T440p Owner's Thread

Saw your post at Ars Technica, too.

I've got one of these waiting for me when I can pick it up next month, and I'm already having buyer's remorse. WiFi disconnects, light bleed, battery sucking performance. Ay yai yai.

 

Update... The AUO display is evidently back ordered in the US, so my replacement could take a week or more to get done. So much for "next business day" onsite repair Perhaps too many people have been requesting replacements.

So far I've had no wireless dropouts and battery life looks like it'll be 4-5 hours for general usage, which is not too bad for a quad-core FHD machine, IMO.

Edit: my fan is now making a growling noise at the lowest couple of speeds, which is infuriating. Guess I'll have to add a new fan assembly to my service request. Hard to like a new computer when it needs fixing right off the bat

This is the first thinkpad I've ever bought that has had problems with such major components from the beginning. No idea if it's just bad luck or a sign of poor QA, but the biggest issue I've had to deal with in the past with a new Thinkpad was swapping out one keyboard for a better one (back in the days of true parts-lottery).

 

I have AUO panel, but never seen that bad "shadow images" in any panel than in this one. I had youtube site open for an hour and I could read video comments 5 minutes later from dark gray wallpaper. It took good 30 minutes to disappear completely, very scary situation

 

I have an X-Rite i1Display 2 calibrator and today I was able to take some measurements from my T440P with the LG LP140WF1-SPK1 panel. I was curious because people with AUO were remarking that they had to turn it down in order to not go blind and that wasn't my experience with the LG. The only measurements of the AUO panel I'm aware of were provided in a review of the Clevo W740SU at notebookcheck.net.

I took a screenshot of their measurements for the AUO panel and pasted in my measurements of the LG panel below. Screen brightness was set to maximum. Center brightness measured 219 cd/m2 at the max level. In case you are curious, the second step down from max measured ~160 cd/m2. I am not an authority on displays but it seems to me that the brightness shouldn't vary this much across the display area. What do you think?

 

It may be slightly more variation across the display than one would expect, but it's not abnormal IMO. More importantly, is there uniform color across the display? In addition to several areas of visible bleed on my LG display, the right side has a slight green cast. All in all it's not a great display considering it was a $200 upgrade. Hopefully the AUO panel I have on order is more uniform.

 

Is that after you've been using it or is that right after boot? Also, what storage are you using? And what power profile?

Do you have the Intel ipcc driver installed? ok I think that ought to do it... 😃

I've been impressed with my battery life... but I did a fresh install...

 

Finally got mine today (2 weeks shipping!) after it was found on the 4th day of UPS lost package trace. I'm just glad I didn't have to have an entirely new one built. I got i7-4700MQ, 730M, FHD and Intel AC then put in 16GB of my own ram and a Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD. I also put the lenovo 500GB HDD in the ultradrive bay with an adapter.

I'm coming from a 6 year old (fall 2007) macbook, so it's a big change in a lot of ways.

I'm not particularly impressed. Overall impression - it feels sturdy and light at the same time. I like the look and the thickness doesn't matter when it's this light. Keyboard - great (although a couple keys seem to clack/stick compared to the others). Trackpad - good enough and I haven't updated drivers or done anything with synaptics. I'd hazard to say that out of the box it still doesn't compare to my 6 year old macbook's touchpad. The motion of the trackpad is a non-issue because I always tap anyway. Screen - backlight bleed noticeable only on boot screen. Don't know what type of panel it is. Everything seems somewhat blurry at times but I think I just have to get used to it. WIFI - I seemed to get random disconnects as well with the Intel AC card. Speed - not really able to judge as I'll explain below but it felt unexpectedly sluggish with all the stock crapware, which I was going to remove later.

I botched the OS install on the SSD and managed to somehow eliminate my recovery partition on the HDD at the same time so I ended up with a machine that can't boot just 2 hours after receiving it I contacted lenovo support and they're sending me the recovery disks (no idea why they aren't included to begin with) but it'll be a couple of days in the mail. I am a total idiot for rushing things I didn't have experience with but I'd waited an extra week for the machine and was eager to get the hardware all set up before messing with everything else.

