Sitting comfortably in the middle segment of Lenovo's ThinkPad family, the T Series offers a powerful combination of price, performance, and mobility. The 14.1-inch T400 is less bulky than the Lenovo SL for small business or the budget R series, and cheaper than the ultraportable Lenovo X or the ultra-powerful W series. At $ 1,549, this business notebook has top-notch features like switchable graphics, as well as long battery life and excellent ergonomics. In other words, it has everything you can expect from a ThinkPad.
Lenovo T400 Design Review
While Dell and HP have already provided their line of business notebooks with a more modern design, the T400 does not offer any new features to the ThinkPad's classic look. The chassis and keyboard are black with a touch of bright red TrackPoint joystick and blue on some keys, including the ThinkVantage button, which launches Lenovo's software utility, and the enter key. A row of green status lights is located just below the screen.
Unlike the SL and X300 / X301 series, the T400 hinges are simple, metal, rather than smooth, black. The cover is not made of glossy plastic and does not have a luminous logo, as in the SL series.
Like the Samsung X460, the maximum thickness of the laptop is only 33 mm.
An extended 9-cell battery forms a significant bulge at the rear of the device and raises the total weight to 2.54 kg with a slender 2.13 kg four-cell low-capacity battery. Although the system fits comfortably on your lap and doesn't tip over, the back of the laptop is noticeably heavier than the front.
Adequate ports
The Lenovo T400 comes standard with all the ports that a mobile professional might need, but with one exception. On the right side are an optical drive and a single USB port. On the left there is an ExpressCard / 54 slot, Ethernet, a modem connector and two more USB ports. On the front panel there is a FireWire connector, as well as a microphone input and a headphone output, and on the back there is a Kensington lock. For added security, the system even comes with a fingerprint reader.
The memory card reader, which is absolutely necessary today, is not available in the basic configuration, but it is available as an option for an extra $ 10 when ordering a T400 on Lenovo.com. Users would also like to have DisplayPort and HDMI ports, but they are not vital.
Keyboard, TrackPoint, and Touchpad
The Lenovo T400 is a laptop with the same keyboard as other ThinkPad models, with strong feedback and a predictable key layout. Nevertheless, if you put it next to some other devices of the line, such as the X300, SL300 and the old Z61t, you will notice that the keys in the T400 are slightly less responsive and, unlike other products of this type, the entire keyboard flexes noticeably. Users note the difference in internal design and the use of a weaker base plate than, for example, the ThinkPad T61.
Between the "P" and "P" keys is conveniently located the familiar miniature tensometric joystick TrackPoint. While most users prefer a touchpad, many appreciated the accuracy of this pointing device, and those who print blindly are glad to be able to move around the screen without taking their hands off the center row of keys. Owners who don’t like the TrackPoint joystick can completely ignore it and use the high-precision touch panel below the gap for navigation.
Heating temperature
Like other ThinkPad laptops, the Lenovo T400 remains pleasantly cool when used. For example, after 15 minutes of web surfing, the temperature between the G and H keys did not exceed 29 degrees, the touch panel had a temperature of 28 ° C, and the back lower part of the body warmed up to averaged 29. According to experts, any temperature not exceeding 32 degrees on the scale Celsius can be considered extremely cool.
Display
A diagonal 14.1-inch screen with LED backlight produces vibrant colors and sharp images both during normal work with a laptop and in video viewing mode. The color rendering quality remains stable at angles of up to 45 degrees, which is enough, at least so that three adults can sit at the screen and watch the movie without discomfort.
Lenovo releases the T400 with a resolution of 1280 x 800 (WXGA) or 1440 x 900 (WXGA +) pixels. Users strongly recommend choosing the option with the best display performance. 1440 x 900 pixels on a 14.1-inch monitor provides enough screen space to comfortably view web content or long documents without eye strain.
Webcam
1.3 megapixels is more than enough for video conferencing, but for photography this is clearly too little. Pictures and videos taken in low light are clear, vibrant, and full of detail, but pixelated. In Skype video chat, the movements are smooth.
Amazingly good sound
The built-in speakers produce a loud, clear, albeit slightly metallic sound at high volume, both when watching a video or playing music. Users note that when listening to jazz, dance pop and rock, they had little distortion even at maximum volume. Still, the results are far from Hi-Fi systems, so music lovers will probably need headphones or external speakers.
Switchable graphics
Lenovo offers the T400 with two different graphics options: an integrated Intel GMA 4500MHD chip or a switchable graphics solution that allows users to choose between the same energy-efficient Intel chip and the more powerful ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 without rebooting.
