T430s owners'/would-be owners' thread.

May I ask you how did you get such a price because the greatest discount I know of is the B&N and if I configure the same exact machine, it would cost me $996.75 USD before taxes.

 

Exactly - I can't even take my personal phone to work :/ Cameras are disabled on work Blackberry


PChrome: Employee Purchase program at work...

 

Oh, that may explain it at least partially and rationale confirmed by SubtleEntropy!

 

I do not think this can be shared, right?

 

Heh - I am pretty sure not... I had to log in through link provided via a site where I had to login with my work credentials.

 

That is fine. I did expect that. Congrats on your machine, my friend

 

That is in Canadian dollars. Somehow it's almost $200 cheaper in Canada.

 

That is an incorrect statement.
EVERYONE at work has Lenovos - Work buys them, employees buy them through work so we get a discount...

 

Lenovo's employee friends portal also has it on sale for that cheap. Free display upgrade too.

 

Quick GIS shows RFD has a link + password available - looks to be only Canada tho - Built the exact same system I bought for the same price (actually even cheaper but i think its the taxes...) some people are saying they are getting the i5 basemodel for under 700...

 

Someone with i5 version should check the bios please.
I was told by Lenovo employer that all T430s have thunderbolt.



Funny, if true.

 

Is it a better discount than B&N? If so, does it require special access?

 

There you go...

 

Any T430s owners able to give a comparison with the X1? Specifically pointing out where each is better than the other.

I'm in the marker for one but can't decide!

 

Yes, it is for Canada only but is cheaper than the B&N price.

Try pricing the T430s with i5-3320, then you must enter the discount code to get the discounted price.

 

Do they ship to the US?

 

I got mine for under 700, but with taxes in it goes to around $750

 

Anybody can comment on the display quality (the 1600x900 one) and real time battery life for the T430s? Also, does the machine overheat?

 

it just went to 6/14 and 6/21 and today is the 15th lol

 

I would very much like to own a t430s, but the weight is still a little too much for me. Hopefully by the time all the ultrabooks have come out and the prices have lowered a little bit it will be a lot more affordable than an ultrabook with 1600x900.

 

Just received my T430s. I can confirm a couple things:

- My i7 does have a thunderbolt port, or at least a thunderbolt icon next to the port (I have no thunderbolt devices)
- Despite what's reported in the tabook pdf, I have no option to switch in between thunderbolt and mini-displayport in the BIOS. My displayport monitor works fine with a miniDP to DP converter.
- The USB ports are indeed either blue or yellow. No black USB ports.

A couple immediate thoughts/opinions:

- Pretty good look and feel to it. It does feel a little bit on the heavy side if you ask me, but I'm coming from a 13". It is however fairly sleek and thin.
- Display isn't horrible, but it's not exactly great either
- Keyboard is definitely different, seems fine to me. I'm not that picky about my keyboards though.

I'm happy to answer questions..

 

How is the screen? I know you said good not great but can you give details? Bad viewing angles, bad contrast, bad sharpness? Thanks

Sent from my DROIDX

 

Unboxing video link will be here shortly.

 

Just discovered that the T420s does not ship with a screw to hold in an mSATA drive, so if you plan on installing one, you'll need to find a screw for it.

This is odd, since my T420 had the screw installed. For now, I'll be stealing the screw from the T420 to install the mSATA in the T430s.

 

Live blog! Thats terrible where am I going to find a screw?

 

I believe the size is M2 x 3mm. You should be able to order online, or Lenovo support might be willing to send you one for free, especially since I think the system probably should have shipped with it...

 

It's bright and clear, and no dead pixels. The only negatives I really see are how washed out it is when totally black, and the viewing angle gets poor quickly when you start to close the lid (all other angles aren't too bad)

I have the HD+ screen incidentally.

 

Unboxing video uploading now: Lenovo ThinkPad T430s Unboxing - YouTube

It seems to me that there is very little difference between the screen on my T420 and the T430s. If you're looking straight at it, it looks great. Viewing angles are what you'd expect from a TN screen, though (not great).

 

The order details website is not really reliable. It showed that mine will ship on the 19th, then it showed that it was shipped for over a day before it was actually surrendered to UPS (surrendered today).

The T430s are shipped with WORLD EASE, that is a bunch of them were shipped today. If you are lucky, yours might be in there as well and the website just isn't updated ;-)

 

I hate to be a bother as this has probably already been answered, but is the mSATA slot on the T430s or T430 actually Sata II or Sata III? Also, how much worse is the NVS 5200M than the 5400M?

 

I can definitively confirm that the mSATA is SATA II.

 

Let me also ask a probably answered question, is the connection for the primary hard drive when replacing it with an SSD is SATA III in both T430 and T430x?

 

Yes, the standard hard drive bay and the Ultrabay are both SATA III for both T430 and T430x systems.

