Thinkpad T420 Owner's Thread

T420 display question...stop rolling your eyes

I currently have T520 and LOVE the FHD display; however, it's big (I know, that's what she said). Anyhu, I am considering T420 but the display horrors are really keeping me from it.

Could someone who likes good display or might had owned T520+FHD Display share your experience with T420 display?

thanks.

 

I have both the T420 with a 1600*900 resolution and the T520 with the FHD screen, and I have to admit that I often take the T520 along with me, only because of the poor screen on the T420, it is really bad, especiallly compared with the FHD screen on the T520/W520 series.

 

Compared to the FHD on the T/W520, yeah, the T420 screens aren't great.

It's not like they're unusable or anything though. The AUO part is the worst of the lot, but it's what I have on mine and it's pretty much what I'd expect for a business notebook: tolerable, but nothing impressive.

I'd stay away from it if you want good color reproduction for photo work or if you watch a lot of movies. But if you just do office work and web browsing, I wouldn't be too concerned.

 

Hi Jesper Juul, ThinkRob

Your feedback is really helpful and it looks like either i will wait for another quality supplier to introduce a worthy 14" or just go with T520.

I might be picker than others but I don't think people should settle for bad screens on T420. Consumers will never get more unless we make these corps realize it. Yesterday, I saw the Lenovo earning and they're making TIHS load of $$$. So they should be able to put better screens on otherwise such an amazing laptop.

 

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This has been discussed to death, but here's a quick summary.

We're not Lenovo's major customers for Think-brand products. Not even close. Businesses are Lenovo's major customers. The price difference between a high-end TN or mid-range IPS panel and a mid-range TN panel is not insignificant, and when you're talking about ordering hundreds of laptops at once, that adds up. Businesses don't want to spend money on premium screens because as far as they're concerned, decent screens are fine for office work. And you know, they're not exactly at fault for employing that reasoning. I'd do the same thing if I were controlling a large companies IT budget.

Even amongst consumers, the people who come on notebook forums and talk about hardware? Yeah, we're not in the majority there either. We're the geeks who nitpick everything, and frankly we're just not a terribly powerful financial force even if we *could* agree on what we wanted (which we can't.)

Lenovo is doing well in the market because they know what most people want. They're not a monopoly -- the PC market is cutthroat and has been for at least two decades now -- and if they weren't delivering what customers wanted, they'd be toast.

Also, I don't think the T420 has any *bad* panels. Even the "worst" of the parts (the AUO one) isn't bad. It's decent. That's the best word for it really. There are plenty of worse TN panels out there (believe me, I own a couple) and plenty of worse TN panels on *far* more expensive notebooks (I've owned some of those too). There are also plenty of better TN panels. So, yeah: not good, not bad. Decent.

Frankly, I think the T420 is an incredible value at the $600-700 you can get a bare config. for. I've owned, refurbished, sold, and otherwise dealt with the majority of the ThinkPads made in the last 15 years, and it's absolutely incredible how consistent the line's been throughout those years. And you know what? The mid-range screens have been consistent too. Except for a few IPS options during the years in which the ill-fated IDTech venture was around, ThinkPads haven't really had anything special LCD-wise. As I mentioned above: it's just not a major concern for business users.

 

My current travel machine is a T420. I have made a few upgrades.

The base model I purchased new off eBay is the 4236-NVU. For the uninitiated, that's the dual core i7-2620M with Optimus Graphics, 1600x900 screen, etc. I have the AOU screen. I paid $899 for it new with a three year warranty.

I pulled the 4GB and it now has 16GB of Corsair RAM. Not the fastest stuff on the market but it's getting the job done. I pulled the HDD and it now has the Samsung Series 830 256GB SSD. I have a 12.7mm Ultrabay drive adapter for a second SSD or HDD when needed. If I need long battery life (above 4.5 hours) I use the 9 cell. Otherwise I am typically using the lighter 6 cell battery.

PCMARK 7 score at Intel HD Graphics 3000 Mobile video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2620M Processor,LENOVO 4236NVU score: 4403 PCMarks.

This machine reminds me of my W510 but just smaller in size.

 

Yeah, the T420 can be upgraded to a beast of a machine: 16 GB of RAM, a fast Core i7, a 6 Gbit SSD, an mSATA SSD, and even a second SSD in the optical bay.

<3

 

I believe the optical bay caddy is limited only 1.5Gbit speeds? Am I correct on this one?

Anyways, I've had my T420 for nearly eight months now. I bought it with the baseline Core i3 processor, Nvidia graphics, and later added two SSDs to it (an Intel 320 160GB and an Intel 310 40GB). Great machine. It's a bit on the bulky side, but it's functional and can take more abuse than my MacBook Pro did.

Plus, the raven black really stands out among silver-colored MacBooks in the lecture hall. Personally, I haven't seen too many other people with Thinkpads at my university - most people roll with MacBook Pros or MacBook Airs.

