Thinkpad Ultrabook T430u

I don't have a T430u, but you may find it helpful to read the T430u user guide section on Power Mangement, page 27.
http://download.lenovo.com/ibmdl/pub/pc/pccbbs/mobiles_pdf/t530_t530i_w530_ug_en.pdf
This section on page 28 may be helpful.

 

I've now had this laptop for around a week. I really wanted to like this laptop; I've really looked around for the best windows laptop price/quality wise. The build quality, the trackpad, the trackpoint(my first thinkpad) are all incredible.
However, the panel is just inexcusable. I work with my laptop on my lap a lot, and every time I had to look from one side of the screen to the other, I had to rotate the screen just a bit because the viewing angle is so crappy. The brightness is also very low: it is unusable below 70% brightness, so battery life at 50% brightness will almost never be true.
I got around 4.5 hours on normal use (web browsing, skype, light youtube videos).

I can live with the low resolution, but the colors and viewing angle is just a deal-breaker. Luckily, I'm able to return this machine and lenovo has been very cooperative. They'll definitely get my business in the future, just not with this machine.

Here are a few pictures I took comparing it with a macbook air, hopefully this helps for anyone making a decision. Note that both these laptops are at 100% brightness.
T430u panel comparison - Minus

 

@Nadim - I share your thoughts exactly.

I really wanted to keep this machine, but I'm going to return it. The panel is just terrible to stare at while working for longer than a few minutes.

It's a shame, because I really think this is the perfect laptop otherwise. Lenovo, if you are listening... please update the T430u with a better screen :/

 

How is the trackpad? Does it work properly with Windows 8?

 

Is the T430u's standard display any different than the one in the T430? And in turn, is the T430's different than the T420's? I.e., if my daughter says the display in her sister's T420 is good enough to suit her, will she be any less satisfied with a T430 or T430u?

 

there are several makes for the T430u LCD (two from AUO and another from CMI or CMO). Download Hwinfo32 and check the display manufacturer code, and post it here.

 

Mine says:
Monitor Name: Lenovo [Unknown Model: LEN40A0]
Monitor Name (Manuf): B140XTN02.5

Which manufacturer is this? BTW, no screen door effect for me. And while the colors won't knock your socks off, bumping up the contrast made a pleasant difference. I use this machine for web surfing, writing and general business purposes, so the display is fine for me.

 

Does the T430u have the possibily to dock? is there a docking connector at the bottom?

 

so Ive now got my system. everything looks good and feels good. but after setting everything up ive just noticed that my msata and 500 gb 7200rpm hard drive configuration whines louder than the fan. i also cannot seem to install power manager no matter what i do. it is absolutely the most annoying thing ever and im on the edge to returning it. I can however confirm that the canadian T430Us do not have the RAM problem, and do support the extra ram. i want to love this laptop but these little things are just killing it. SOLID build quiality though but again its just the hard drive issue that i cant get over. does anyone else have this problem, im pretty sure the hard drive is supposed to be quiet when not in use... any solutions?

 

I have the same panel, it's made by AU Optronics and it's horrible in my opinion. Today I received the glossy version of the panel which is the b140xw03 v0. This is one is a bit better to look at but still not 100% happy.

I managed to find the n140bge-l42 chi-mei which is meant to have better contrast than the AUO panels at 600:1 so hopefully that will be the reason for me to stick to the laptop as I'd hate to return or sell it.

 

I also bought the Crucial msata 256GB and Samsung 1TB Spinpoint which is meant to be virtually silent for a hard drive so hopefully the system will be quiet once everything is in place...plus 16GB 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM as only paid £30 for it!

 

Taking a look at the Xorg log, it looks like I have the AUO display, product ID 9532.

I don't know about the other 2 panel models, but here's my short review on the AUO 9532:

Garbage!

 

hopefully lead_org can help me answer this, my t430u still can't charge past 50%.

I've tried following the instructions here, I went into regedit.exe and changed the ChargeStartControl, ChargeStartPercentage to 15%, then I changed the ChargeStopControl and ChargeStopPercentage to 100% however it still won't charge past 50%.

Hopefully someone here (lead_org ) has an answer to this...

