Lenovo T420 Review

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Background

I bought this notebook as a desktop replacement for use when I start grad school in a few weeks. I’ll be going for a PhD in Electrical Engineering, specializing in designing microwave/mm-wave wireless chips. I’m upgrading from a desktop with an AMD X2 clocked to a 4800+ and a 36GB WD Raptor boot drive, so take my wild fanaticism with a grain of salt.

I took the extra weight penalty and sprung for the 9-cell and purchased an extra AC adapter. This is so I could leave one AC adapter at school and one at home. Since the 9-cell can get me through 8-9 hours of reading lecture notes, journal articles, and e-mail, I’m freed from carrying the AC adapter around with me all the time.

It will be able to handle a bit of simulation that I’ll be doing in Agilent ADS, Cadence, HFSS, and Sonnet, but mostly it will be for layout, light CAD, and quick sims. I figure I’ll have something to push the actual large problem sets to. If this is all that I have for the larger problem sets then I might  consider dropping the i7-2720QM quad-core in this, or I’ll upgrade my old desktop.

Specifications

• Lenovo T420-4177-CTO
• Intel i5-2520M
• 8GB RAM
• 1600×900 resolution
• Nvidia Optimus NVS 4200M
• 80GB Intel 310 mSATA SSD
• 500GB 7200rpm (not used right now)
• Intel 6300 abgn 3×3 Wireless
• Camera+Bluetooth
• 9-cell battery

First Impressions

This notebook both looks and feels solid. I remember admiring the utilitarian nature of Thinkpads back in the IBM days, and this notebook exudes that same feeling. Nice job on that part, Lenovo.

There are just enough USB ports – one each side, and a powered one in the back. One eSATA/USB combo port that I didn’t include in the prior count, one VGA out, one displayport out, and a media card reader.

It does feel kind of chunky and the weight is concentrated towards the back with the 9-cell battery, but hey, I chose the extra weight for longer unwired time. Sorry, I don’t care about you, my aching back!

Display

I have the 1600×900 screen made by AU Optronics. It’s okay – kind of grainy if  you focus in on it, but I’m not a connoisseur of notebook screens by any means. The hi-res screen provides just enough real estate to view a pdf and work on a word processor/spreadsheet/presentation open as well. I can’t imagine doing that with the low-res screen.

With that said, wide aspect ratio screens suck. 16:9 doesn’t leave too much vertical room to work with, especially for a business oriented notebook brand. “Ooooh, but I can watch HD movies on it!” No, I want to watch movies on a 50″ TV with 5.1 sound, not on some tiny, slightly grainy notebook screen with crappy speakers.

The vertical viewing angle sucks, don’t even try to adjust the gamma on the screen, the default is good enough if your eyes are perpendicular to the center of the screen. I’d say 10-15 degrees north or south results in 0.1 change in gamma. There is an angle at which colors invert, but my eyes are never at that angle.

Brightness is plenty – I keep my LCDs at half brightness for my eyes sake. Contrast is just okay.

Sound

It sucks in typical notebook fashion, but you’re not here for the sound reproduction. The solution lies in quality headphones and a headphone driver if the headphones have a high impedance.

Unfortunately, the headphone output is right at the front edge on the right side. So, if you have a right-angled plug, angle it away from you so that you don’t break it. I you don’t have a right-angled plug, it’s going to get in the way of your mouse hand if you’re right handed.

There is some ridiculous option in software to output to both the speakers and the headphone out at the same time – if you’re into that sort of thing.

Keyboard Touchpad & Trackpoint

The keyboard has a fantastic feeling, not that spaced-out chiclet keyboard crap, but an actual keyboard with good tactile feedback. There isn’t too much travel or too little travel, it’s juuust right. There are elongated Esc and Delete keys, which make them easier to press. I do wish PageUp and PageDown were lower on the keyboard, however.

Brushing the touchpad isn’t an issue while typing. Speaking of, the touchpad feels kind of strange due to the tiny bumps on it – it give you less surface area that you’re actually in contact with. But it’s better than having a chalkboard touchpad that sops up your skin oil, I guess.