 

I VERY happy with my Lenovo T420 following specs below...
i7-2620M(2.7GHz)
8GB RAM,
500GB 7200rpm HD,
14in 1600x900 LCD,
NVIDIA N12P-NS1 1GB
CDRW/DVDRW,
Intel® Centrino® Ultimate-N 6300 wireless
WWAN
Bluetooth 3.0
1Gb Ethernet
UltraNav
Secure Chip
Camera 720p
9c Li-Ion Win7 Pro 64

 

The Ultrabay is SATA III 6GB/s speeds on the T420. Assuming of course you are using the right HDD adapter for a SSD drive.

The T420 isn't bulky when compared to the typical 15 and 17" machines on the market. It is compared to a MacBook Air. It depends on your point of reference.

 

This is good to know!!!! Thanks!!!

 

Hi,

Does anyone have any experience with core i7-2820 in either T420/T520? I am interested in heat output; moreover, if any, noise level under decent load?

Thanks.

 

Hi

I have a couple of questions regarding the T420.

1) Weight
I've seen 1.9 kg , 2 kg , 2.1 kg, 2.2 kg and 2.3 kg mentioned in various online articles/reviews/product specifications.

How much does the T420 actually weigh with the 6-cell battery?

2) Fan noise
Is this model really quiet or is there room for improvement with tpfancontrol?

3) Screen quality
While I do appreciate a good screen on my laptop I'm certainly not obsessive about it, but I was wondering how the ICC profile affects the viewing experience.

Without the ICC, is the screen bad or acceptable?
With the ICC, is the screen acceptable or good?

 

It weighs nearly five pounds with the six cell. The charger is another pound or so.

 

That's highly subjective. Calibration can help some, but my experience with ThinkPad screens is they're average.

 

Thanks

 

4.79 lbs. or 2.17 kg. It's actually rather nice with the 6 cell and thanks to Sandy Bridge it gets decent battery life.

Fan noise depends on your settings for the the BIOS and Power Manager but with power optimized Optimus settings (mostly running on the Intel GPU), it runs very quiet and cool.

Regarding the screen, that has been hashed out over and over again in this thread. I would like to see the three possible supplier 1600x900 screens side-by-side. The AOU on mine is fair but good enough.

 

In the aggregate, they are all crappy TN panels, regardless of the supplier. The differences are too miniscule for all except the most discerning of eyes.

 

How? Posted side-by-side in this forum, as unknown-quality JPEG images taken by unknown-quality cameras, then compressed randomly by unknown-quality image hosting sites, to be viewed on unknown-quality laptop screens?

This forum cannot help anyone with that. Lenovo must be willing to showcase their products so that customers (like you and me) can decide for themselves by looking with their own eyes and touching with their own hands. Then again, who are "we" to request such "marketing innovations"?

Otherwise, I can say one thing, someone else can say something else, and you can understand something completely different in your head. People end up using qualifiers like "decent," "good enough," "not good, not bad, not worse that before," "I have no problems with it," "really bad," "terrible," "horrible," "unacceptable," or whatever.

 

Thanks for the reply

Ok. I expect advice on how to do this can be found elsewhere.

I was just wondering if using using the correct icc profile would sort of even out the differences between them and improve the image overall. Yes, people have been posting about their Samsung, LG or AOU panels, however it is not clear to me whether they had all taken the necessary steps before declaring the screen to be good, bad or just acceptable.


For a while now, I've been looking for a lighweight, reliable, and powerful (Sandy Bridge) 14-inch laptop with a great keyboard, decent battery life, a matt display and a higher than 1366x768 resolution. As it turns out, not so easy. Although, I keep coming back to the T420 (cannot afford the T420s).

 

Refurbished T420s's go for about $900 on Ebay - have you considered those as an option?

 

Does it come with a Danish keyboard?

Would prefer a new one, though.

 

I'm sure you can replace it with one. It's not that hard.

 

Anyone think its possible that we see Ivy Bridge quad core in T430?

 

Maybe. But it's important to consider that Ivy Bridge mobile will retain the same TDPs - only the desktop parts will have lower TDPs.

The again, TDPs aren't necessarily everything.

 

The Core i7-3610QM is rumored to be a quad core 35W CPU. Then again I would so much prefer a 25W i5 with a longer battery life.

 

Actually, from what I have seen the answer is no, the T420 is unlikely to get Ivy Bridge. The new CPU will not be backwards compatible with the mobile chipsets including the QM67.

Source: Ivy Bridge’s Backwards Compatibility Explained

I would expect to see an entirely new model with an upgraded chipset for Ivy Bridge.

 

Is anyone having standby issues where the caps lock key light, volume light, power light and thinklight will flash on and off and the unit won't come out of standby. This only happens once in a while. I did a fresh installation of Windows 7 and I have all the drivers updated to the latest version. I did make a post about this before and John suggested it might be the graphics driver. My T420 is the one with the Intel gpu.

I am really stumped on what's going on.

 

1. Is there anything significant in Event Viewer's system log at the time either the machine goes into standby or tries to come out?

2. Have you tried the various Windows Update files in the Lenovo T420 downloads. They contain a lot of patches.

John

 

Was watching the CNET review for this thing:

Lenovo ThinkPad T420 - YouTube

I don't know, but I think MacBooks are so ubiquitous (especially in universities) that the overall design has lost its flash in most people's eyes. Thinkpads stand out very well from the crowd (unless you work for a corporate IT department).

