Lenovo ThinkPad T420 Review - Lenovo Review

Lenovo's ThinkPad T series notebooks have for ages been the gold standard for mainstream business systems due to their strong performance, superior construction, and best-in-class keyboards. With the 14-inch ThinkPad T420, Lenovo has created a couple of changes, switching the screen to your now-standard 16:9 aspect ratio and creating the latest Intel 2nd Generation Core series CPU. Is the T420, $1,179 as configured, this company notebook to get rid of?

Design

The ThinkPad T420 follows the classic ThinkPad aesthetic business users have started to know and love through the years. The matte black, rubberized lid having its simple silver logo and raven black sides, bottom, and interior are long-time ThinkPad staples, out of the box the tiny red TrackPoint pointing stick that sits involving the G and H keys. Like previous ThinkPad T Series notebooks, the T420 is ideal for durability. The rubberized ABS plastic lid, carbon-reinforced bottom, and internal roll cage shield against shocks and drops.

At 13.4 x 10 x 1 inches and 5.2 pounds using the high-capacity nine-cell battery, the ThinkPad T420 is a little larger and heavier compared to the Toshiba Tecra R840 (13.4 x 9.4 x 1.1 inches, 4.6 pounds), however it's still lighter as opposed to HP Elitebook 8460p (13 x 9.1 x 1.3 inches, 5.4 pounds) and also the Dell Latitude E6420 (13.9 x 10.25 x 1.25 inches, 6.2 pounds) featuring its extended battery. Using the standard six-cell battery cuts the T420's length to 9 inches and its particular weight to 4.8 pounds. Lenovo's ThinkPad T420s, designed like a lighter alternative, weighs only 4 pounds and measures only 13.5 x 9.1 x 0.8-1 inches.

Display and Audio

The 230-nit, 14.1-inch matte display provided sharp images and lots of desktop real-estate thanks to its optional 1600 x 900 panel. When we watched a 1080p QuickTime trailer with the movie Point Blank, images were sharp and motion smooth with viewing angles solid as much as 45 degrees on the left or right. However, whenever we streamed a 720p Flash episode of Fringe from Fox.com, the perimeters of objects seemed somewhat pixelated, perhaps as the screen a higher resolution compared to video. We endorse the 1600 x 900 panel, a $50 option, because doing so shows much more of your favorite website pages and documents without forcing someone to scroll.

While significantly less high fidelity as audio-focused consumer notebooks like the Dell XPS plus the HP Envy series, the Lenovo ThinkPad T420 provides surprisingly good music playback. Whether we had arrived playing Kool and also the Gang's jazz-oriented "Summer Madness," the bass-heavy "Between the Sheets" from the Isley Brothers, or Motley Crue's guitar-laden "Looks that Kill," sound was accurate and loud enough to fill a medium-sized room. We could even figure out a solid separation of sound between your speakers, which lay on either side on the keyboard.

Performance

With its 2.5-GHz Core i5 CPU, 4GB of RAM, an Nvidia NVS 4200M graphics chip, and 7,200-rpm harddrive, the ThinkPad T420 was sufficiently strong for anything we threw in internet marketing, from playing 1080p video to spreadsheet crunching and lightweight gaming. On PCMarkVantage, which measures functionality, the T420 scored a robust 8,197, greater than the 5,596 thin-and-light notebook category average, the 7,728 submitted by the Toshiba Tecra R840, along with the HP EliteBook 8460p (both have exactly the same Core i5-2520M CPU).

The 500GB, 7,200-rpm hard disk booted into Windows 7 Professional inside a speedy 48 seconds, much faster versus the 65-second category average. The drive took a modest 3 minutes and 5 seconds to accomplish the LAPTOP File Transfer test, , involving copying 4.97GB of mixed-media files. That's a rate of 27.5 MBps, a little higher compared to 26 MBps category average but well behind the 34.6 MBps provided through the Dell Latitude E6420 as well as 7,200-rpm drive.

Using Oxelon Media Encoder, the T420 transcoded a 114MB MPEG4 to AVI in 43 seconds, 15 seconds less compared to the thin-and-light average, and so on a par with all the Toshiba R840 (41 seconds) along with the HP 8460p (42 seconds).

Graphics

Our ThinkPad T420 review unit had Nvidia NVS 4200M and Intel HD 3000 GPUs and Nvidia's Optimus graphics switching technology to toggle involving the two for top combination of battery and performance. On 3DMark06, which measures overall graphics prowess, the ThinkPad T420 scored a solid 5,583, well higher than the 4,006 category average, the 5,060 offered by the Dell Latitude E6420 having its Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics, along with the 5,032 scored because of the HP EliteBook 8460p having its AMD Radeon HD 6470M GPU.

The ThinkPad T420 isn't a gaming console, nonetheless its discrete graphics chip is a good example to get decent frame rates on some popular titles. At autodetect settings, the T420 provided a great 61 frames per second when playing World of Warcraft, rather less than the 86 fps category average, but much higher compared to 41 fps the Dell Latitude E6420 got as well as the 52 fps scored through the HP EliteBook 8460p, and impressive considering that most notebooks from the category have lower resolution screens. With camera work turned up, the pace dropped to some still-solid 32 fps.

In the harder demanding Far Cry 2, the ThinkPad T420 got an excellent 37 fps at 1024 x 768 resolution, on the par while using 36.6 fps category average. When we upped the resolution to 1600 x 900, that rate dropped to your modest 25 fps, and that is comfortably across the 20 fps category average.

Keyboard, Pointing Stick, TouchPad

The classic, spill-resistant keyboard for the ThinkPad T420 features 7 rows which has a full range of keys, even rarely used ones including scroll lock and pause. Enlarged Esc and Delete keys ensure it is easy to perform these frequent functions. The combination of strong tactile feedback plus a smile-shaped key surface allowed us to accomplish an 86 word-per-minute score that has a 1-percent error rate around the Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor test, well above our 80 wpm average. However, the typing experience about the 13-inch ThinkPad X1 continues to be the industry's best for that notebook's soft-touch palm rest and more responsive keys.

Like other ThinkPads, the T420 has both a TrackPoint pointing stick along with a touchpad. We're huge fans in the TrackPoint because doing so provides the most accurate method to navigate round the desktop lacking using a mouse, plus it allows you to move the pointer without lifting your fingers off from the home row. If you don't like pointing sticks, the three x 1.75-inch textured touchpad provides accurate navigation round the desktop, as well as two discrete mouse buttons provide the optimal amount of feedback. However, multitouch gestures including pinch-to-zoom aren't smooth whatsoever.