A critical analysis of the build quality of the T410/T510/W510

I have a T410. It is my first thinkpad and before I start allow me to say that holistically, I am pretty happy with this notebook. Mostly out of the fact that it's the most robust notebook I've owned in my years of owning computers.

While the notebook is pretty solid when you look at it from a big picture point of view, there are a few glaring weak points and oversights that I believe could have been avoided with a little bit of extra effort or design discussion.

I'll just outline it as follows:

Keyboard
They overall feel of the keyboard can be described as somewhat mushy. I used a T60 before and the keyboard definitely felt very firm and extremely tactile, almost clicky and clacky in its action. This keyboard however, is a little quieter and more muted in its typing sensation. While I can type this paragraph at a steady 80 WPM, I feel that the keyboard is definitely a little bit different than what I would consider a quintessential "Thinkpad" keyboard. I do appreciate the large escape and delete keys. The design itself is nice.

As for flex, yes its there. I don't care what anyone says. Though it might not be apparent upon first purchasing the computer, the keyboard can definitely be depressed to the point of bowing. The good news is that it doesn't affect typing action at all, which is the important part. I don't really mind because I understand what really goes into making a computer and that any lightweight material is going to lose its rigidity when compared to a piece of steel.

Casing (Body)
Let me start by saying that the body of this notebook is easily the most structurally sound piece of computer I've ever held. I think the roll cage is definitely something that contributes to a very consistent and solid feeling.

HOWEVER..there are definitely some oversights as far as the plastic goes. The area right above the holes where the screen bezel latches hook into can be very easily depressed and it makes an audible creaking sound. It's literally right in between the touch pad and the holes themselves. It's clear that Lenovo didn't put any sort of support in that area as it sounds very hollow and weak. I try not to pick up the notebook by that area.

Another weak aspect are the speaker grills. These are VERY thin mesh plastic. I could easily see them being punctured if pressed on too hard, or if not, indented by a nail on your finger or otherwise if now careful. It's clear to me that the speakers themselves are just 1-inch radius little tweeters sitting near the top of the speaker grills. The lower portion presses against the body of the notebook itself. It's a pretty cheap feeling design. You have to be careful. Also, dust particles very easily fall into the mesh holes.

The very left palmrest. People have complained about this before, and it's true. Right above the HDD bay, there are two piece of plastic rubbing against each other. Sometimes it gets really annoying when you're in a quiet environment. It's a pretty small creak but its there.

Also, I'd like to add that at the left side of the computer, there is a bowing action from the notebook case itself. It's warped. It's hard for me to describe in words so here's a picture:

http://www.notebookreview.com/assets/49566.jpg

The area RIGHT above the VGA port. It warps downward very slightly.

Next I have the mention that my case is warped in general. Meaning, my thinkpad does not sit flush on a table. It wobbles. The bottom left corner of my laptop sticks up a little bit more than the other portions. It happens consistently regardless of which table I put it on in my house or in which position. I don't know how that would happen and its not the first time I've heard of this either. It causes the rubber portion to make squeaking noises anytime I shift my hands to and from the keyboard. Pretty annoying.

Screen/Upper Portion case
This is a pretty weak part of the notebook. The screen bezel is what I would call to be very cheap. There are gaps around where the screen meets the bezel and the area is definitely not meant to be pressed against. Or pulled up. It's basely held down and it's not what you would find in a properly built monitor.

There is also NO ROLLCAGE in the upper portion of the laptop. Perhaps this step was to save weight, but personally I would have preferred a slightly heavier notebook in exchange for having structural rigidity. You can essentially twist and warp the top portion of the notebook as you please. Also, pressing against the back of the screen can produce ripples in some spots. Remember the videos where a company worker would stand on top of their Thinkpad with the lid closed and then open it up to see it working just like before? Yeah. Don't do that on this one.

The hinges are one area that is pretty good. They're VERY solid and the movement of the screen portion feels solid. No wobble whatsoever.

