ThinkPad T400s Gets High Marks, But Not Everyone is Gushing

Last night, we posted our review of the ThinkPad T400s, Lenovo’s new slimmed down, sexied up 14-inch business notebook. Having spent over a week with the new ThinkPad, we fell in love with its super-thin chassis, ultrafast boot times (ours had a Toshiba SSD), and incredible keyboard / touchpad, which were even more responsive and comfortable than a typical ThinkPad’s. We also loved the performance as the system returned the highest score on PCMark Vantage, a popular performance benchmark, that we’d ever seen, besting even some quad core desktop replacements we tested.

There’s no such thing as a perfect notebook. So we also noted that, with a starting price of $1,599 and an MSRP of $2130 for our tricked-out review sample, this is an extremely expensive system, particularly in comparison to the regular ThinkPad T400, which can be had for under $800 in its minimum configuration. For over $2,000, we would also hope to get more than its modest 4.5 hours of battery life and we would have hoped for better graphics performance as its integrated Intel 4500MHD graphics chip delivered below average scores. But the performance and thin, durable form factor are so fantastic that it’s easy to overlook these flaws.

But, as always, we’re curious to see what our colleagues at other sites think. Let’s have a look:

• Engadget did a brief hands-on with the T400s, loved the system but for its weak graphics chip and high price, and was particularly enamored with the new textured touchpad, saying ” It’s pretty great — we wish all trackpads were like this.” They also said that the price delta between original T400 and T400s makes the less expensive system look like a better choice on paper, but “side by side the clean lines and trimmed-down looks of the T400s make it a much harder decision.”
• Maximum PC is a little more muted in its praise of the ThinkPad T400s, calling the 14-inch notebook a “an all-around sturdy machine that can perform your typical work or school functions and be transported with ease,” but criticizing its video-encoding performance (which we found to be good) and its lack of “fashionable aesthetics.”
• Slashgear generally liked the T400s, but, like us, they were disappointed in the lack of a high-capacity battery. Unlike us, they ran Geekbench, where surprisingly the performance score they got wasn’t so high. Perhaps their T400s review unit did not have the blazing-fast SSD that ours had.
• Notebooks.com is still working on their review, but they seem impressed so far.
• JkOntheRun has a great hands-on video of the T400s and says he is seeing nearly 6 hours of endurance from the battery, though he doesn’t say if this is anecdotal use or from a battery test.
• Computer Shopper loves the keyboard on the T400s as much as we do, saying “the tactile feedback and key travel are perfect.” They also got incredibly strong performance scores, but were unimpressed with the sluggish integrated graphics chip. They used a power-intensive DVD rundown test to measure endurance and got a mere 2 hours and 12 minutes of battery life.

So it looks like most people have a positive impression, though they aren’t all gushing like we are.