Lenovo ThinkPad T410 Review Discussion

My T500 is far from having any thermal issues, so I've had no reason to take additional measures to improve cooling. The recent generations of Thinkpads have been known to have very robust cooling systems. The T510 seems to handle heat very well, and I haven't heard any complaints about the W510, but some users have been complaining that the T410's fan runs more often and louder than the T400's.

 

Have a question to those of you who have the T410. I just got it, all excited, works wonderful EXCEPT for the battery life - very disappointed. I paid extra for the 6 cell cos the review mentions over 5 hours battery life. I am only getting 1 hr 40+ minutes. I've charged and used a few times, thinking it's just new and needs to be fully charged a few times before it reaches full capacity. Nope, still giving me less than 2 hours battery life. How can I correct this? is this your experience as well? Also, i can't find where it actually says, on the battery, that it's a 6 cell vs a 4 cell? Did they send me the wrong battery? Thanks in advance for any advice on this...

 

That really sucks...you may have a defective battery (or possibly the 4-cell).

Lenovo assigns a number to ThinkPad batteries and it's either 25 or 27 for the T410. Assuming it's 25, the 4-cell would be simply '25', the 6-cell would be '25+' and the 9-cell would be '25++'. The product numbers from the 4-cell and 6-cell are as follows-

4-cell: 51J0498
6-cell: 51J0499

Hopefully, you'll be able to identify your battery from that information...

What are your main specs- which processor, hard drive and display do you have? Do you have Intel integrated graphics or the NVIDIA discrete graphics card?

I couldn't find a single review of the T410 where the 6-cell lasted under 3:09. And that was with the i5-540M, NVIDIA graphics, WXGA+ (1440x900) display and a 7200rpm hard drive!

 

any real word on battery life aside his? I'm very close in pulling the trigger on a t410, and i f i am not getting any close to the t400 battery life then it's a no -deal for me


King regards

 

If you use integrated graphics on the T410, I'm sure you'd get better battery life than the T400 (assuming similar components and battery capacity).

 

Question: did you measure the contrast of your WXGA+ test model?

Other reviews have stated that the contrast on the WXGA+ display is far below average. I perfectly realize that it doesn't follow from this that either the NBR review or the other reviews are wrong. Displays can differ from laptop to laptop, even for the exact same model. I'm just curious whether or not you actually measured contrast quantitatively.

 

I also love the thinklight for the many reasons that others have posted. Is it just me or does the WGA screen look alot better in terms of brightness then the WGA+. I think it's going to be the determining factor for me between the ingrated and discrete

 

Are you sure about that? The one on the left seems to show more of the colour wheel making me think the higher res WGA+ screen...

Can anyone else comment please?

Also what does w/ww ant stand for on the ordering page? Is this for Wi-Fi or something else like wimax>

 

Thanks for the feedback. I have a basic T410 - no NVidia and I am a pretty basic business user, no fancy games or long videos. I have also played around with the power settings and changed it to minimal performance and everything else minimal when on battery. Not much better. The notebook is now only showing 2 hours 25+ minutes after a full charge. It's been a week now, it's not getting better. My husband just got his T400 and after the first full charge it was showing 6+ hours of battery life. I think i got a 6-cell lemon!! or it's a 2 cell or something else. Will call tech support first thing tomorrow!

By the way, this battery is flush with the notebook while the T400's 6-cell sticks out. Does that confirm they sent me the wrong one? I see some discussions mentioning that the 6-cell for the T410 was flushed. (That's why i've never bought this stuff online before. Maybe i won't do it again without having seen and touched it first)

 

I found something interesting today in the tabook that I think would explain the flex in the LCD cover.
According to the tabook;

High elasticity PC in the LCD lid. I think that's why Kevin reported so much flex.

 

The 6 cell doesn't stick out on the T410 since many complained about it sticking out on the previous generation. You definitely have a lemon here. Call support and a new one will be delivered to your doorstep tomorrow.

 

I noticed that too, although looking at the Windows 7 taskbar does make it seem that the WXGA+ is on the right ... so why does the background look off?

He should have had both machines center or tile the wallpaper (without stretching/shrinking to fit the screen), and he definitely should have mentioned in the article which one was which!

 

Thanks for all feedback.
yep, IBM was super efficient with sending a replacement battery. still had issues, spoke with tech support a few times and had to send the notebook to them. they reimaged the hard drive and it seems to have solved the problem now. apparently i could have done that reimaging myself if they had walked me thru it on the phone. but i got my notebook back in a couple of days so it wasn't too bad.

 

Has anyone got figures as to idle power consumption on the Intel graphics model? Preferably with the screen dimmed all the way and wifi on...

Are the figures from the review (9-10W, screen brightness 70%, WiFi on) referring to idle? Or was the machine doing something at the time?

 

Its been a while, but does the t410 have metal latch pieces?

 

Dear all,

i just realised that the screen bezel is not the same between the left and the right. From the edge to the screen on the left side is 16 mm while the right is 14 mm. Forgive me for the accuracy as i use plastic ruler.

This 2 mm difference is almost unnoticeable, but as i frequently use this laptop as my daily driver it gives me a certain feeling of irregularity, which in the end led me to measure it.

The bezel is asymmetric!

 

Id take battery life numbers in this review with grain of salt.
I have T410 with integrated graphics and 9 cell battery and there is no way to get NBR's battery life number/power draw in watts with parameters they tested with.
70% screen, balanced mode will bring more like 3.5-4.5 hours doing light web browsing at best.
I get 7.5h battery life displayed when simply IDLING and doing NOTHING with all setting set to minimum! Screen brightness minimum, all radios off, maximum power saving, everything software wise one can do to conserve battery life, except for battery stretch which would give additional 15 minutes max.
I wonder what did they smoke to get such battery life numbers ? Either that or Lenovo provided NBR with tweaked machines to get higher battery life numbers.
Its a shame that R400 that I had could net the same battery life that my brand new T410 can and at the same time remained cooler and quieter than T410 is, not by much cooler, but considerably quieter.
Fail for intel on this one.

 

@sapibobo,

I wonder what you would think of their tablet - its really asymmetric. The reason for both is "probably" the electronics (on tablet) and cables from WiFi and WWAN antennas (on both) going inside the screen bezel.

 

I made one big review Lenovo T420 vs Dell Latitude E6420 vs HP Elitebook 8460p
Google Tõlgi
Original is here Sülearvutid, Laptopid, Sülearvuti, Laptop, Lenovo, Dell, IBM, HP, Fujitsu - soodsad sülearvutid

 

I would like to share my experience. T410 using since one year, since today i am very happy (more then happy this word is correct) I have use 4 laptop in my life. Toshiba Traca-1, Dell Inspiron, Dell XPS and HP DV4.
I am using all day, cool & quite.
Specification:
Core i7 M620, 4gb Ram, 9 cell bat.
W7 Professional 32 bit, 350 gb,
Nvidia NVS 3100M, 256 MB.

If you have any question, any doubt, any query, just ask.

 

I will be getting a T410 soon and I have a silly question.

Any chance I could install a backlit keyboard in it?

EDIT: Found out I could use a KB from a T430, but there would be issues with keys in different places. I could software re-map them but it's not worth the hassle. I am happy using the think light.