Trackpoints are okay. This is my opinion. Sometimes the red trackpoint gets in the way of typing the letter ‘b’, as if it’s mocking me. That bastard.

Keyboard Light

There is a white LED light that shines down from the camera onto the keyboard. I had my doubts, but it’s fantastic! Easy on the eyes and illuminates more than a backlit keyboard would. Switch it on/off by pressing [Fn]+[PgUp].

ThinkVantage Tools

The ThinkVantage tools are pretty good, actually. The System Update software is kept up to date and is really useful for grabbing the other pieces of software if you do a clean install.

Using Airbag Protection, I turned the motion sensor off for the hard drive, since I’m using a solid state drive.

In the Power Manager, I set the power mode to Power Source Optimized, changed the default brightness settings, and I was happy with the result.

Battery Life

Battery life with some Gmail chatting on wifi and reading PDF lecture notes was 8-9 hours with half brightness on the 9-cell battery. The notebook slows down when it’s in the low clocked CPU state in order to save power. If you want to do CPU/GPU intensive tasks, plug it into the wall.

Fan Noise

It depends on the ambient and usage – the fan control software likes to keep the processor’s idle temperature at around a constant 40C. When it’s 30C out, the fan in the notebook is going to be spinning at 3500rpm after a while, and it can get annoying if you like complete silence.

When the ambient is closer to 20C, the fan in the notebook is going to keep closer to 2000rpm, which is dead silent. Unplugged with the power source optimized profile, I haven’t heard it step up from 2000 rpm.

Temperature

It’s plenty cool when you use it on a desk. I lap-tested it, too – it can get slightly warm with a slight amount of sweat, but it’s better than most since the fan seems to be able to move air decently well. Usage as a laptop is not recommended, if you want to have babies someday. Not recommended as birth control either. YMMV.

Ultrabay DVD drive

I normally wouldn’t say anything about it, but I keep pressing the damn button that opens it whenever I move the notebook around! At least once a day, on average.

I don’t need a DVD drive, so I ordered an ultrabay adapter that supports SATA III with a 12.7mm bezel off of ebay for $50 to replace it. The standard Thinkpad ultrabay from Lenovo has a smaller bezel that doesn’t quite cover the same thickness and leaves a nice gap.

http://stores.ebay.com/digizon/_i.html?_nkw=Lenovo+ThinkPad+T420

Wireless & Ethernet

Switch the wireless radio on/off with [Fn]+[F5]. You can also control the Bluetooth radio in the OSD menu that pops up.

I got the Intel 6300 abgn card with the 3×3 dipole antennas. I only have a 54g connection right now, but 10m away from the wireless router without line of sight, I’m seeing the full 21Mbps downlink that I see on the ethernet connection.

I’ll test the wireless-n connection a bit when I arrive on the GA Tech campus in a few weeks. I can’t wait to experience the fruits of glorious MIMO research – the wireless-n card spec states that it can have a thoroughput of up to 450Mbps, but due to channel interference, noise, signal attenuation, phase of the moon, etc, your signal to noise ratio will determine what you will actually achieve.

Speaking of which, the ethernet is gigabit! Sweet! But it doesn’t matter at all with my 100Mbps router. Maybe school with have gigabit all the way to the ethernet jack.

Shipping

The first ship date estimate in the shopping cart was great. The second one when purchasing/purchased was worse. The second ship date was accurate. UPS delivered, and they require a signature. The laptop ships from Hong Kong, to Alaska, to Kansas, and then to the final destination. They will ship some accessories separately, if they can, from a US location, this will also require a signature. It’s pretty stupid, so beware of that.

Overall

I really, really like the notebook. It’s light enough to carry around in a backpack all day, and it lasts long enough on the 9-cell to use all day with wifi on and the display set at a non-blinding half brightness. The i5 Sandy Bridge processor is plenty fast and is good enough to run harmonic balance and transient simulations on, when plugged into the outlet, and the Nvidia Optimus can only help with that when doing light CAD for computational electromagnetic (FDTD or MOM) sims. If you have a similar usage scenario, I think you’ll be happy with this notebook.

A+++ Great seller, product is as advertised, will do business again!!!