Everyone talking of doing a clean install - how exactly did you go about doing that? I figuratively banged my head against the internet for an hour before just deciding to go with a full migration to the SSD. It seemed to me like I could only download a windows 8 ISO if I had a retail windows 8 key, as the OEM windows 8 product key did not work on the microsoft site.

I'd greatly appreciate it if anyone had any tips for restoring the system earlier or could explain options for doing a clean install. Thanks!

 

I'm having an issue with the trackpad -- whenever I scroll slightly too far to the top (using two finger scrolling) it seems to just pull me back to the end of the page -- and it's doing this constantly, making it impossible to actually use the two finger scrolling.

Also, the keyboard my model came with has a spacebar with a dead zone on the bottom right (right where I lay my thumb) -- so I'm having Lenovo send me a new one.

Other than that the computer seems really spiffy. I plan on upgrading to an SSD and at least 12GB RAM in the next month.

 

For the clean install.. it's easy... create the bootable win 8 media (pro or otherwise) depending on your license and boot from that... you will need the wireless drivers available on a USB drive or something, then let it do it's updates then upgrade to 8.1

From there it's just a matter of installing the Intel ipcc driver and I believe the fingerprint and SD card software and whatever else you think you need...

 

After I've been using it. I'm using Windows 7 on a Samsung 840 Pro SSD. Power profile is set to just Balanced. Haven't messed around tweaking Power Source Optimized in Power Manager yet.

Not sure what the "ipcc" driver is.

I did a clean install of Windows and all latest drivers.

 

How does this work though? There's no Windows key on the bottom of the laptop so I wouldn't know what to type when the installer asks for the key

 

The license key is in the bios... you don't have to enter it at all...

But that's why you can't just install 8.1 the license is for plain win 8

 

If your definition of "clean install" is resetting the machine to the state Lenovo delivered it then the install will be reading the key that is embedded in your BIOS. You'd need to create the recovery "disks" which need to be a 16GB or larger USB thumb drive. You'll be reinstalling Win8 with all the stuff Lenovo preinstalled and then, optionally, you can upgrade to Win8.1 through the Windows Store.

If however by "clean install" you mean installing generic Win 8.1 and then adding just the necessary drivers from Lenovo that process is different. You can get a generic 8.1 ISO for free from Microsoft but it is not going accept the key embedded in your BIOS. I haven't actually done this yet but the basic idea is that you can use a placeholder key to proceed w/ the install, at some point after install retrieve your embedded key using one of several possible methods, and then activate windows online with your actual key retrieved from the BIOS.

Helpful post from the T440S thread.

The placeholder keys that will let you finish the install but NOT activate Windows are:
334NH-RXG76-64THK-C7CKG-D3VPT for Core
XHQ8N-C3MCJ-RQXB6-WCHYG-C9WKB for Professional

Also, somebody said there is a sticker behind your RAM dimms w/ your actual key on it but I haven't actually taken a look to see if that is true. Can anyone verify this?

 

I simply copied the recovery partition to a 16GB flash drive (via Windows Recovery menu), replaced the HDD with an SSD, stuck the flash drive in a USB port and turned on the machine. It installed the factory image, and partitioned and aligned the new drive. Then came the hours of updates, removing bloatware and upgrading to Win8.1

 

You can skip the removing bloatware if you install win 8 (not 8.1) then do the upgrade...

 

What's that?

 

Not sure what's up, but I cannot get my T440p to wake up from sleep. the power button pulses, so I press it. Nothing. I click my mouse or the trackpad, nothing. I press every key on the keyboard, nothing. The only thing that works is to manually power it down and reboot. This happens on every power setting available in either Windows or via the Power Manager. It's quite frustrating.

 

That's looking attractive right now because I'm unable to upgrade to win8.1 from the factory preload. The update fails at the last hurdle on one of the windows customization screens.

 

Control panel > recovery > create a recovery drive

 

regarding the fan - mine too is quite annoying
it doesn't seem to moan or anything like that, but has more of a vibration, or buzzing.
anyone else experience this? any tips? has anyone been able to adjust/play around with it?

thanks!

 

I can't get this method to work. I created the recovery partition, but when I boot it it doesn't seem to want to do anything when my fresh SSD is installed. How do I actually get the Windows image over to it?