Performance
The Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53 GHz, 2 GB DDR3 RAM and the Centrino 2 chipset provide high performance test results for the Lenovo T400 laptop. The performance of switchable graphics in high-performance mode in the PCMark Vantage test shows an impressive 3576 points, 700 points higher than the average for thin and light systems. This is better than the Dell Latitude E6400 (3025), Fujitsu LifeBook S6520 (3383) and SL400 from Lenovo (3411). The EliteBook 6930p laptop, which showed a significantly higher score (3749), is equipped with a slower 2.4 GHz processor, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450 graphics card, but it has a lower resolution - 1280 x 800 pixels.
About the Lenovo T400 mode, user reviews are positive. The laptop allows you to simultaneously receive a video call via Skype, broadcast high-definition video from Fox.com and edit a Word document without visible delays or pause programs on both high-performance and cost-effective integrated graphics processor.
Downloading takes 1 minute and 5 seconds, which is 1 second slower than the average for laptops of this class. But still, users would like to significantly reduce the start time, at least to the level of the Dell Latitude E6400 (53 s).
Graphics Performance
In high-performance mode, the Lenovo T400 laptop showed 2557 points in 3DMark06, which is 1200 above the average and surpasses the SL400 (2225) and Samsung X460 (2082), both of which have discrete graphics. The energy-saving processor lowers the 3DMark06 result to a mediocre result of 753 points, which is 600 lower than the average.
Owners of the laptop do not recommend using the T400 as a gaming machine, only as a last resort. For example, the FEAR test in high performance mode gives a respectable, but unremarkable 35 fps at a resolution of 1024 x 768 and 24 fps at 1440 x 900 pixels. Energy-saving graphics allows you to get only 15 and 6 fps as a result of the test.
For a business system, the T400 provides good multimedia performance. In both discrete and integrated graphics mode, DVD viewing is enjoyable. Shaded scenes are reproduced accurately and with less noise or distortion, while vivid scenes are quite colorful.
Hard disk performance
Lenovo T400 is offered in variants with hard disk drives with a rotation speed of 5400 and 7200 rpm, as well as solid-state SSD drives. According to user reviews, the Hitachi HDD with a capacity of 160 GB and a speed of 7,200 rpm is the weakest link in the overall notebook performance configuration. The drive completed a test copy of 4.97 GB of mixed media files in 5 minutes 9 s, which corresponds to 16.5 MB / s - the average value for models in this category. Although the score is better than that of the SL400 (12.6 MB / s), the HP EliteBook 6930p (12.7 MB / s) and the Fujitsu LifeBook S6520 (14.9 Mbps), the Dell Latitude E6400 with only a disk speed 5400 rpm works at a speed of 18.5 MB / s.
Higher capacity drive system configurations can improve performance. Lenovo SL300 with a Hitachi drive with a capacity of 250 GB and a speed of 5400 rpm is significantly ahead of Lenovo SL400. For those who can afford to pay for higher speeds, users are advised to purchase solid state drives.
Wireless Performance
The Intel WiFi Link 5100 card provides good data transfer speeds for laptops of this class: on average 20.7 Mbps at a distance of up to 5 m and 16.3 Mbps at a distance of up to 15 m. The T400 can also be equipped with integrated mobile broadband cards mobile operators.
Battery life
The laptop’s battery test, which consists in continuous web surfing via Wi-Fi in high performance mode, showed a T400 battery life of 5 hours 19 minutes. This compares with the Dell Latitude E6400 (5:17) and Lenovo SL400 (5:20).
In the Lenovo T400 power saving mode, the battery lasted as long as 6 hours 26 minutes, which is much more than the average for the category (4:28). However, it is important to remember that testing was carried out with a bulky nine-cell battery, so six- and four-cell devices show significantly shorter battery life.
Software included
Like other ThinkPad laptops, including the SL400 and SL300, the T400 is free of unnecessary software. The system comes with typical Lenovo Care utilities, including battery management, system recovery, and password management, as well as drive protection tools and Lenovo T400 drivers. InterVideo WinDVD and Roxio Easy Media Creator are included in the kit for burning and burning DVDs.
If you upgrade to a new operating system, you will need to update the Lenovo T400 laptop power management program. Drivers and new software are available at lenovo.com. However, the manufacturer does not provide drivers for devices that have not been tested with Windows 10. These include the Lenovo T400. Instructions for updating the software are in the same place.
Verdict
The advantages of the model are the ability to work with two types of graphic hardware and a long operating time of a nine-cell battery. Among its shortcomings are an outdated design, mediocre hard drive performance, a clumsy look when using an extended power battery, and a lack of a memory card slot in a standard configuration.
Thus, the Lenovo T400 complete with its nine-cell battery is not the lightest 14.1-inch laptop, but one of the most powerful and longest running devices in its class. Switchable graphics, a fast processor and the Centrino 2 chipset give owners a portable system whose performance is close to desktop computers and has a battery life of more than 6 hours.