 

Are you running Windows8 or Windows7, ct809?. If Win7, open your PowerManager application (right-click the Win7 battery icon and select Power Manager, get into the Advanced (not basic) mode, then go to the Battery tab. Click the Maintenance Button and change the charging thresholds.

I've heard it reported that Win8 makes it much more difficult to get to this setting. I spec'ed my T430u with Win7 so I don't know how to do this if you have Win8. Good luck.

 

Hi I'm on windows 8. I downloaded the Power Manager driver for Windows 8, however I still can't get it to charge past 50%.

Has anyone else on Windows 8 experienced this problem?

 

i am not sure why your T430u with win 8 wouldn't charge past 50%. If you can maybe you could load Win 7, and do a test with the new OS to see whether that solves the issue. Otherwise you should get in contact with Lenovo Warranty support.

 

Thanks lead, I called Lenovo Warranty support (1-800-565-3344), talked to a guy called Albert in Eastern Canada and I got the worst customer service I've ever experienced. I basically explained my situation, and he put me on hold for 30 seconds and came back and told me to go to a local repair shop. I asked him for more help, and to at least try some basic troubleshooting tips on their end but he declined and just told me to visit a repair shop. Since it's the weeknight (and the christmas holidays are coming up, most stores would be closed) I again asked him nicely to try some basic trouble shooting tips. He declined again, and that's when I started getting pissed off by his lack of professionalism. I asked to speak to a manager and he declined, and hung up on me.

I called back again, spoke with another rep about my situation, he helped me install Power Manager for Windows 7, but after 15 minutes we still couldn't get it to work. I appreciate the fact that the 2nd guy offered to help (even though with no success), but I'm pretty livid with the lack of customer service on the first guy, Albert. I have his manager's name...I guess we'll have an interesting talk tomorrow...

 

Anyways, so I played around with the computer a little bit more, and re-installed Lenovo Settings Dependency Package and the Power Management Driver, then when I rebooted and went into Lenovo Settings, this option popped up

It's kinda confusing to understand, but I left it at "fully charge" and we'll see what happens...

Hopefully this solves the issue for other users going forward.

 

@ct809 Hope that solves your problem. I'm glad I decided to stick with Windows 7 on mine. Supposed to be delivered at last on Friday.

 

Yes, it seems this is way easier to manage in Windows 7. I spec'ed my machine with Win 7 and am glad I did. In fact, using Win 7's Power Manager, you get a third option (in addition to the 2 choices presented to ct809); you get to set minimum and maximum charge levels.

Hope you like your T430u when it comes today!

 

It appears that any W7 purchase thru Jan 31 is eligible for the $15 W8 upgrade offer -- even if you had the option of W8 at time of purchase -- so it turns out W7 was the better decision either way. It gives you all options, including the ability to easily go back to W7 if you don't like W8. As I understand it, you can download the W8 upgrade to a DVD for later use on any Windows computer.

Edit for disclaimer: I've completed registration to get my upgrade code, but have not yet claimed my update, which must be done from the eligible computer. It's possible that when I attempt to claim and download the upgrade, MS say this wasn't a "preinstalled" W7. It's unclear exactly what they mean by preinstalled. Technically, Lenovo preinstalled the OS, but it was my option, as opposed to buying a retail boxed preinstalled unit. Anyway, registration did require giving them my "CTO" model number and that sailed through just fine. I'll update this again after I hopefully complete the claim and download.