Edit: After mucking around I decided to try to create a system image on an external HDD, but it's giving me error 0x80780119. I have no clue what to do. I wish Windows worked like Linux (sensibly)

 

I think you should create a bootable partition on your flash drive, and then copy the recovery partition.
Then, when your machine starts, select the bootable recovery media from the list of boot options - and it should work.

 

Right, I'm past that. I'm booting from the SSD fine. The problem is that restoring from a system image doesn't want to work on my new drive; I think the drive is slightly smaller than the 500GB HDD the Thinkpad came with.

At this point in time I'm considering just using my MSDN Windows 8.1 license...

 

This is good idea, and it can save you tons of time.
Remember that this license serves you for the installation process only (it's possible to use any placeholder license for win 8.1, and in particular your MSDN license).
For the activation process, you CAN use the original oem license (just extract it from the bios).

 

I guess I lucked out... I actually didn't think it would work and had never considered the option of copying the recovery partition but thought I'd give it a try. The only downsides were how long it took (slow flash drive I guess) and the fact that windows recreated the recovery partitions on the new SSD (not a big deal).

I didn't change anything in the bios, figuring the machine would simply look for the first device from which it could boot.

 

So I ended up using a Windows 8.1 MSDN key and it is working well. I kind of wish I could use my OEM key, but it's for the standard version of Windows 8 and not Windows 8 Pro (MSDN only offers pro).

Is there some way to get a standard Windows 8 ISO so I can use the key my computer came with? It seriously seems like the biggest pain in the in the world.

 

This post might be helpful.

 

For those of you who have bought the T440p...

If you knew what you know now before you had made your purchase will you still make the purchase?

 

Just about every thread I've read elsewhere says I'll only see the vaunted Haswell battery life if I use Windows 8. I'll deal with the chintzy battery life, then.

Sitll grousing about no battery slice.

 

I'm still on the fence. At least when I ordered mine in December Lenovo stated that I can return it for any reason for a full refund as long as the return occurs before January 31st. In some very important ways it is an excellent machine but definitely not without some glaring issues. I'll type a full review here pretty soon. The biggest issue on returning it for me is finding something better.

An addendum to this question for T440P owners: If you have or will return yours, what are you going to get and why? If you considered the T440P but bought something else, what did you get? If you are keeping yours, what was your second choice?

 

Yes, definitively. No laptop is without it's "issues", but overall I'm pretty happy with my purchase.

 

Same here. And Lenovo is known for this Fan issues... Shame they don't deal with this problem.
I'm a little surprises about the noise problem. I get the problem on my previous T430 but I believe I haven't this problem on the T440p.
In most cases, Fan is at 0 when browsing Internet, Word, Excel and others "office" apps.

I don't play on my laptop. As IT guy, the only thing a little heavy is virtualization. To get the fan Level 7, I need 4 or 5 VM running at the same time (for periodic fan lauching). Beyond 5 VM, Fan is always on, between level 4~7.
I have TCPFan. If I really need on the T430 for not becoming crazy about noise, on the T440p it's just to check what computer do. For now, I did not need to switch to manual...
Can somebody tell me something that will launch FAN 7 in most cases ? Or an app to launch a bench, I'm not familiar with this type of tools.

 

If I had to choose a new computer and not a Lenovo it will be obviouisly a Dell.
New latitutude Serie 7000, seems to interesting. But in France, Dell does no longer offer customization of components etc (only a selection between 2 or 3 models).

 

Despite the fact that my T440p needs a new display and new fan (being done this thursday) and despite the fact that I think the new design is a little cheap-looking, I would probably still have bought the T440p. If money were no object, however, I definitely would not have bought it.

For the price there's not much, if anything, that can beat a quad-core, FHD T440p IMO, especially if you can get one with a big discount (I got a total 22% discount). So while it's not my favorite Thinkpad ever, most of the time it'll be sitting in a dock and I probably won't care.

 

I know about this method but it doesn't seem to work; and the downloader doesn't recognize my key to download the ISO. Is there a serial I can use for the download tool?