 

Let me guess, the guy that is on camera uses a MacBook Air.

 

Has anyone ever had a problem with using a USB mouse on a T420? Mine keeps getting power issues and disconnecting and reconnecting constantly regardless of the port I use.

 

Have you tried a known good mouse? Does the mouse exhibit that issue on another laptop?

 

I haven't had any issues when I connect an USB mouse to my T420, you can try toggling the USB Power settings so that it doesn't turn off periodically but if that still don't work then I suggest calling support and have it get looked at as it could be a faulty USB port on the motherboard.

 

Thanks for the reply. I've tried multiple nice and I've already tried every single USB port on the T420 and it does the same thing. All of my mice (and I have quite a few) are all in perfect working order and work perfectly on my desktop system. How would I toggle the USB power settings?

 

1. Launch Lenovo Power Manager
2. Switch to the Advanced mode
3. Click the Advanced settings for the power plan in use
4. Flip the "USB selective suspend setting" to Disabled

 

Thanks and done. Now the waiting begins...

 

I am not sure it will work but lets hope so.

 

got my T420 last week (Intel Core i7-2640M Processor, 1600 x 900, Intel HD Graphics 3000) - very happy with it so far!

I'm thinking of buying an external monitor, and I've got a very basic question: do I have to look for specific requirements or avoid some type of monitors?

from my point of view I don't have specific requirements, I'd just like a nice and fairly big monitor, I would use it basically only for work, no movies or games. budget not an issue.

thanks

 

What is your budget for the monitor? That determines a lot.

The T420 has two native video connectors. The DisplayPort (DP) and VGA connectors.

VGA is analog and present on nearly all monitors. It has decent but lower quality than the digital DP connection.

Converting from DP is easy. I carry two converters in my backpack. See DisplayPort to DVI Video Adapter Converter | StarTech.com for the cable I use to connect to DVI (if needed). See http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002CSRFD8/ref=oh_o05_s00_i00_details for the converter I use to connect to HDMI (if needed).

I would recommend getting a LCD panel that has DisplayPort. If it also has VGA you are pretty much assured it will work on any "legacy" machines, too. I use nothing but Dell UltraSharp LCD panels now.

 

If budget really is "no issue", go with a high-end NEC monitor. NEC makes some absolutely phenomenal *IPS displays, and if they're in your price range I'd go for it without a question.

I suspect that budget does, in fact, matter, in which case we'd need to know a range to make a better recommendation. (I like Dell Ultrasharps as well, but again: budget will dictate whether that's an option for you.)

 

Well, if you are buying a monitor for use with the T420, you absolutely want one with DisplayPort input. Beyond that, it's up to you.

I'm looking to update the monitor I'm using for my desktop Real Soon Now and the Dell UltraSharp U2412M is at the top of the list. It's an 24" 16x10, 1920 x 1200 resolution, IPS monitor. Oh yeah, with DisplayPort, D-Sub, DVI inputs.

I'm planning on using the Dell as the main monitor, with my current 20" 16x10 in portrait-mode as a secondary monitor. I just got done installing a new computer desk yesterday so I'll have enough room for all this visual goodness.

My buddy has an Eyefinity setup. I gotta do something!

 

hey thanks a lot for the info on monitors - that's very kind.

well I said budget is not an issue as I've got research money to spend on computer accessories, but of course there's no point in me buying a very expensive monitor if I don't really need it (I would not use it for movies or games, and I don't have specific graphic requirements)

I did not want to indicate a budget initially because I don't know much about average prices for a decent monitor. perhaps something around 250£ or 400$ (I live in UK) would be sensible - but this is quite flexible. I'm thinking I can then use the money for other accessories for my new machine (although I'm not sure what yet!)

 

In the US, the regular prices for Dell Ultrasharp U2412M is $369 and U2312HM is $299. Very attractive discounts are offered every now and then.

I'm typing on a U2311H (U2312HM predecessor) which I bought for $180, brand new, with free shipping, last summer. Excellent monitor.

 

Depending on what size you're going for, having a decent monitor doesn't have to be expensive. I have a LG Flatron IPS225 FHD monitor which has most of the ports you need plus the benefits of IPS technology for consistent colours and wider viewing angles. Best of all it only costed me £98 at the time which at the time was a steal, it has gone up slightly since then but is still considerably well below the £250 budget that you had in mind.

 

Alright, based on that I'm going to second the recommendation of the UltraSharp series. They're great monitors (we've got tons of 'em at work), and they're definitely a good choice for that price range.

They're nowhere near the high-end, so don't expect near-flawless results, but I'd be lying if I said that they weren't a phenomenal series for the price.

 

I have the Dell U2412m and am very pleased with it.
I especially like the 16x10 screen size.
I wish the Thinkpads were 16x10.

 

I have a U2711. I covet the U3011.

 

I'm not keen on 16:10 since I like to run my desktop monitors in portrait mode. I've got two UXGA UltraSharps (can't remember what models), so this gives me 2400x1600 which is *excellent* for coding. 16:10 wouldn't really help this much (it would give me a bit more vertical resolution, but a little too much physical height.)