 

If I were to get an ultrabay caddy and put a hdd in there, would there be any way to still use the dvd drive just through a sata to usb cable or something? or would I have to either take the hdd out or use an external dvd drive?

 

The ultrabay DVD drive uses a nonstandard power connector, so you can't use a generic SATA to USB cable. You'd need to either remove the Ultrabay HDD or get a USB DVD drive.

 

Better in terms of overall viewability. More like a Apple screen. With more than a 1% viewing angle. The screen on my X1 is simply pathetic. Washed out with zero vertical viewing angle.

I would sell it and but the T430s if it had a much improved screen. Apple gets it. Lenovo does not. I do not like OSX or I would buy the Apple.

 

1
2352CTO ThinkPad T430s - 1 Year Topeseller Express Depot Warranty
$2,869.00
$2,168.00
$2,869.00
$1,691.04


Processor

Intel Core i7-3520M Processor (4MB L3, 2.90GHz)

Operating system Genuine Windows 7 Professional (64 bit)

Operating system language Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 - English

Display type 14.0" HD+ (1600 x 900) LED Backlit Anti-Glare Display, Mobile Broadband Ready

System graphics Intel Core i7-3520M Processor (4M Cache, 2.90 GHz) with Intel HD Graphics 4000

Total memory 8 GB PC3-12800 DDR3 (2 DIMM)

Keyboard Keyboard Backlit - US English

Camera 720p HD Camera Mic

Hard drive 180GB Solid State Drive, SATA3

Ultrabay DVD Recordable

System expansion slots Express Card Slot

Battery 6 Cell Lithium Battery T81+

Power cord 90W AC Adapter - US (2pin)

Integrated WiFi wireless LAN adapters ThinkPad 1x1 b/g/n

Integrated mobile broadband Mobile Broadband upgradable

Language pack Publication - US English

Microsoft productivity software preload Microsoft Office Home and Student 2010 - NA English

 

Thanks to whoever posted the youtube unboxing video, it was interesting. I would love to see the numbers for the boot time with the SSD VS HDD. Went with the SSD option above (Paid $1691 with 20% discount for my config).

How do you toggle on and off the backlit option?

B.

 

I just finished installing a Samsung 830 Series into the T430s system from the unboxing video.

Boot time is 24 seconds from pressing the power button until the desktop is usable.

About 7 seconds of that is the system POST, so the Windows load is really only taking about 17 seconds with a fast SSD.

 

Does anyone know if this is a good set of memory for the T430s?

Newegg.com - ADATA XPG Gaming Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Laptop Memory Model AXDS1600GC4G9-2

 

I hope it is. That's the same set that I bought for my T430s. The lower voltage is what drew me to it. I'm hoping it will help out a little with battery life.

 

Thanks for help.

 

@s1148625
could you write something about display quality in t430s is it better than in previous T-models?

 

http://youtu.be/7YBcGOvCFSg

 

Really appreciate the video, but it's hard to tell screen quality from a video. All the talk about screen door effect is really scaring me. Like this photo here: http://i43.tinypic.com/357irsy.jpg

 

I have not observed the screen door effect on the T430s. The screen is bright and looks beautiful when using it straight on (which is the most common use case for a notebook screen). Horizontal viewing angles appear to be slightly better compared to my T420, but noticeable distortion occurs hen moving to view the screen from the far left or right side.

The loss of color accuracy is even more noticeable in the vertical viewing angles
Overall, the screen is pretty comparable to the one on my T420. I would not be surprised to learn that they use the same panel.

 

Initial Impressions:

Keyboard: I enjoy the keyboard more every day. It is taking some getting used to as far as the new placement/shape of the Delete, Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys for me, but in a few days, this keyboard will seem like second nature.

The tactile feel of the keys is wonderful. They are even snappier than the keys on the classic ThinkPad keyboard from my T420 (which is actually a T60 keyboard... I replaced the T420 keyboard on Day 1 because I didn't like the slight spring that the perforated back design allowed). Overall, my typing speed has not suffered at all (with the exception of when I use those keys mentioned earlier, since I'm still having to relearn the muscle memory for those).

The keyboard sound is satisfying, but not overly clacky as some classic ThinkPad keyboards have been prone to. If you are a loud typist, you will make a lot of noise with this keyboard. Try to press more gently.

The backlit keyboard is very nice, and the ThinkLight may be a touch brighter compared to previous models. It certainly does seem to provide better illumination compared to my T420.

The audio quality is noticeably improved over my T420. The mid and high frequencies are much crisper and well-defined. Obviously, low frequencies suffer on such small speakers, but you can't expect too much from a notebook of this size.

Although the screen fails to reach the stellar quality of an IPS display, for typical usage scenarios (looking at the screen straight on), saturation is bright without being overly so. At the highest brightness level, the screen is somewhat overwhelming in even a brightly lit room. I find myself having to turn it down to 10 or 12 (out of 15) to use it comfortably. Outdoors, the increased brightness and lack of a glossy screen makes the T430s usable, even in direct sunlight.