 

Fwiw I am a contractor and I supply my own hardware... so in my case whatever tool will do the job is what I use... (price is last in my list)

This time around I my priorities were:

1: max ram; keyboard; trackpoint
2: battery life (any Haswell with optimus qualifies though)
3: docking ability
4: size


Hmm I think an ordered list doesn't work so well. All of those should be ones

I'm very pleased with the t440p and would buy it again...

The keyboard is better than the dell options...

I was briefly tempted by the m3800 but it lacks a trackpoint...

The w540 was what I originally wanted but I when I found that the t440p had 1080p as an option and could have 2 drives and 16 gb of ram I picked it instead...

 

Well, here's my review for whatever it's worth. I've had the machine for a week now. I'd consider myself a power user doing a lot of audio/video editing, compression, running multiple virtual machines, android emulator + eclipse. I occasionally play TF2 but otherwise don't do much gaming these days. I use laptops almost exclusively on my lap, not on a desk so some of the ergonomic points I note may not apply to desk users.

It may seem like I've focused more on the negative points below I do think this is a really nice machine overall. Great performance, terrific thermals, very low noise, potential for multiple drives and lots of RAM. I don't dispute that they have done a lot of research into user habits and such but some of the ergonomic design decisions seem baffling.

4700MQ, Nvidia 730, FHD, Intel 7260AC, 6 cell battery. Currently using this w/ 4Gb Ram and the 500Gb HDD. If I keep it I'll be swapping in 16GB and an Intel 530 SSD. As of this writing I'm using the supplied Lenovo image of Win8 Pro that has been upgraded to Win8.1 Pro with all available Lenovo and MS updates/patches applied.

High Praise

-Chassis rigidity is correct. No perceptable flex from one hand lifting or two hand twisting. Nothing is loose or rattling. Display hinges are tight.

-Keyboard feel is great. My keyboard seems to have been correctly aligned so there are no sticky keys. Perhaps some keys are ever so slightly louder than others but this is really a non-issue. My Trackpad is not loud as some have reported.

-Noise emissions are excellent. Under normal use the hard drive is the loudest sound emitted and the fan needs to be at level 2 before it becomes barely louder than the drive. When I swap in a SSD disk noise will cease to be an issue. Generally speaking unless under load the fan is completely off. Apparently I got a good fan that is correctly balanced and everything. No grinding, chattering or irritating frequencies. While fan level 7 is clearly noticeable it is not offensive at all. I only hear fan level 7 very rarely for brief bursts under heavy load.

-Thermal performance is outstanding. When researching laptops the very first thing I do is head over to notebookcheck.net and look at the thermal maps. I believe the idle draw of the 4700MQ is 26watts. The fact that this full voltage 47W quad can idle while being entirely passively cooled with the fan OFF with a cpu temp of 49C in a 21C room is fantastic. An example of a practical heavy load for me is h264 encoding with Handbrake. With all cores loaded at 100% the fan runs at an entirely unoffensive level 3 almost exclusively with cpu temps of 77C in a 21C room. I work almost exclusively with this thing in my lap, not on a desk, so one of the single most important criteria for me is chassis bottom temps. While cpu thermals are safe during idle from passive cooling and turning the fan off serves to reduce power draw I feel this leads to the base getting a bit warmer than I would prefer so I may just keep the fan at level 1 with tpfancontrol. Fan level 1 gives me ~38C cpu temp at idle in a 21C room.

-Weight is acceptable. Carry weight is never really an issue with me. I'm more concerned with perceived weight over time as I use it mostly on my lap. Laptop is nicely balanced and i never feel like a particular edge is biting into my legs. With the 6 cell battery my scale shows 4lb 15.25oz. This is a 5lb laptop. The fact that Lenovo lists the weight without battery at 4.15lbs is silly. They should simply list weights for both 6 and 9 cell batteries or a min/max weight.

Constructive Criticism

-Absence of dedicated trackpoint buttons is a definite huge negative. I greatly prefer trackpoints to trackpads to the extent that it is a mandatory feature of any laptop I would buy. I've used this new buttonless trackpad for a week now and misclick a LOT. It is really frustrating. The flat surface of the trackpad also seems to greatly increase wrist strain for me when operating the trackpoint. Center button vertical scrolling is borderline painful for a long page and right-clicking is quite awkward. This is NOT good ergonomic design. Additionally I find that the trackpad occasionally seems to not register clicks of any kind but this may purely be a driver issue that needs to be sorted. One pleasant surprise is that I was worried that the larger trackpad would cause the cursor to jump around a lot when typing as my palms are partially resting on it. This does not seem to be the case at all.