Edit x2: Purchase and download of W8 complete for $15. Burned ISO to DVD disc for future install.

~~~

Just hoping for a tolerable screen. Not expecting greatness, just want it to be passable for basic web browsing, word processing etc.

 

Well, no screen door on mine. Viewing angles are poor but at first blush I think the screen will be tolerable. We'll see. Just moving in to it.

 

I just got mine, no screen door effect, trackpad sucks for scrolling or maybe I'm just not use to it. Build quality is solid. My only problem is that my Wifi card jumps randomly from 5.5 mbps to 104 mbps while my 3 year old Gateway has a solid 300 mbps. I have the 2x2 abgn wireless card that came default with the config, my 3 year old Gateway has a Qualcomm Atheros Wireless Card. Also the Fn key is located in a weird place. I think my wireless card is screwed up cause sometimes it takes forever to load webpages and other times its fast.

Edit: I think I may have solved my problem. I switched my wireless from the 2x2 to the Broadcom 802.11n Network adapter and my issues have all gone away. Steady 130mbps and no lagging.

 

Opac, can you give me the exact steps you took to fix the wireless issues? I also have the 2x2 wireless card and my speed drops are really driving me crazy.
Thanks.

 

Go to Device Manager
Expand Network Adapters
Right click the 2x2 and click on update driver software
Click on Browse my computer for driver software
Click on Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer
Select Broadcomm 802.11n Wireless Adapter
Click Next and you should be good

 

Interestingly my 2x2 Wifi adapter seems to have come with a Broadcomm driver. When I do opac's procedure, the only option I see is "2x2 11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN PCI Express Half Mini Card Adapter". Luckily I don't think I've any WiFi consistency issues...

 

Does your speed in the "Wi-Fi Status" window fluctuate drastically?

 

Thanks Opac, so far my wireless seems to be running a lot better with the broadcom adapter. So far the intermittent connections issues have subsided but I'll need to see how it runs long term.

 

Hi, if anyone from the UK is watching I've just listed my T430u for sale.

Brand New Thinkpad T430u i5-3427u 16GB DDR3 320GB + 24GB SSD Windows 8 64bit | eBay

 

Never really checked it... looking now. I've got an ancient Linksys WRT54G router and it looks like it's generally about 11.0 Mbps, sometimes as high as 18 Mbps, with very occasional drops to 5.5 for a few seconds.

It looks like my current driver is Broadcom, dated 5/8/2012, version 5.100.82.139. Any idea of the latest known-good version?

 

Funny that you guys mentioned this wifi inconsistency. I've been having this and I thought it was my ISP's issue, but I followed your steps and it's fixed now. Cheers

 

Same here. I haven't noticed any wi-fi lag or fluctuation.

 

Ok I got more tweaks for those who may have the same problems as me.

Anything under 30% brightness my screen needs to adjust from a dark background to a white background whether it a Windows folder or just opening a browser. It was really annoying since you can see the adjustment and my screen would flicker noticeably. I have figured out that by going to Graphics Properties by right clicking on the desktop, and then going to "Power", choosing the power source as "On Battery" and unchecking "Display Power Saving Technology while choosing "maximize battery life", the annoyance went away. Hopefully that helps some of you that have very sharp eyes lol.

 

I got my T430u a couple of weeks ago but I cannot try it until recently. So far I have several problems:

1. As someone here has pointed out: the charge of battery cannot go over 50%, and I could find a way to fix it;
2. Internet Explorer 10 does not work properly: when I open a new window, I always got a message that IE has a problem in opening the website. I installed Google Chrome but it does not run;
3. I installed a VPN software and it does not work either.

I have Windows 8 with T430u, and I am not sure Problems 2 and 3 are due to Win8 or the laptop. Does anyone have any perspective?

And, if I want to install Windows 7 on T430u, is there anything special (other than regular installation of Win7 on a new laptop by, for example, a USB installation)? Since T430u has two hard disks, would the OS be installed on the mSATA disk?

 

Wow... lots of questions.

1) regarding the battery charge only to 50%, go back and review the past several pages of posts in this thread. It's a setting related to "maximizing battery health" and you need to turn if off to allow the computer to charge the battery all the way to 100%. Windows 8 seems to hide the feature for some reason.

2 and 3) I don't use IE so I haven't experienced what you've noticed, But I wonder if your VPN software is interfering with your internet connection.

Lastly) there's really only 1 hard disk, the spinning HDD (likely either 320GB or 500GB) and a 24GB mSATA solid state drive (SSD) which only serves to speed things up by acting as an intelligent disk cache for the spinning hard disk. The OS is installed on the larger, spinning hard disk. Again, spend the time and read through the previous posts on this thread (at least the last half) to answer most all of your questions.

 

