a thread on how to properly condition the battery? Its been quite a while since i have had a laptop...

 

Do any of you think there will be any "quality issues" with the i7 Thunderbolt port since it's SO early in the Thunderbolt game?

I'm trying to buy a laptop that I won't have to plug and unplug 3 or 4 things every time I move it from my desk to a mobile location. I immediately assumed I'd have to buy a dock but it seems Thunderbolt could serve that purpose. I've seen a few Thunderbolt docks pop up online.

 

Thunderbolt is mature as a technology. Unfortunately, TB peripherals are still somewhat uncommon.

 

So, basically that TB port could take over the duties once only carried out by the dock connector on the bottom? I guess the only problem is waiting on a new Lenovo Thunderbolt dock.

 

what do you want to connect to a thunderbolt port that requires more bandwith then usb3.0? imo the only thing that needs that much bandwith is a gpu. or a massive NAS SSD setup.
there are many usb dockings that work.

 

I was assuming I was looking for some sort of dock to connect DisplayPort or HMDI, and 2 or 3 USB connections (keyboard, mouse, maybe a DAC).

 

When you get it, stick the battery in and connect to charger. Charge it all the way to 100%. Unplug and let it drain to 5% or so. Charge all the way back up again, and that should be sufficient.

 

Just now got an official ship notice by email for my T430s i7 system. The website says 7/2 as the actual ship date, but judging by the tracking the actual ship date really was today, 7/4. Estimated 5 days for shipping to the US.

 

Using my T430s at 12/15 brightness, browsing only ... have been on for 3.5 hrs and battery says 1:15 left. So I am getting about 4.5 hrs.

No additional bay battery.

 

I just got shipping confirmation on mine too. Estimated delivery date is 2012/07/11.

Looking forward to getting my hands on my first Thinkpad!

 

I'm thinking about upgrading my three and a half year old X301 to a T430s, and wondering if it's a worthwhile upgrade. From a performance point of view the T430s is obviously a great leap (even my wife's X201i is faster than the X301). From a screen/portability/build quality standpoint I am not so sure. Does anybody know how the screens compare? Will I find the added weight OK? I work as a consultant and travel with my own PC, as well as with one that belongs to a client, three days per week. The other days I work in my office with a nice external 24 inch IPS monitor. Performance is not that important, but screen resolution, picture quality and weight is (considering I'm carrying two computers). Other brands than Thinkpad don't really interest me, since I am addicted to the trackpoint and keyboard, and find the build quality and serviceability slightly better than Dell and HP, and obviously vastly superior to anything from most other manufacturers. I replaced the fan in my X301 myself when it developed a rattle, and can't really imagine doing that on a Sony, Samsung or ASUS.

The type of work I do is mostly MS Office, but some of the Word and Visio documents are rather heavy.

I considered the X230 with IPS screen, but don't particularly fancy a downgrade in screen resolution. The X1 carbon is obviously an alternative, but do we know if it will have a better screen than the 1600x900 in the T430s? If it does, that would probably be my best choice, but if the screen turns out to be the same as the T430s, I might take the better performance, battery life, ethernet connector and expandability of the T430s over the lower weight of the X1.

Price is no issue at all, since I use it professionally and it only costs about a day or two of consultancy revenue even if I go for a fully loaded one. I've been holding on to the X301 for too long, but there hasn't been anything around that I felt compelled to upgrade to.

What do you guys think?

 

After having had my T430s for a couple of days now, I am really liking it. Yes, the screen viewing angles are as bad as everyone says, but it is otherwise a solid machine.

Question: does anyone have any experience and recommendation for a miniDisplay-to-HDMI adaptor? I'm thinking of heading on eBay to have a look.

Thanks in advance.

 

Check Monoprice.com for cables and adapters. Some seriously cheap and VERY high quality stuff.

 

X301 is also notorious for its screen. I compared mine with my friend's x301, I'd say they are comparable although the screen door effect on the T430s is slightly more noticeable. The annoying thing is that T430s's screen is actually smaller vertically since it's a 16x9.

The fan on the T430s is noisy since it's always at 3000rpm.

 

Deal extreme has one at 6.99 free shipping. However, ebay has a 6FT Mini DP to HDMI adapter around the same price which might be better since you wouldn't need a HDMI cable anymore.

 

Vertically, the screens of the X301 and the T430s are the same size. The T430s has a wider screen.

1440x900 was the resolution for the X301.

1600x900 for the T430s.