-Noticeable backlight bleed. Mine shipped with the LG IPS panel and I have two spots under either side of the camera that are very noticeable. Obviously this is most noticeable on dark backgrounds. When watching video with letterboxing it is easily observable. I strongly suspect that the backlight issues have nothing to do with the panel and everything to do with the rigidity of the display frame. My own research indicates that the LG panel is a good deal dimmer than the AUO panel that was listed in the hardware maintenance manual. If I keep this unit I may attempt to have the panel swapped if possible but I'm waiting on more user reports. Considering the panels are probably costing Lenovo in the range of ~$40 and that this was a $200+ upcharge I'm rather underwhelmed. While color shifts are certainly reduced off-angle with IPS I can say that there is a very precise sweet spot for brightness with this panel so you may find yourself adjusting display angle to dial in the brightness exactly in the same manner as you would adjust a TN panel to get in the correct angle for accurate color.

-Display back flexes to a suspicious degree. While the base chassis feels pretty bulletproof the display back definitely does not. Adjusting the display angle with either one finger or two gentle hands induces large blooms of backlight bleed. Perhaps this behavior is within the design parameters but it does not inspire confidence. I'm curious if the T440S's CFRP display back flexes as much as the T440P's GFRP back. I'd like to hear a statement from the Thinkpad designers as to why they built this with so much flex.

-This really isn't a dig at Lenovo per se as all manufacturer's do the same thing but considering the display is the component you interface with more than any other it really needs to become standard practice for manufacturers to to explicitly tell you what panel will be shipped with your laptop and what the performance specs of that panel are. Luminosity, color, response time, viewing angles etc. need to be fully disclosed up front. Why is acceptable to have panel lotteries when it is unacceptable to substitute CPUs or GPUs?

-The swapping of Fn and Ctrl keys is straight up retarded. I realize they can be reassigned in the bios but if so why not just keep the standard layout and let people who want to deviate from the standard swap them? Lots of pressing the wrong button here.

-Absence of Thinklight is a negative. The backlit keyboard has less utility.

-Light seepage under the keys from the backlit keyboard is quite distracting as the bleed is always brighter than the actual letter intended to be illuminated. This needs to be improved.

-Absence of clamshell design is probably a negative. I suppose the wisdom of removing display closure hooks is going to depend on how long the display hinges stay perfectly tight.

-Others have noted that the edges of the top palmrest panel are somewhat unfinished and feel sharp. This isn't a big deal to me but it undercuts the perception of overall build quality.

-Front edge/wrist rest edges are only beveled to a tiny degree and for all intents and purposes are sharp, hard edges. It's not a huge deal if you mostly interface with your computer through the trackpad but if you mostly interface via the keyboard/trackpoint then this seemingly small detail will become excruciatingly noticeable in certain positions. I find the wrist "rests" are constantly digging into my wrists in a painful manner and that I have to adjust my position a lot to alleviate the pressure. Major ergonomic design failure here. This alone could be a deal breaker for me but I need to be sure that any replacement candidate doesn't have the same issue as the hard angular look seems to be in vogue with everybody these days.

-Internal speakers are loud enough but otherwise quite disappointing. While technically there are two channels this is for all intents and purposes a mono NOT stereo setup. Both speakers are in a single unit located in the center of the base under the trackpad. Both left and right channels are right beside each other. If you manipulate the balance control you will only hear a decrease in output, not a shift in position. I'm not sure what the frequency response is and I certainly didn't expect a booming system but apparently business users are not supposed to listen to music or podcasts, watch videos or do anything other than have conference calls with their thinkpads. The frequency response of these speakers is similar to a landline telephone call. I would have gladly traded slightly larger dimensions for slightly lower frequency response.

 

I'm curious how tight folks find their T440p hinges. I think mine are too sloppy, but it's hard to tell what is normal. For example, if I lower my display to within about 1.5 inches of totally closed, the lid will close itself by gravity. Does this sound about right?