So to summarize do we know which of the three screens are the best and worst?

I'm gonna pull the trigger on the T430u (thanks to lead_org's awesome review), and I was thinking of asking Lenovo Sales which screen is installed on the laptops they're currently selling.

On another note, and sorry for asking this general question here, I'm planning to up my ram to 8 GB. Am I better off swapping out the original Samsung for a pair of 4 GBs of my own choice? Or is it OK if I just pop in one 4GB stick, with the same speed (1600MHz)?


Edit: So I just talked to lenovo sales. The rep didn't know what the screen model was. He just gave me the generic specs:

14.0" (355mm) HD (1366x768) color, anti-glare, LED backlight
200 nits, 16 9 aspect ratio, 500 1 contrast ratio

Does this help in any way to define which led panel is currently being used?

 

Nope. That's the generic specification that all the screens have. \_0_/

 

Useless sales rep
Any ideas on the ram question @drjohn?

 

Doesn't matter the brand, nor does it matter with the speed of the RAM. It's all very universal now, just don't use DDR3 with DDR2 lol.

Also is anybody experiencing the fan always being on?

 

No, quite the opposite -- fan is usually off or very low, almost inaudible. It's off as I type this.

I pretty happy with how cool and quiet this thing is. The stock 320GB HDD makes no noise at all and there's almost no noticeable heat on the bottom; none on the top/keyboard. Mostly non-taxing usage though, web browsing, email, word processing etc., so...

 

I really don't think there is much of a difference in the brand. From the pictures I have seen of the screen, each one looks poor like the one I received. I think another poster hit the nail on the head when they said that this generation of 14 inch screens is lackluster overall. I saw the 1600x900 screen and was similarly disappointed.

Oh well Lenovo... Hopefully next year you roll out some better panels.

 

Hey guys, what do people get on battery life with the HDD and SSD combo using express cache versus using a straight SSD? just wondering. thinking of going back to SSD and hdd combo. got all my programs installed on my msata, but now the power settings are all messed up so my hard drive keeps spinning even on idle and its pretty loud, but i still get 4.5 hours on a full charge with regular use. just a word to people, if you are thinking of putting all your programs on the msata dont do it, you will end up with a loud HDD ( if you stick with stock HDD)

 

The msata isn't for installing programs, it's just a big cache drive for the OS to park frequently used files for faster access. Just a guess, but perhaps your HDD may be endlessly searching for files that aren't there. I have a stock HDD and I swear I've yet to hear it make a noise.

 

Why not? Depending on the settings, an mSATA SSD can be a file cache or a bootable OS/programs drive. (Windows 7 can be realistically installed in a 32GB mSATA SSD, or a Linux distro in a 16GB one.)

mSATA SSD boot = loud stock HDD? You're so funny.

HDD never going to sleep has nothing to do with the presence of a bootable mSATA SSD that contains OS and programs.



How did you set up your mSATA SSD to make it a boot/OS/programs drive?

 

Is anybody's hinge squeaking? My right hinge squeaks quite loudly when I open and close my lid. Kind of thinking of returning it...

 

I stand corrected. Thought I'd read somewhere here (?) advising against using it this way or at least using it to store programs.

 

No squeaking at all, but occasionally the lid does not register that it has been closed and the computer doesn't go to sleep. Once I had it closed and confirmed at sleep and came back to find it the computer up and running. Gonna have to get this fixed if it persists.

 

Yeah so what i did was make a recovery usb, and remove the hard drive from the computer, then loaded windows 8 onto a fresh 64Gb msata. its really fast, but just the hard drive seems to stay on all the time.. so im thinking of goin back. but yeah i know the msata is supposed to be used as a cache, but you can use it the other way i just wish i could figure out how to make this hard drive turn off. i have the power settings set to turn it off after 1 minute and it doesnt do anything. probably only works if your OS is on the hard drive not he SSD. im actually thinking of going dual SSD.

 

You took those pieces of advice out of context.

As I said, the mSATA SSD can be configured as a file cache, or it can be configured as a "regular drive" which can be used as a boot/OS/programs drive or a file storage drive.

You are speculating. Let me ask again: How did you decouple the mSATA SSD from the HDD and set the mSATA SSD as the boot drive?

 

FYI,

The SSD in my Samsung Series 9 is a 256GB mSATA drive. It handles all of the OS boot, application launch, and data retrieval duties.

You can do the same thing in the current and previous generation ThinkPads. A lot of people I know have a 256GB mSATA, and two 512GB SSD's in the primary and ultrabay of a model like the W520 or W530. Yea, three SSD's in the chassis. Expensive, but some of the folks I know with this config are doing high end customer demos using big storage blobs and need the I/O.

The caching design is interesting but not something I'd ever use.