I bought this product from the Lenovo website because of its functionality and battery life. My personal belief is that a laptop must have 7 hours of realistic use in order to be a 'mobile' device. Im a university student and stay on the campus for about 12-14 hours three days a week, with heavy use of my Laptop. This saying, I have been very excited about the 13 hour battery life with the 9cell battery, where the 'slice battery' can up this to around 21 hours.Here are some of the options I did, and did not take:
Display: default 720p (not upgraded)
Processor: core i5 3210m (upgraded from i3, ivy bridge)
Memory: 4GB DDR3 (not upgraded)
Storage: 320GB 7200 RPM (not upgraded)
Camera: None
Battery: 9 cell (upgraded from the 6 cell)
-also took on the fingerprint reader, not as useful as I thought. Don't upgrade if you can and spend less money. But it's not an annoyance, so if you want to spend on cash, its kinda cool.
-did not take the backlit keyboard
-took the 2x2 intel antenna
Suggestions on the upgrades:
-Don't upgrade to the 500 GB because the speed is only 5400RPM, which will significantly slow it down. Take on the SSD if you can afford it.
Core i5 3210m is enough for most people, it handles everything I throw at it, and I'm not playing games on it. I play some flash games, and it's very functional. I use photoshop to edit some images and it's very speedy. I also do some video editing and the performance is good. I don't see a good reason to upgrade to an i7. Higher processors will take in more battery, make the fan loud from trying to cool down the system.
-Don't get the backlit keyboard if you don't need it. There is an overhead angled light on the screen (included in all models) that is very powerful. It's more than enough to see the keyboard in low light, and it's more useful than just a backlit keyboard because it acts like a flashlight.
-Take your priorities on the display, I'm satisfied with the display but not fully. Definitely upgrade if you can afford it.
-Don't upgrade to the discrete graphics card, I've read from multiple sources that it makes the laptop become very warm and kicks in the fan into overdrive.
Here are my thoughts on the laptop:
Display: Quite honestly, the display is poor but one of the most functional I have ever used. The reason is because the colors are not varied, and it has the worst viewing angles I have seen. The pros are that everything is crisp and clear. The display also heavily helps the battery life. You can up the brightness, but it's not that bright it sunlight. You can smoothly see the screen at full brightness in daylight, but it could be better. One thing that really impressed me was the angles the screen can be pushed back and forth. You can push the screen back so that it can be laid flat on a surface. I didn't think it was the big of a deal, but it helped so much when I was trying to share an idea or a funny video with someone. On that note, the screen is also very rigid and sturdy. I can pick the whole laptop up from the a screen corner while its open without it giving in. The cons are also very manageable, within a couple days I got used to it and it wasn't a problem. There are steel rollcages that make sure the screen is durable
Keyboard: The keyboard flies, I wasn't a fast typer before but now I can smoothly type lightning speed and barely even look at the keyboard. I had another Lenovo laptop with the old keyboard and this new one is very much better .
Aesthetics: This is a major factor (for some reason) when people are buying a new laptop. Let me tell you that yes, this is fugly. It looks old but the design is mainly for functionality. The aesthetics, however, do show a hint of performance and business, so for that reason it will appeal to some people.
Performance: I've owned some very high performance and some very low performance PC's over the years and this laptop is consistent and reliable. It takes everything I throw at it without a hiccup and I've seen no real lags or freezes. If you're using it for school where you might make a video, edit some photos, play some games, I'm sure this won't have problems. This is NOT for hardcore video editors or gaming people. I would suggest alienware for gaming and an Apple computer for video editing. I've tried playing WOW and some maplestory and it runs very, very smoothly when on medium-high settings.
Battery Life: Like I said before, this thing is THE BEST when it comes to battery life. The T-series have the world's BEST battery life, hand down. Many competitors don't come close. One thing to note tis that it also charges extremely quickly. Mine usually goes from aroun 65% to full in about 10 minutes.
Speakers and audio: I can tell you from experiencing horrible speakers and audio on many laptops that the speakers on this thing are BEYOND what I expected. They are very loud and crisp, and the rival many dedicated desktop speakers. The noise can fill a room at around 70% audio. When it comes to plugging in some headphones, the audio maintains the same quality and then some. I'm often decreasing the volume on every video to almost the lowest because of how loud and great the audio on this laptop is. There is the Dolby Advanced Audio on the t430, so I expected a great quality and was met, and then some. This seriously surprised my and was great because I am pretty much an audiophile.
