Lenovo T400 Notebook: specifications and reviews

Conveniently located in the middle segment of the ThinkPad family of Lenovo, the T series offers a strong combination of price, performance and mobility. The 14.1-inch T400 is less cumbersome than the Lenovo SL for small business or the budget R series, and cheaper than the ultraportable Lenovo X or the ultra-high-end W series. At a price of $ 1,549, this business notebook has such first-class features as switchable graphics, As well as a long battery life and excellent ergonomics. In other words, it has everything you can expect from 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 classic ThinkPad look. The chassis and keyboard are black with a shade of bright red TrackPoint and blue buttons on some keys, including a ThinkVantage button that launches the Lenovo software utility and an enter key. A series of green status lights is located just below the screen.

Unlike the SL and X300 / X301 series, the T400 has simple, metallic, not smooth, black loops. 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.

The extended 9-cell battery forms a significant bulge in the rear of the device and raises the total weight to 2.54 kg from a slender 2.13 kg of a four-cell, low-capacity battery. Although the system fits comfortably on the lap and does not tip over, the back of the notebook is noticeably heavier than the front.

Adequate ports

The Lenovo T400 comes standard with all the ports that a mobile professional only needs, but with one exception. On the right side there is an optical drive and a single USB port. On the left there is an ExpressCard / 54 slot, Ethernet, a modem jack and two more USB ports. The front panel houses the FireWire connector, as well as the microphone input and headphone output, and the Kensington lock on the back. For additional security, the system even comes with a device for reading fingerprints.

The card reader, absolutely necessary today, is not available in the basic configuration, but it is available as an option for an additional $ 10 when ordering T400 on Lenovo.com. Users would also like to have DisplayPort and HDMI ports, but they are not vital.

Keyboard, TrackPoint and Touchpad

Lenovo T400 - laptop with the same keyboard as in other ThinkPad models, with strong feedback and predictable key layout. However, if you put it next to some other devices in the line, such as the X300, SL300 and the old Z61t, you'll notice that the keys in the T400 are slightly less responsive and, unlike the rest of this type of product, the entire keyboard sags noticeably. Users note the difference between the internal design and the use of a weaker support plate than, for example, the ThinkPad T61.

Between the keys "P" and "P" is conveniently located already familiar miniature tensometric joystick TrackPoint. While most users prefer the touch panel, many have appreciated the accuracy of this pointing device, and those who print blindly are pleased to be able to move around the screen without taking their hands off the central row of keys. Owners who do not like the TrackPoint joystick can completely ignore it and use a high-precision touch panel located below the blank to navigate.

Heating temperature

Like other ThinkPad notebooks, Lenovo T400 remains pleasantly cool when used. For example, after 15 minutes of web surfing, the temperature between keys G and H did not exceed 29 degrees, the touch panel had a temperature of 28 ° C, and the rear lower part of the case warmed to averaged 29. According to experts, any temperature not exceeding 32 degrees on the scale Celsius, can be considered extremely cool.

Display

The screen of 14.1 inches diagonally with LED backlight produces bright colors and clear images both in normal work with a laptop and in video viewing mode. The color quality remains stable at angles up to 45 degrees, which is enough, at least, that three adults have the opportunity to sit at the screen and without discomfort to watch the film.

Lenovo releases the T400 with a resolution of 1280 x 800 (WXGA) or 1440 x 900 (WXGA +) pixels. Users are strongly encouraged to choose the option with the best display indicators. 1440 x 900 pixels on a 14.1-inch monitor provide enough space on the screen to comfortably browse web content or long documents without eye strain.

Webcam

1.3 megapixels is more than enough for videoconferencing, but for photographing this is clearly too little. Pictures and videos taken in low light conditions are clear, bright and full of details, but pixelated. In the video chat the traffic is smooth.