Final thoughts
The casing strip right in between the touch pad and the trackpoint buttons can be flexed downward significantly. The touchpad itself can be flexed downward significantly.

Honestly, this is NOT a thinkpad of the past, no matter what anyone says. While the overall structural integrity has remained the same as a whole, the smaller, more subtle aspects of the notebook have become cheap. The fit and finish is not IBM quality, no matter what anyone says. My notebook came with glue still visible around the area where they attach the little plastic strip that has the letters "T410" on it. I was able to scrape it off. But I had to question, why was it there in the first place? Why has the beloved Thinkpad become a victim of assembly-line negligence?

I have a pretty good answer...at least for myself. Thinkpads used to be thousands and thousands of dollars. For a long time, they were the most expensive notebook you could buy. Since then. Thinkpads have entered into the consumer market. While these are still business machines, essentially anyone can have a Thinkpad now. It allows me, a poor college student, the ability to afford a decent notebook.

I'd also like to say that the Thinkpad is still miles ahead of all the other crap out there. I do think that the Elitebook and maybe Macbook Pro are beating it out in terms of build quality, neither company comes close to providing the level of performance and support Lenovo gives. Honestly, walk into any Best Buy or CompUSA and look at all the notebooks. Everything is horrible glossy plastic now with shiny screens and even glossy touchpads (who thought that was a good idea???) I literally don't think you can buy a consumer notebook today that doesn't have that horrible plastic on it. Furthermore, I guarantee you most of those other consumer brands will have trivial parts failing within two years of owning the notebook (the power jack). I feel differently about the thinkpad. While the fit and finish isn't quite what I expected, I think that this notebook will do well to get me through college.

That's enough typing.

 

Quick question that is a little bit off topic. Is the rollcage a Lenovo thing or is it a IBM. Alot of people seem to point to the fact that rollcage seem to introduce by IBM, while on Wikipedia it states that rollcage was implement by Lenovo.

 

The Mg rollcage was implemented by Lenovo AFAIK.

 

Honestly, for $1000 US dollars today. You cannot buy anything better than Your T410.
BUT, if you are willing to pay $8000 US dollars(my dad spend about $4000 for his Thinkpad T22 in 2002 ?) and you can find half a million users willing to pay $8000 for a laptop today. Maybe Lenovo will give what you want.
I am not try to be mean, i am trying to be reasonable. Every little thing cost you some money!

 

Indeed the rollcage came only afte Lenovo got their hands on the thinkpad.
The people that have been designing thinkpads for years are still designing them. It's the same IBM people, no one lost their job. The problem I'm seeing now however is that there is a discrepancy between what the engineers envision for the notebook and what is produced on the floor.

 

I think it is a QC issue caused by obvious cost pressures. Definitely something for Lenovo to work on.

Remember that the design engineering is not exactly the same as the production engineering.

Also you might just have a different variant of the keyboard and have gotten an NMB which is softer in feel compared to the Alps or Chicony.

 

Lenovo replaced the bottom part part of my T61p's chassis because of this. Just something to consider if it bothers you enough.

 

I was actually able to straighten out the body just by holding it by that corner for about 5 minutes. Might be the barbaric way to even out my notebook but it worked. This thing is honestly weird. It feel so strong and yet it can twist subtly. I find that question-inducing.

I was able to remedy the battery wobbling too but sticking some pads of electrical tape in the battery bay. And the left palmrest creak I was able to solve by really tightening the HDD bay screw. I almost stripped it but that doesn't really matter to me. My notebook feels like the brick I want it to now. Save for the other weak elements I mentioned.

 

I've not seen nor held any of the 410/510 series, but it's the internet here so of course I'll comment, having recently bought a W500.

The W500 appears to be a solidly built machine. Fit and finish is good. The keyboard is pretty good, with no flex (maybe I got a good one, and believe me having owned a Dell and a Toshiba I know keyboard flex). All in all, seems very well and carefully constructed. It's been so long since I've used an old IBM TP that it's hard to compare.

