Lenovo ThinkPad T420 Review

Lenovo's Thinkpad T series notebooks have long been the gold standard for mainstream business systems because of their strong performance, superior build quality, and best-in-class keyboards. With the 14-inch ThinkPad T420, Lenovo has made a couple of changes, switching the screen to the now-standard 16:9 aspect ratio and giving it the latest Intel 2nd Generation Core series CPU. Is the T420, $1,179 as configured, the business notebook to beat?

Design

The ThinkPad T420 follows the classic ThinkPad aesthetic business users have come to know and love over the years. The matte black, rubberized lid with its simple silver logo and raven black sides, bottom, and interior are all long-time ThinkPad staples, as is the tiny red TrackPoint pointing stick that sits between the G and H keys. Like previous ThinkPad T Series notebooks, the T420 is designed for durability. The rubberized ABS plastic lid, carbon-reinforced bottom, and internal roll cage help protect against shocks and drops.
At 13.4 x 10 x 1 inches and 5.2 pounds with the high-capacity nine-cell battery, the ThinkPad T420 is a bit larger and heavier than the Toshiba Tecra R840 (13.4 x 9.4 x 1.1 inches, 4.6 pounds), but it's still lighter than the HP Elitebook 8460p (13 x 9.1 x 1.3 inches, 5.4 pounds) and the Dell Latitude E6420 (13.9 x 10.25 x 1.25 inches, 6.2 pounds) with its extended battery. Using the standard six-cell battery cuts the T420's length to 9 inches and its weight to 4.8 pounds. Lenovo's ThinkPad T420s, designed as a lighter alternative, weighs only 4 pounds and measures only 13.5 x 9.1 x 0.8-1 inches.

Keyboard, Pointing Stick, TouchPad

The classic, spill-resistant keyboard on the ThinkPad T420 features 7 rows with a full range of keys, even rarely used ones such as scroll lock and pause. Enlarged Esc and Delete keys make it easy to perform these frequent functions. The combination of strong tactile feedback and a smile-shaped key surface allowed us to achieve an 86 word-per-minute score with a 1-percent error rate on the Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor test, well above our 80 wpm average. However, the typing experience on the 13-inch ThinkPad X1 remains the industry's best because of that notebook's soft-touch palm rest and even more responsive keys.
Like other ThinkPads, the T420 has both a TrackPoint pointing stick and a touchpad. We're huge fans of the TrackPoint because it provides the most accurate way to navigate around the desktop short of using a mouse, and it allows you to move the pointer without lifting your fingers off of the home row. If you don't like pointing sticks, the 3 x 1.75-inch textured touchpad provides accurate navigation around the desktop, and its two discrete mouse buttons provide just the right amount of feedback. However, multitouch gestures such as pinch-to-zoom are not smooth at all.

Heat

The ThinkPad T420 stayed pleasantly cool throughout our testing. After streaming video for 15 minutes, the touchpad measured a frigid 82 degrees, the keyboard an icy 81 degrees, and the bottom a cool 87 degrees Fahrenheit. We consider temperatures below 95 degrees comfortable.

Display and Audio

The 230-nit, 14.1-inch matte display provided sharp images and plenty of desktop real estate thanks to its optional 1600 x 900 panel. When we watched a 1080p QuickTime trailer for the movie Point Blank, images were sharp and motion smooth with viewing angles solid up to 45 degrees to the left or right. However, when we streamed a 720p Flash episode of Fringe from Fox.com, the edges of objects seemed a little pixelated, perhaps because the screen had a higher resolution than the video. We highly recommend the 1600 x 900 panel, a $50 option, because it shows a lot more of your favorite web pages and documents without forcing you to scroll.
While not as high fidelity as audio-focused consumer notebooks such as the Dell XPS and the HP Envy series, the Lenovo ThinkPad T420 provides surprisingly good music playback. Whether we were playing Kool and the Gang's jazz-oriented "Summer Madness," the bass-heavy "Between the Sheets" by the Isley Brothers, or Motley Crue's guitar-laden "Looks that Kill," sound was accurate and loud enough to fill a medium-sized room. We could even make out a solid separation of sound between the speakers, which sit on either side of the keyboard.

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