Surprisingly Good Sounding

Built-in speakers produce a loud, clean, although slightly metallic at high volume sound both when watching video, and when playing music. Users note that when listening to jazz, dance-pop and rock, they had little distortion, even at maximum volume. And yet 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

Intel Core 2 Duo 2.53 GHz, 2 GB of DDR3 RAM and Centrino 2 chipset provide high performance testing of the Lenovo T400 notebook. The characteristics of switchable graphics in high-performance mode in the PCMark Vantage test show 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). Notebook EliteBook 6930p, which showed a much higher score (3749), is equipped with a slower 2.4GHz processor, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450, but it has a lower resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels.

On the Lenovo T400 user mode, user reviews are rated positively. The laptop provides simultaneous reception of a video call via Skype, streaming high-definition streaming video from Fox.com and editing a Word document without visible delays or suspending programs on both a high-performance and economical integrated graphics processor.

The download takes 1 minute and 5 seconds, which is 1 second slower than the average for a laptop of this class. But still, users would like to significantly reduce the start time, at least to the Dell Latitude E6400 (53 s).

Graphic performance

In high performance mode, the Lenovo T400 notebook showed 2557 points in 3DMark06, which is 1200 above the average and exceeds the SL400 (2225) and Samsung X460 (2082), both of which have discrete graphics. The energy-saving processor lowers the result of 3DMark06 to a mediocre result of 753 points, which is 600 below the average.

Notebook owners do not recommend using the T400 as a gaming machine, only as a last resort. For example, the FEAR test in high performance mode provides respectable, but unremarkable, 35 fps at 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 the business system, the T400 provides good multimedia performance. Both in discrete and integrated graphics mode, watching DVD is enjoyable. Darkened scenes are reproduced accurately and with less noise or distortion, while bright scenes are quite colorful.

Hard Drive Performance

Lenovo T400 is offered in variants with hard drives with a rotation speed of 5400 and 7200 rpm, as well as SSD solid-state drives. According to user feedback, the Hitachi hard drive with a capacity of 160 GB and a speed of 7,200 rpm is the weakest link in the overall performance of the notebook. The drive completed a test copy of 4.97 GB of mixed media files in 5 minutes 9 seconds, which corresponds to 16.5 MB / s - the average value for models in this category. Despite the fact that the evaluation is better than 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 a disk rotation speed of only 5400 rpm runs at a speed of 18.5 MB / s.

The configuration of a system with a larger drive can improve performance. Lenovo SL300 with a 250 GB Hitachi disk and a speed of 5400 rpm is much ahead of the Lenovo SL400. For those who can afford to pay for a higher speed of work, users advise to buy solid-state drives.

Performance in wireless networks

The Intel WiFi Link 5100 card provides good data transfer speed for notebooks of this class: an average of 20.7 Mbps at a distance of up to 5 m and 16.3 Mbps at distances of up to 15 m. The T400 can also be equipped with integrated mobile broadband cards Operators of cellular communication.

Battery life

The laptop battery test, consisting of 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 power saving mode of Lenovo T400, the battery lasted as much as 6 hours and 26 minutes, which is significantly more than the average for the category (4:28). Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the testing was done with a bulky nine-cell battery of batteries, so six- and four-cell devices show a much shorter battery life.

Included Software

Like other ThinkPad notebooks, including the SL400 and SL300, the T400 is free of unnecessary software. The system comes with typical Lenovo Care utilities, including a battery management program, 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 set for recording and playback of DVDs.

When upgrading to a new operating system, you will need to update the Lenovo T400 notebook power management program. Drivers and new software can be obtained from lenovo.com. True, the manufacturer does not provide drivers for devices not tested with Windows 10. These include the Lenovo T400. The instructions for updating the software are in the same place.

Verdict

Advantages of the model are the ability to work with two kinds of graphics hardware and a long battery life of a nine-cell battery. Among its disadvantages - the outdated design, the mediocre performance of the hard drive, awkward appearance when using the extended battery, the lack of a memory card slot in the standard configuration.

Thus, the Lenovo T400 bundled with its nine-cell battery is not the lightest 14.1-inch notebook, but one of the most powerful and long-lasting devices in its class. Switched graphics, a fast processor and a Centrino 2 chipset give owners a portable system that is close to desktop computers and has a battery life of more than 6 hours.