Lenovo Thinkpad T420 4178-6VU 14 Notebook (2.5 GHz Intel Core i5-2520M

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 9 x 13.4 x 1.2 inches ; 4.7 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 7.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B004U5MV2G
• Item model number: 41786VU
  

List Price : $1,445.81
Price : $1,149.00
You Save : $296.81 (21%)

Product Description

Designed to be a productive workstation in the boardroom, home office or on the road the Lenovo ThinkPad T420 4178-6UU Notebook PC comes with a second generation Intel Core i5-2520M 2.50GHz processor with Turbo Boost Technology, mated to 4GB of fast DDR3 1333MHz memory. With a max turbo processing speed of 3.20GHz during resource-intensive applications, the Lenovo ThinkPad T420 4178-6UU Notebook PC is ready for anything your business needs can throw at it.

Technical Details

• 2.50GHz Intel Core i5-2520M Processor
• 500 GB Hard Drive, 4 GB DDR3 RAM
• 14 inch HD+ (1600x900) color display, anti-glare
• Intel HD Graphics 3000 and nVidia Quadro NVS 4200M with nVidia Optimus
• UltraNav with TrackPoint ; touchpad, Bluetooth 3.0, fingerprint reader

Customer Reviews

This Laptop was delivered on January 7, 2012. Here are my first impressions.
Configuration is average for the most of modern laptops but with some advantages:
- Latest processor Sandy Bridge Core i5 2520M dual core 2.5 Ghz;
- 4Gb RAM (used only one slot, I'm going to install additional memory which shall provide me with max of 8 Gb of total memory 2x4Gb).
- 500 Gb/7200 rpm hard drive is fast enough and equipped with anti-shock feature.
- This machine has 14" matte HD screen with resolution of 1600x900 which does not give any reflections at all! It tilts 180 degrees which is very handy.
- It has Intel HD Graphics 3000 and nVidia Quadro NVS 4200M with 1 Gb dedicated memory, which is not the fastest but is still sufficient for day-to-day activity: work with MS Office applications, Web surfing, watching video and playing not too demanding games.
- Three USB-2 drives + one e-SATA/USB are an advantage, more than enough, but it would be better to have USB-3 and HDMI port which in this case replaced with Display port which is not so widely used yet.
- Spill proof keyboard is a beauty of this machine! I used to have laptops of different brands: Toshiba, Dell, Asus, Sony, the last one is Samsung (I still have it) but this one is the best in terms of the keyboard! Typing this keyboard is nothing but the pleasure. The only thing which requires to be got used to is the location of certain keys such as DELETE, two keys right above the arrow keys, which I found unnecessary - they switch pages when surfing the internet current to previous and vice versa. I'd prefer to have HOME/END keys instead of them. Also FN and CTRL keys: ctrl key should be at the lowest left and fn key is between ctrl and windows keys, but you can swap them in BIOS.
- Interesting feature is the track point - did not have chance to use much but with a little practice I'm sure it can be more convenient than touchpad. Touch pad is normal, nothing to say bad or good. It is smaller than the same in Samsung QX 411 but you do not touch it accidentally when typing which was a pain with Samsung.
- Another cute thing is a little flash light on top of the camera, which allows for typing in complete darkness. You can turn it on by pressing "function + page up" keys simultaneously; it justifies the strange placement of these keys, because it's extremely easy to find them in the dark.
- Sound quality - alright. Not best but not too bad. I found a bit inconvenient combined headphone/mic jack, had to buy special headphones with combined phones/mic connector.
- Built in web camera is crisp and works flawlessly in fast networks.
- Laptop has a fingerprint reader which switches on the machine. Nice feature.
- I've bought configuration with 9 cell battery 55++. Had a chance to test it with everything on: Wi-Fi, connected wireless mouse, Bluetooth, LAN cable, in other words normal operating mode (no gaming, no films): Web browser running with at least four tabs open with running flash, MS Word, Excel, MS Outlook, Windows live mail + 15 minutes of YouTube video. And it lasted 7.5 hours, without watching video it would last the whole 8 hours! I think it is an excellent result.
As for the weight it's about 2 kg just a 100 gr heavier than Samsung QX 411 which has same 14" display and 6 cell battery with 3-4 hours life.
As for the build quality - A+ a very solid reliable laptop the best I've used.
Design: Very practical yet beautiful, I like it's rugged style, it has everything I need but "no frills", no glossy finish, display hinges made of metal the lid does not shake. No gaps, no squeaks. I'd say that it's as good as mac book pro with one exception MBPs for show-offs and Thinkpads for pros.
Generally speaking I absolutely satisfied with my Lenovo ThinkPad T420.

Pros:
1. Improved battery life.
2. Still better than Dell/HP when it comes to "business" laptops.
3. Keyboard (minus the goofy placement of the Fn key).
Cons:
1. Horrible screen - while anti-glare, low contrast, low NITs, and 16:9 format - for those of use who actually use the laptops for work (document processing, coding, etc.), every vertical pixel counts (yes 16:10 if not 16:11 would be much better).
2. Horrible screen - vertical viewing angles are awful. Horizontal viewing angles are not that great either. For around $1,100 MacBook Pro 13 looks way nicer as far as the screen goes.
3. Hinges - not like they used to make them. You can still find ThinkPads from years ago where the hinges are as stiff as they day they made them. Had to send this thing in to get the hinges replaced a few months after getting it (normal use - just some schoolwork and moderate usage).
4. Could be a bit lighter (yeah, year T430 is on the way, but again, everyone is playing catch up to Apple).
5. Audio jack connector sucks - cracks and pops when rotate the phone-jack.
6. USB 3.0 was not available (again T430 will have it, but at the time Asus already was selling laptops with 3.0 available).
7. Still stinks, wreaks (literally), whatever term you prefer, of cheap plastic - this is often an issue with Chinese-made goods and this one was pretty bad - had to leave it outside for days at a time to air/sun/gas out.
8. Eraser head has to go - put in a bigger touch-pad. Yes some TP fanatics will scream "Foul," but get with the times - a nice track-pad is the way to go.
9. Some of the keys actually leave marks on the display when the lid is closed - I thought Lenovo makes "high-precision" hardware.
Yes, some might say "Why didn't you just buy Apple?" Because, I almost did, but wanted to give the PC thing one more shot. It's actually not the Windows that was the biggest driving factor - have been using Windows and Linux for years and don't really care for iOS; however, it's the hardware - why can't someone make a 16:11 14 inch, non-glare, but decent contrast display, bullet-proof hinges, 12 hour battery life (without the extra-capacity battery hump sticking out) with switchable graphics laptop for around $1,000-$1,250 range? I guess, I'll just keep wishing.