Weight/thickness/portability; The 14 inch is very thin compared to other laptops. It's only about an inch, and It kinda surprised me because the pictures make it seem much thicker. It's not bulky at all, which was what I thought it would be. Overall, it's more mobile than I thought it would be, so that was a pleasant surprise. The 14inch is pretty small, I can't say the same about the 15inch.
Trackpad: The trackpad isn't so great, it sometimes lags. It's not so reliable but smooth. Some laptop have the flat glass like trackpad, but comfort wise, this feels much better. The red button in the middle is a surprise, I didnt think I would ever use it. I'm getting used to it and it's much more accurate, reliable, efficient, and comfortable than the trackpad. The reason it's not so popular is probably because it takes so long to learn.
Connectivity: There are a total of 4 USB compatible ports, 2 of them being USB 3.0 (also compatible with USB 2.0) There is a default SD Card reader, which works. I don't use it, but there is a network card slot. I don't use the optical drive, but it's comforting to know that I can use it in case I need it for upgrading or troubleshooting (or even gaming). I chose the 2x2 intel antenna, and HEAVILY SUGGEST EVERYONE DO THAT SAME. There is no upgrade charge (at least when I ordered) and it has the REAL N speeds. There is also 2 antennas instead of the one, so connectivity is optimal. I've had no real problems with connecting to wifi besides my router being stubborn. Nothing to complain about when it comes to connecting to wifi. Its very consistent and reliable.
Fingerprint reader: work like a charm, but I use it less than I wanted to. It makes starting up alot slower because you have to wait upwards to minute for the fingerprint software to load up before scanning and logging in. I think just making the computer sleep and boot up from restore would fix this. Never had it really fail, but again, not too useful. Avoid this option if you can.
Build Quality: Excellent build quality, this has goen through military qualifications, so If it can survive a warzone, it will be able to survive a university. No complains at all about the build quality, only good things to say about it
Some concerns:
-again, the trackpad isn't the best. but the red button thing makes up for it if you learn to use it.
-sometimes the optical drive opens up after i shut down the computer and throw it in my bag. It's probably because something hit the eject button, but you just learn to be more careful with the eject button.
-I've bad some updating issues, but it fixed itself. It didnt disrupt my work flow, but windows kept on asking me to restart because the update had failed.
-Not really an issue, but the cover strangely attracts fingerprints for some reason. I don't really care since the think is kinda fugly anyways, but it's something to note.
edit: I should give more credit to this laptop. It is very modular too. I've changed out the CD drive to an extra hard drive bay. I now have an SSD for my boot drive and my original HDD as my storage drive. Perfect combination.
By researching more you can even change out the screen, add an mSATA SSD, mod the appearance. It's just awesome.I went through 3 of these in 6 months at work before finally getting one that works "almost" flawlessly. The first 2 had "bugs" galore. The 2nd one just died all together with no notice just couldn't boot it up one day. The one I have now has issues with my external hard drive I get the blue screen of death about 2 minutes after I unplug it, although this is the first and only problem I've had with this laptop. Solved by simply not using the hard drive... :(
It is fast, the laptop screen is fine, although I usually have it plugged in to a 22" Samsung. I would agree with one other user though that if you use the ctrl key a lot you will hate this keyboard (unless you just get used to it by using it exclusively). I use a wireless Logitech keyboard 95% of the time, but on the rare occasion I am forced to use the laptop keyboard, I want to stick needles in my eyes at the stupid placement of the ctrl and function keys on the bottom left. I push the Fn key instead of the Ctrl key constantly! I also find that I accidentally hit the little red mouse button that's in the middle of the keyboard a lot, but I had this problem on my old Dell too, so...
All in all, this laptop isn't aweful, but I certainly wouldn't buy one for personal use, because the "lemon" factor is much too high for my liking. That being said, I have a Toshiba that only lasted 1 year before it started to overheat, and then 6 months after that, the mouse broke (i.e. the keyboard mouse/pad no longer functions). I've had no luck with Dell recently either, so... perhaps an Apple is in my future. You get what you pay for I guess...The Lenovo T series has yet to disappoint me, these laptops I have traveled with for years and have held up to the riggers of airports, trains, and buses. The T420 pleasantly suprised me with a nicely sized 14inch screen and decent battery life from the main battery. Too short to tell right now how the mechanics hold up, however if they are like the rest of the Lenovo's it should stay good and strong for a long time.
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