My W was a replacement for a consumer-grade HP dv6000. The HP was a pretty good machine, though the webcam never worked, and since the model was prone to overheating the wireless crapped out after two years. It's only a matter of time for the video and motherboard. It had a great keyboard, I'll give it that.

At work I just got an HP EliteBook. I've gotta say, it's a pretty well built machine. Also quite expensive.

Prices of notebooks I have owned (some of which were provided by work, so I'll give the cost to the company), which should help us all in understanding where Lenovo now stands:

2000: Dell Inspiron. Celeron processor. Runs Win NT Pro. I bought it. Cost $2300. Still boots, but let's face it, unusable, but it was a well-built computer with a garbage keyboard. An equivalent ThinkPad would have cost $5000.

2005: Toshiba tablet. Work PC running XP. Currently takes it about 20 minutes to boot. Good machine overall, but now useless.

2007: HP dv6000, consumer-grade running Vista. Rushed to market, all kinds of drivers missing or never provided (see webcam comment above). Not a bad machine, but when it started failing it was the big pieces that went. Paid $900.

2010: W500. You've seen my comments above. Paid $1100, which is reasonable for not the latest and greatest.

2010: HP 2360 EliteBook. Very nice machine. Work paid $1500.

So obviously the Lenovo's have come down in price, to the point that the price delta between an HP consumer-grade PC and a Lenovo business-class PC has narrowed.

Obviously something is giving here. Not sure what.

 

Well you shouldn't be paying $900 for a consumer laptop now-a-days unless it has some fast dedicated graphics card + huge drive and a ton of memory.

So you do still have a price premium. Eliteboots are quite expensive unless through their reps that will mark them down like crazy to larger customers. I have had friends get quotes for a couple % over cost with HP. Luckily Lenovo has good discounts for single end users.

 

The lack of finish in some areas has been discussed over and over again. Yes, it's probably due to the 50-70% drop in price since Lenovo took over.

 

Although the fit and finish of the Thinkpads have decreased over the last few years since Lenovo took over, they are still better built than any HP and Dell business laptops. You think there is a lot of flex on the T410, try a Dell E6410 or HP Elitebook. Even worst. Lenovo has to cut somewhere considering the pricing. A lot of your points are valid but still think your nitpicking and expecting too much from a sub $1500 laptop.

 

I'd like to see some of your evidence about Elitebook flex. Most of the reviews i've read say its even more solid that the Lenovos (8540w vs W510).

Regarding the price, my desired Lenovo config (i7 820QM, FHD, 2GB memory, stock hard drive, FX 880m, gobi, color calibrator, DVD-RW+1 yr warranty) comes to about 2200usd (EPP pricing). My ELitebook 8540w configuration (i7 820QM, Ati Firepro M5800, FHD display, 2GB ram, stock hard drive, Blu-Ray drive, Gobi+3yr warranty) costs 2400usd. Now, the Lenovo FHD display is better than the HPs so to bring the configs up to parity i would bump up the HP to the DC2 display which is superior to the W510s and drop the Blue Ray to DVD-RW. This leaves the pricing at 2200 for the lenovo vs 2450 for the HP. The 250 USD price delta buys me a much better display, more powerful yet less power hungry graphincs card, TWO additional year warranty.

My point is that the prices are a wash really with 10% of each other yet reviews are beginning to surface saying the HP Elitebooks are built better than Lenovos. We have 4 Lenovos in my family and they are all well built ,albeit with faults. All i'm saying is both the Elitebooks and Thinkpads are not cheap and should not be making excuses. My Samsung X50 (magnesium frame) which is in its 5th year has turned out to be quite well built with no flex anywhere that i've discovered.

 

The older Elitebooks from the T61/T60 era, definitely had more flex in the keyboards then the equivalent thinkpads. But i think the latest HP model has addressed the keyboard shortcomings.

 

I meant the screen flex, not the whole laptop it self. I have not experienced the newest Elite-book release a few months ago but ones from last year. Not impressed.