 

Yeah, almost like spring action drawing it shut once you get to 1.5". However it is one way only. There should be good resistance to opening it back up.

 

So is there any sort of agreement as to which screen is better, the AUO or the LG?

I have the LG in mine and the viewing angles are atrocious to say the least. At anything but maximum resolution the screen feels washed out and awful. I'm considering ditching it for the AUO but apparently that has huge problems with ghosting.

I'm considering putting in a service request with Lenovo to have my screen changed out but I want some opinions before I go ahead and do that.

 

Nice review, unlucky. Informative.

After reading, I feel less anxious about the one that I ordered that I won't see for another three weeks.

Forums always attract the negative as people wonder whether their problem or issue is unique, or when searching for a solution. The first impressions thread actually had a lot of positive things to say about the 440p at first, and then things started to degenerate a tad. Some of the early posters really like their new laptop. Fancy that.

unlucky, are you having any driver issues, particularly with AC connectivity? How about when shutting down? Any hangs there? --These are problems that seem to be popping up on the Lenovo forum. Have you updated drivers with the Lenovo utility? Manually? Were your drivers current when you got it?

You've already noted that your fan is quiet, so I guess that's not an issue generally; perhaps only randomly.

 

For what it's worth, my fan is extremely quiet. I don't have any problems with my AC adapter, and I haven't had issues with it during shutdown/reboot. The only driver related problem I had was trying to install the Intel wireless drivers off of Intel's website; overwriting the automatically included Win8 drivers caused constant BSODs -- nothing a factory reset couldn't fix though.

I'm using the Lenovo update tool to keep my drivers up to date, it's way easier than having to manage everything myself. The only things I installed from their OEM websites are the graphics drivers.

Ordered on 12/05 and received on 12/26, by the way.

 

I was actually referring to the wireless AC card and dropped connections.

So you were not able to install a driver from Intel's site?

 

Pipspeak,did you get confirmation from Lenovo they could come by Thursday? Does it take some time to scheudle a tech in?
I too have the LG panel, with poor brightness, along with a horribly noisy fan. These would be the 2 fixes I'd go for, so am interested to hear how it turns out for you.

However if the AUO panel does indeed have ghosting issues, I'm not sure I'd go for the change. This LG though, has fairly poor black levels, as I cannot really differentiate the blacks from 5 and up @ Lagom Black level - Lagom LCD test
Would anyone who's been able to calibrate this panel be willing to share some color profiles?

I also have a sketchy space bar, that sometimes does not register when used on the right side.
Wondering if it's worth upgrading the warranty to 2 year onsite + accidental.
Will there by any issues if a tech comes and I have upgraded the RAM and HDD?

Thanks

 

I have the same problem with my space bar. I had Lenovo ship me a replacement keyboard, but I'm not sure if it's shipped yet.

I'm also having the same thoughts about the screen; I have the LG and I hate the viewing angles/colors, but at the same time I'm not sure if it's worth switching to the AUO screen if there is extreme ghosting. I had a W740SU and I didn't have any problems with ghosting, though.

Oh, I have the Intel AC card (not the Thinkpad branded one) and I'm not having any issues with random disconnects. But I've only used it at home, the problem could easily be AC related.

And yeah, I did a fresh Windows install and I'm using the wireless drivers that Windows 8.1 ships with.

 

Does the AUO screen have ghosting issues? First I've heard. I actually don't have a huge problem with the LG screen overall, just several patches of horrible light bleed. Colors look fine to me and viewing angles are decent. If I have time tomorrow I can test it with my colorimeter.

It took about a week for Lenovo to sort out the replacement screen, but it's now awaiting pick up by the tech and the fan should arrive today. Spoke to the tech yesterday and Thursday looks good for the repair.

Don't worry about the HDD and RAM upgrades... they're listed as "customer replaceable".

 

Nice thanks!
Yes, aside from the black levels, the screen doesnt seem horrible. If you are able to test with the colorimeter it'd be great.
Interested to see how it stacks up to the AUO panel.

Than fan however is driving me crazy

Thanks again

 

The AUO screen has some ghosting, but the effect is very minimal IMHO. It don´t bothers me.

 

How are the viewing angles on the AUO screen?

 

And how are the black levels?
Black level - Lagom LCD test