Lenovo ThinkPad T410s Laptop Review
So many business notebooks go, the Lenovo ThinkPad T Series always received high marks for its excellent keyboard, track points and performance. The latest in this line, the T410s, the Weight Watchers version of the 14-inch T410. It is lighter and thinner, but still possesses much of the performance.
Last year, Lenovo slimmed down and jazzy traditional ThinkPad T Series released slimmer design as the ThinkPad T400. Now some of the most attractive parts of the T400s have found their way into the T410s, including the more angular shape of the sides, and the new keyboard / LCD light layout. This new look is more evolutionary than revolutionary, but it makes the system look much more modern and attractive.
The materials used in the T410s the chassis while making it durable and stylish. The chassis features a cover made from ABS plastic and strong carbon fiber reinforced plastic base. An internal roll cage protects the notebook from damage.
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While the T410 measured 13.1 x 9.4 x 1.3 inches and 5.2 pounds with its standard six-cell battery, T410s is a lighter 3.8 pounds and is only 1 inch thick, making it closer Sony VAIO Z on the HP EliteBook 8450p.
A 2.4-GHz Intel Core i5 520M processor and 4 GB of RAM in the T410s combined to provide a strong overall performance. PCMark Vantage scoring system in 6234 – 700 points less than the T410 (which has a 2.53 GHz Intel Core i5 CPU 540m), but still trounced the thin and light average with 2,000 points. The HP EliteBook 8440p, the same processor but only 2 GB of RAM, scored 5.552.
The 5,400-rpm, 250 GB hard drive booted Windows 7 Professional (64-bit) in 1 minute and 7 seconds, just slightly below the average (59 seconds). The station completed LAPTOP Transfer Test, which we copy 4.97GB of mixed media in a slow 4 minutes and 50 seconds (at a rate of 17.5 MBps). That 6.3 MBps lower than the average for the category, and just better than the original T400 (16.5 MBps).
Using Oxelon Media Encoder, the T410s transcoded a 114MB MPEG-4 video to AVI format on a fast 58 seconds 7 seconds faster than the average. However, the T410 transcoding finished in just 52 seconds.
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Even with integrated Intel GMA graphics HD, we were able to move smoothly over the world in Google Earth, browse the web with ease, view pictures and watch high-definition video (though it was a bit noisy). On 3DMark06, a benchmark that measures the overall graphical prowess, scored the T410s 1899, about 360 points below the average thin and light.
Frame rates exhibited during gameplay were barely passable. World of Warcraft, we have 37 frames per second with resolution 1024 x 768 managed and effects set to default, which dropped to only 10 fps with everything maxed out. The typical thin and light laptop looks 86 and 26 fps, respectively on the test. The same goes for the more demanding Far Cry 2: 33 fps at 1024 x 768 and 10 fps on max resolution of 1440 x 900.
Conclusion
As an aspiring younger brother, the Lenovo ThinkPad T410s is thinner and lighter than the T410, but still manages to perform almost as good. However, a sub-4-pound machine that takes only 4 hours on one charge does not seem worth the premium 260 U.S. dollars (with identically configured). Not only the T410s cost more but not that much more in terms of sustainability get. There is much to like about the T410s, but we would not buy one without the three-cell Ultrabay battery.