 

To the OP, I also have that flex between the holes and the trackpad buttons, when I open the LCD and press down on that area a little, it does depress.
But considering that you said you are overall very happy with the notebook, the rest of your post does seem nitpicky.
My T410 is the most solid notebook I've ever had. Yet it has some LCD flex, and that flex in that area when I open the LCD. I guess I would say, just deal with it? It could be worse. The Inspiron E1705 I had was easily the most creaky, flexy notebook I've ever had. It was just terrible.
If you want something that's totally solid, perhaps you should consider a toughbook. But for the price and quality, I'd say a thinkpad can't be beat.

 

Regarding Keyboard Flex: I had a Thinkpad T60. It's keyboard was AMAZING for a laptop of that era. I thought laptops had mushy keyboards and nonstandard layouts: think Toshiba Satellite. I've used a couple T61s and a few T400 laptops. They had nice keyboards. A few weeks ago I used a T410 and the keyboard was just ultra mushy.

The nice keyboards on the thinkpads aren't anything special anymore; Dell's Latitude, HP's probook and elitebook and even Toshiba (gasp!) have nice firm keyboards. My $300 netbook has no keyboard flex and a great keyboard.

Hinges - that's something i get worried about. I am always worried that hinges are going to wear out prematurely or break. My Thinkpad had wobbly hinges towards the end but once they were tightened up, it was good.

This is one place where the thinkpads shine, IMO. The hinges have a good feel to them. The HP Pro/Elite, Dell Latitude and Toshiba Tecra have just bad feeling hinges. The hinges in my Dell laptop (and where they mount to) aren't in good shape.

It's possible lenovo is letting QC slip and maybe even intentionally designing them to be cheap. Thing is, it's going to be hard for them to gain an edge when other companies are catching up to what they could claim as theirs.

 

It's cool to look back at reviews of the T43 i'm using to type this presently, and see the reviewers saying the palmrests of the T43 had considerable flex, then thinking about the ThinkPads of today, the T43 feels like a solid brick compared to the newer ThinkPads, it was just interesting to see that people held criticism of the T43's palmrest flex, when to me it feels like a solid brick compared to my old T61p's palmrests, or the latest ThinkPads.

Also i have a feeling that the traditional ThinkPad users will pay a premium for the "antique" ThinkPads soon and maybe there'll even be a mini market boom for old ThinkPads, cause if the W700 i ordered "open box" off of eBay has considerably poorer build quality than my T61p, i am forced to expect the latest iteration of ThinkPads is even worse, since this "build quality since Lenovo aquiring IBM" seems to be degenerative.

 

Well, I hope in this case, thinkpad doesn't know best. ^ ^

 

I can't comment for the current series but I certainly hope they're better than the t400/500 from 08. my t500 compeltely fell aparty about a year in, both hinges failed and the system constantly overheats n shuts down. paid almsot 1700 for it at the time

 

Wow, that instills confidence in this W700 that's being shipped eh?

 

do you have warranty?

double hinge failure is usually very rare, you must be using the laptop for quite a long time after the first hinge failed.

I have heard of the overheating problem with hybrid GPU (specifically the ATI), but it is not very common. Not sure whether it was a manufacturing defect or a software/firmware glitch.

 

Wait thinkpad knows best, have you actually seen the W700?

It is a tank. Why do you think it is built worse than your T61p?



But anyways I want to try the new machines and see how the keyboards are because when people say Dell latitudes are on par, then that says a lot if true. The latitude keyboards on the E6400 and the E4300 that I've used were not solid and had poor key action.

HPs...I just don't like the physical feel of the keys themselves so I can never get into typing on them.

 

Worst part of the T410 is now the creaky palm rest... left side.

Worst part used to be the keyboard not coping with fast typing but the BIOS update fixed that.

I guess some cardboard or other padding would fix the creaking if I wanted to disassemble the unit - however I may cause more issues than I fix

As a whole though, the T410 is a great laptop.