As far as battery life goes, I let it run down last night with some mindless web surfing. Got about 3.5 hours with the low backlight on, the Power Source Optimized power profile, and screen brightness set at 7.

If you have a really light unplugged workload, you could tweak the power settings to get considerably more battery life out of this system. I wanted to test a no-tweak use case last night.

If you require significant spans of time without being plugged in with your T430s, your best bet is to get an additional 3 cell Ultrabay battery.

One welcome change that I've noticed is that the USB ports are not nearly as tight as previous ThinkPads. On my T42, T60, T400, and T420, I have at times struggled to insert a USB flash drive or other USB cable into the USB ports, due to extremely tight engineering tolerances.

The new T430 ports are not loose, by any means, but they do allow the insertion of USB devices with much less force.

One notable design change in the T430s (at least compared to my T430 - I've not had an s-designated model before) is the fact that the palm rest, speaker cover, and top rear panel (immediately under the opened screen) are all a single piece of plastic. With previous models, the palmrest was a separate piece. Overall, this provides a somewhat sturdier appearance, and eliminates some of the flex from the removable palmrest that I've experienced with previous models.

This does suggest, though, that replacing the palm rest might take a bit more time, compared to previous versions, since the keyboard will need to be removed. For most ThinkPad fans, this shouldn't pose too much of a problem. The ability to access both memory slots, the Wireless card, and the WWAN/mSATA slot from the single bay on the bottom of the machine is a welcome addition. It made the installation of the mSATA drive and additional memory very easy to accomplish.

A word of caution: I made the mistake of using a 16GB USB memory key to create my system Recovery Media. Unfortunately, the drive that the Recovery Media Creator produced was not bootable, so I was unable to restore the factory partition to my SSD. The Recovery Media Creator will only allow you to create one set of recovery media (likely an issue with Microsoft Licensing), so if it fails (as mine did), you are left with no alternative other than to request recovery media from Lenovo.

With previous systems, it was possible to restore the system to factory state through Rescue and Recovery, and then burn a second set of Recovery Media. With this system, however, that is no longer possible, as the system must place a marker somewhere on the recovery partition itself mandating that no further recovery media may be created. Overall, this is a huge inconvenience, especially since Lenovo's tool failed to create bootable recovery media. Word to the wise: Create your recovery media on discs rather than on flash media.

I ended up performing a fresh install of Windows 7 to SSD, then installing the drivers and necessary software from the SWTOOLS folder on the original hard drive. As has been the case with previous systems immediately after launch, the ThinkVantage System Update tool doesn't completely detect all of the hardware and supported software on the T430s. Many of the drivers and software need to be manually installed, as TVSU simply doesn't recommend them as packages.

With the fresh load of Windows 7 Pro on the 256GB Samsung 830 SSD, the system boots in about 24 seconds. 7 of those are before Windows starts to load, while the system is POSTing.

Overal, I am pleased with the T430s. Although the weight and dimension difference compared to my T420 seem slight on paper, in daily use, the machine is less of a beast to lug around.

 

Thanks for the unboxing vid and the review above. I am really glad that the "screen door" effect is not present on the 430s.

Question - if one has a Windows 7 Ult Cd could you just back up the swtools folder and use the OEM code to reinstall? Would that allow you to recover everything you need? Or does the system restore also install other needed/required software?

 

Same here, modules are already here, only the T430s is missing.

 

AS SSD Scores for the Mushkin 120GB mSATA drive in the SATA-II mSATA slot on the T430s:

Sequential Read: 258.17 MB/s
Sequential Write: 165.04 MB/s
4K Read: 14.39 MB/s
4K Write: 38.88 MB/s
4k-64Thrd Read: 125.87 MB/s
4k-64Thrd Write: 142.63 MB/s
Acc. Time Read: 0.241 ms
Acc. Time Write: .312 ms

Score Read: 166
Score Write: 198
Score Overall: 450

AS SSD Scores for the 256 GB Samsung 830 Series SSD in the hard drive bay of the T430s:


Sequential Read: 496.02 MB/s
Sequential Write: 402.19 MB/s
4K Read: 13.87 MB/s
4K Write: 44.63 MB/s
4k-64Thrd Read: 392.15 MB/s
4k-64Thrd Write: 115.10 MB/s
Acc. Time Read: 0.110 ms
Acc. Time Write: 0.083 ms

Score Read: 456
Score Write: 200
Score Overall: 886

Obviously, the mSATA device is hitting the upper limits of the SATA-II 3.0Gbps bandwidth limit. However, if you need a huge hard drive and don't might a slight performance hit on your SSD, the mSATA drive, even limited to SATA-II speeds, will outperform any platter-based drive on the market. In many cases, even with benchmark results that show the Samsung 830 to be far superior in this system, the real-world performance for most tasks (other than booting, loading up hard-drive intensive applications) will probably be very similar.