Lenovo ThinkPad T410: Built for Business
by Jarred Walton on March 26, 2010 4:00 AM ESTBig Battery = Decent Battery Life
So let's get this out of the way first: the T410 "cheats" by using a 9-cell 94Wh battery compared to 6-cell 48 to 64Wh batteries in competing laptops. The default battery on the T410 is also a 6-cell unit, but if you want more battery life it's nice to have the option of grabbing a higher capacity battery. For a comparison of how the laptops really stack up, look at the relative battery life chart where we factor in battery capacity.
Even with the large battery, it's still clear that the ThinkPad T410 offers very respectable battery life. Lenovo provides some additional utilities that help in this area, with a Power Manager tool that has a "battery stretch" feature. Enable battery stretch and you can have the audio, networking, and optical drive power down. We used the appropriate options during battery life testing (i.e. everything off for the idle test, optical drive disabled on all tests, audio muted except on the x264 playback test, etc.) to provide maximum battery life. We've done the same for other laptops, where possible, so these results are a best-case scenario. Note that we also uninstall and disable any unwanted applications to reduce system demands and improve battery life; if you're running a firewall and anti-virus software, you can expect slightly lower battery life (and of course batteries will degrade over time).
With the 9-cell battery, you can get over four hours of x264 video playback, five hours of web surfing, and 7.5 hours best-case (i.e. idle). We calibrated the LCD for ~100nits and found that a brightness setting of 38% in Windows (or 11/15 with Lenovo's controls) gave us the desired result. Relative battery life puts the T410 in close competition with IGP solutions like the Gateway NV58, but it appears the i5 + HD4330 in the Inspiron 1564 is slightly superior overall. On the other hand, a last-gen laptop like the Dell Studio XPS 16 clearly draws more power from several of the components. The ThinkPad strikes a nice balance between performance and battery life, and getting over five hours of heavy web surfing shows that the T410 with a 9-cell battery will be enough for most business users looking to go all day without recharging.
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MrSpadge - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
I own a T61 since 2 years and I like it, especially the keyboard. If only I could get something like that for my desktop!However, the machine is far too noisy for my taste (7.2k rpm HDD and/or fan on lowest setting) and the screen is a completely rubbish TN. I love that it's matte (a main reason I chose a Thinkpad), but the viewing angles are so bad that the colors change upon the slightest head movement. If NEC can give us excellent 23" TFTs for 300€ I fail to see why 1000+€ laptops all have to have crappy displays.
Please keep complaining about the display quality!
Belard - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
I'd agree about the screen... I would have thought it would have been fixed by now.One of our guys has a T61... and it is very sharp, looks good. But when put an SL-500 or my R61 next to it, then it looks very bland for no good reason.
MrSpadge - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
I meant "excellent eIPS 23" TFTs".demonsavatar - Sunday, March 28, 2010 - link
Reviews of some other Thinkpads would be great, especially the X201/201s.Nomgle - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
Jarred, do you intend to look at the new Alienware M11X anytime soon ? It fills a special kind of niche - CULV with a decent video card - I'm very interested to see what you think !JarredWalton - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
Just got it this past Tuesday and it's next up for review. This week it will post (i.e. in a few days).beorntheold - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
I've been working on a ThinkPad T60 for the past two and half years. My experience - the best keyboard and /the/ worst LCD screen anywhere.So my advise - if you value your eyes look elsewhere.
strikeback03 - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
should have gotten the flexview, my boss has one and it rocks.fiki959 - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
I understand that PC manufactures have to cut corners somewhere, but 1200+ dollar notebook should have a better screen. My 4 year old Clevo M660 machine has above 400:1 contrast ratio (LG/Philips matrix). It is not very bright around 140 Cd/M2, but is a very nice screen.I bought it for 650 euro (800$), so I think there is room for better screen in 1200 dollar T410.
juampavalverde - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
From the side of cutting BOM, ¿isnt overkill the gpu for a business laptop? The igp from those intel cpus is fast enough for any business software, it could be weak for a workstation, but this is a laptop for everyday work, light load, quick response. and probably one chip less would give some extra time on battery.