 

it's out of warranty, left hinge basically got stuck and the metal inside tore apart when i closed the lid, since is was out of warranty I kept using it half assed. than right hinge tore apart as well. the overheating got so bad it was constantly running 105-110c n shutting down. complete piece of crap in my experience, cheap flimsy plastic not worth 1700. got quoted over 1300 to fix, can you believe that bs? I called up visa extended warranty n they gave me 1300 bucks. I just went ahead n bought a vaio Z instead. I don't know what experiences other people have had with their T500 but mien was nothing short of horrific.

 

This is the first time i heard this kind of severe overheating problem. I have a T500 with hybrid GPU, and when using the ATI GPU, the temperature never gets past 80 degrees when playing Command and Conquer 3.

Thinkpad hinge is extremely solid, but they do break on odd occasions. Given that it is made of Stainless Steel, it will rip apart your laptop if you try to force it close with it been stuck.

But this is the first time, i heard reports of such severe damages on the T500 that is not user induced (i.e. dropping it on concrete floor, etc).

 

the hinge is not broken on the outside, its thick stainless steel on the outside n wont nudge, but the inside is a round thin piece of lighter metal (looks like magnesium) attached to a round pole. that basically tore apart n became detached from the stainless steel cover. Never ever dropped it once. don't know why it just gave away. as for the GPU I don't know why, it was fine when i first got it, than I started having trouble with overheating, had to use tpfancontrol to keep it down. than over a year it just became so bad, with the fan running at 6000rpm it was still constantly over 80c idle and 100c+ just watching youtube.

 

Well you probably should have gotten it looked at when it started acting up...but hindsight is 20/20.

 

Lenovo Support & downloads - Post-warranty annual maintenance agreement (MA) - Mobile Products

see whether you qualify for the post warranty warranty. Also, do you have the T500 still? can you post a pic of the hinge problem?

 

How does the post-warranty work? I can't find much info on the link you gave me, but my model 2081-cto is listed on it. I do still have the machine, altho it's completely unusuable at this point, visa insurance already paid for a replacement. I'll dig out my camera later for a pic of the hinge

 

It's too bad about the hinges. Thought that was the most durable part of a thinkpad.

 

I thought it was too but it seems it's not completely stainless steel, the part attached for the bottom is stainless steel, the part attached to the lid is magnesium, very brittle and cracks in half instead of bending.

 

An instance of failure doesn't make it a trend throughout the line hdoung. Acerbits just got the short end of the stick. He said the laptop has not been abused much.

Many of use have done much worse and still have laptops in great shape (all things considered).

 

You guys on this forum definitely convinced me to buy a Dell e6410. It comes in a few days, I'll let you know

 

regarding the downward warping on the leftside right above the vga port on my t410, i just realized that mines is also like this. is it like this for everyone or should i be concerned and contact support.

 

In my opinion, if you want anything more durable than T/W-series Thinkpad, you better shell out over $2k for one of those rugged laptops. I'm sure the US Army has a model that doubles as body armor plating for their soldiers, you know in case you ever need to protect yourself from getting shot

 

Did you not read my comment on the E6410? J/K. The Dell seem to be a good machine, just not the same solid feel as the T410 or older W500 series. We'll have to wait to see the QC and reliability. I'm using a Dell Precision M4400 at work.


The T410 is my personal laptop which I love. I only wish it was a little lighter and slimmer but that's where the T410s comes in. Just a little too much money for me.

 

IMHO despite the build quality has declined, still has the best keyboard, keyboard of latitude has a very tiny F's keys, it doesn't feel as strong as the ThinkPad keyboard.

 

@Acerbits, please post the photos first and see what happens.

The internal mechanisms are of the hinge are not stainless steel, but rather just low carbon steels (don't think they are magnesium, as they are not strong enough for this job). Most low carbon steels also fail through brittle fracture. You only have to weigh the piece to know which is which. Magnesium is relatively light (because of low density), while the steel piece is quite dense, and therefore quite heavy.