Lenovo ThinkPad T420

Rating

4.0

Pros

• Fast performer with a great keyboard
• Solidly built

Cons

• No USB 3.0
• Textured touchpad has an odd feel

Bottom Line

The venerable T420's staid countenance belies its outstanding performance, reliability, and features.

ThinkPad T420: A Classic Workhorse

No one ever got fired for buying a ThinkPad, as the saying goes, and without a doubt no one will get fired for buying the latest Lenovo T420. This scintillatingly fast Sandy Bridge refresh of the familiar business-black, boxy-but-impressive, all-purpose laptop remains a reliable 4-pound workhorse, and you won't find a better keyboard anywhere. It's not pretty, as members of the IdeaPad series are, but it can do the job and then some.

Normally, Lenovo laptops earn an A+ for their ergonomics. The T420 comes close, but the rough surface of the T420's touchpad might be off-putting to some users. Nevertheless, the touchpad's texture makes it easy to locate by feel, and the placement and feel of the buttons are excellent.

The T420 scored a 124 on our WorldBench 6 test suite--an impressive score for an all-purpose laptop, even with an Intel Core i5-2520M, 4GB of DDR3 memory, and a 500GB, 7200-rpm hard drive on board. The frame rates sustained by the unit's Nvidia NVS 4200M GPU in our gaming tests were less impressive: The T420 is playable at low detail in resolutions up to 1024 by 768, but it's a near miss at higher detail settings.

At Lenovo's default power settings, we noticed a slight stuttering in high-bitrate video when the unit ran off of its battery. The stuttering didn't occur when the unit was plugged into the wall, or when we switched to less miserly power settings. On the other hand, choosing a different power profile means that--if you watch movies without the plug--you probably won't get the outstanding 8 hours, 37 minutes of run time that we recorded in our battery test.

The T420's audio is loud and clear, but lacking in bass through the speakers. The picture from the 720p webcam is outstanding, but while 720p is fine for taking photos or recording, unless you're on a local network, you should use a lower resolution for smooth video conferencing or calls.

The port selection on the T420 has a slight legacy bent. You get four USB 2.0 ports--one of them a combo eSATA/USB, and another always-on--but no USB 3.0 port. There's VGA and DisplayPort video output, along with SD/MMC and ExpressCard slots. Connectivity includes 2.4GHz and 5GHz (optional) wireless, plus gigabit ethernet. Bluetooth and WLAN antennas are integrated , but neither technology was on board our test unit.

The T420 is available with either a 1366-by-768-resolution or a 1600-by-900-resolution 14.0-inch display. Our $1249 test configuration came with the latter display, which proved crisp, bright, and flawlessly backlit. A DVD-RW burner comes standard, but there's no Blu-ray option to show off the screen to best effect.

Also available are a plethora of docking stations and accessories, a fingerprint scanner, and Smart Card reader. The many T420 configurations all seem to be on sale, all of the time. A barebones unit costs $799 (as of August 25, 2011) while one with the full panoply of extras, including an SSD, runs about $1600.

The T420 is available with Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional; a number of other software packages are available. Our test unit shipped without antimalware software, but Microsoft's Security Essentials is free for the download.

The T420 is solidly constructed and offers racehorse performance. It's highly configurable with multiple warranty options, as befits a business laptop. Just about every IT person we know swears by the T series--for their clients and themselves. That should tell you everything you need to know about the long-term reliability of these laptops.

Toshiba Satellite M645-S4118X

Rating

4.0

Pros

• Decent gaming frame rates
• Good everyday performer

Cons

• Annoyingly bright power button light
• Only 10/100 ethernet

Bottom Line

Like an unmarked highway patrol car, this all-purpose laptop's unassuming looks belie its power.

Toshiba Satellite M645-S4118X: Stodgy, Powerful

If you're looking for svelte, sexy design, then Toshiba's $1100, 5.5-pound Satellite M645-S4118X may not be your cup of tea. If you're looking for excellent all-purpose laptop performance, playable gaming frame rates, and top-notch sound and video--including Blu-ray--then it's Earl Grey with a vengeance.

Pedestrian in appearance (if not in price), the M645-S4118X has plenty of power under its hood: 6GB of memory feeding an Intel Core i5-2410M CPU, an Nvidia GeForce GT 525M with 1GB of dedicated memory, and a 5400-rpm, 640GB hard drive. The unit racked up a score of 117 on WorldBench 6, which is good but not category-leading. Gaming frame rates are reasonable, thanks to the Nvidia graphics card, but for really high-end games you will have to sacrifice some detail to get playable frame rates. Video playback on the 1366 by 768 display, including 1080p Blu-ray, is ultra-smooth. Even the sound emanating through the Harman/Kardon speakers is above average.

Ports are mostly standard fare for a system this size: a single always-powered USB 3.0 port, two USB 2.0 ports, headphone and microphone jacks, VGA, HDMI, ethernet, and a Kensington lock port. The model lacks eSATA, possibly because the BD-ROM/DVD burner doesn't leave much room for it, but USB 3.0 largely obviates the need for it. Oddly, though, outside of Bluetooth, the connectivity isn't the latest and greatest--no 5GHz wireless, just 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n, and the ethernet is only 10/100.

The M645-S4118X's ergonomics are above average. The portion of the top deck housing the keyboard is lowered, which puts your fingers in exactly the correct position for comfortable typing on the medium-throw, Chiclet style keyboard. The keyboard's feel is a tad soft, but has more than enough tactile and aural feedback to create a nice typing rhythm, and the layout is excellent. It's backlit, but you may turn that off in the BIOS if you wish.

The touchpad is very responsive; the buttons are a tad stiff, though. A switch just above the touchpad turns it on and off should you find yourself accidentally moving the cursor with the balls of your thumbs--a problem I've experienced on other laptops, but not on the Satellite M645-S4118X.

A sparse but competent bundle of software is onboard the M645-S4118X: WinDVD for movie playback chores, the Toshiba WebCam utility (you'll want to close this during movie playback), Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, and a trial of Norton Internet Security. Also packed in are numerous Toshiba utilities, many of them background applications, including online backup and the shock sensor, but many are not as useful as those two. After trimming the fat, and replacing NIS with Microsoft's Security Essentials, a fast-feeling laptop felt even faster.

The M645-S4118X does suffer one glaringly poor design decision: The bright power button light directly under the screen can be truly annoying when you're watching a movie, or just using Skype with the 640-by-480 Webcam. For some reason, Toshiba doesn't provide a means of turning it off, but covering it with electrical tape works nicely.

On the other hand, you may charge a cell phone off of the USB 3.0 port, or play music using a male-to-male stereo cord plugged into the microphone jack while the laptop is asleep. The behavior may be disabled in the BIOS to extend battery life if you wish. We ran our battery tests with these features disabled, as well as the keyboard backlight. In that state, the Satellite M645-S4118X managed a respectable 4 hours, 24 minutes of run time. Not bad at all for a laptop with this kind of horsepower.

It's not going to turn heads, even in a sedate boardroom environment, but the Toshiba Satellite M645-S4118X lets you get your work done quicker than most of the high-fashion alternatives. That means you can get on with your life, or if you prefer, wreak havoc on digital opponents with its exceptional gaming abilities.