I received my W510 on Feb 4, 2010. It has the Core i7 820QM. I made notes during my unboxing and testing - notes on details I was curious about while patiently waiting for delivery. I'll likely expand this post later with pictures and more details. But I wanted to get my initial comments out there while the W510's are hitting the streets.
Initial Observations – Before Powerup
- Lid has considerable flex. More than any of the other six Thinkpads I just compared it to. It definitely flexes more than the 15.1” widescreen T61p which is the closest in size to the W510 that I have. Pressing on the lid does not distort colors on the screen.
- Battery - The 9-cell battery sticks out in an odd way as you can see in the following two pictures. The battery fits very snug and has almost no play. Behind the battery is a slot for a SIM card.
- Ultrabay - Previous Thinkpads had a UltraBay release button on the side of the unit. Then, a small tab popped out that, when pulled, removed the drive from the UltraBay. The W510 has a spring-loaded locking button underneath the unit that must be held back while you push on a sliding tab (also underneath) that ejects the drive from the bay. This means that you have to undock the W510 in order to remove the CD drive from the Ultrabay. This is not good. I think it’s a step backwards from previous Thinkpads.
- Ultrabay Compatibility - The Ultrabay on the W510 will NOT take the SATA hard drive caddy from the T6x line. Or CD drives, or anything else. I’m not happy about this.
- The DVD Multi Drive has FRU P/N 45N7465, Rev 101, and Manufactured Dec 2009. On the back is says HL Data Storage, Super Multi DVD Rewritter Model GT30N.
- Memory - I opened the memory cover and saw two empty SODIMM memory slots. There must be two more on the other side that I can’t see, because the W510 should have four slots. My unit came with 8GB of memory (2 modules* 4GB), and I added another two modules for a total of 16GB.
- Power Supply - The 135W power supply seems huge next to the T60’s 90W power supply. It looks twice as big. It runs mildly warm after several hours of testing.
I tried plugging a 90W power supply from a T60p. It worked! But I first got a message (displayed by the BIOS upon power-up) that the power supply has a lower wattage, it will take longer to charge the battery, and performance will be adjusted to match available power. - Powered USB - I attached the battery, plugged in the W510 and got a green light on the lid. Then, I plugged my iPhone into the yellow (supposedly) powered USB port on the back of the unit and saw no charge. I tried with two other USB devices – same result. However, after I booted and went through the initial setup, the USB now supplies power when shut off.
- Keyboard -The keyboard feels incredibly good, on par with previous T4x and T6x units. I wrote a post a while back that compared several keyboards; using the technique I show there, my W510’s keyboard would be an ALPS. My only nitpick is that the Enter and backspace keys make a lot more noise than the rest of the keys. The Function keys are slightly elevated. I’m not sure if I like the size and location of the Delete key… time will tell. There is almost no flex on the palm rests or anywhere else around the keyboard. It all feels very tight. After hours of use, the entire keyboard and surrounding area felt evenly room temperature or maybe just slightly cool.
- Trackpad - has a nice bumpy feel to it. It’s comfortable to use, but I still like the trackstick better. It's multitouch... for example, you can us two finger to scroll a web page.
- LEDs – On the outside of the system there are three LED’s: Color sensor calibration status, power, and sleep. On the inside are Wifi, Bluetooth/Wireless USB, and disk activity. The circular power button over the keyboard lights up when on, and there is an orange LED on the speaker mute button when muted. Ditto for the microphone mute button and caps lock.
- Build Quality - with the lid open, I can pick up the whole unit by one corner and there's no body flex. The display hinges are beefy and the lid has no play at all. I just grabbed a new T61p, opened it, closed it, and tried to flex it. Did the same on the W510 and they felt identical to me. This is a very solid machine.
- During initial setup, I was asked to try Norton 360 for 30 days, enroll my fingerprints, buy Office 2007, etc. I skipped through it all.
- After setup, the only bloatware on the desktop was a shortcut for a 60-day trial of Microsoft Office. This is one of the reasons I love Thinkpads.
- Screen: This unit has the 1920x1080 (FHD, 95% gamut) non-touchscreen model. Side-to-side viewing angle was excellent, almost on par with Flexview. The top-down viewing angle, however, was not as good. Full whites start to turn dark at about 15 degrees off vertical when the screen is pulled slightly shut. In the second picture, notice the lighthouse on the bottom left has a dark area: Overall, the display is very bright and the nicest I’ve seen besides the Flexview. It’s so bright that at full setting it starts to hurt my eyes in a dimly lit room. I bought a T61p that I shelved after one day of use because the screen was so horrible. I think that qualifies me as picky – and I like this screen. I ran Everest, which reported the Monitor ID as LEN40B2, Manufacturer B156HW01 V4
Here are some pictures I took at various view angles album format: http://img31.imageshack.us/g/p1000541i.jpg/ - Sound – The speakers are underneath a grill on the left and right of the keyboard. If you look at just the right angle, you can see that there are two areas under the grill that are different and probably hold the speakers. I played the same song on the W510 and the T60p and the W510 is clearer, mostly because the speakers are on top rather than underneath like on the T60p. But the sound quality wasn’t great. I would rate the speakers as “adequate” for a laptop, which isn’t saying much. Lenovo missed out on an opportunity here.
- Fingerprint reader. When configured, the fingerprint reader has a little green LED on it to tell you it's active. Swiping your fingerprint both turns on the W510 and logs in to Windows. Very cool!
- BIOS version is 1.09, dated January 20, 2010. Intel i7 Q 820, 1.73 GHz.
- There is a setup option in the BIOS that sets the charging mode for the powered USB port. The Selections are “Automatic”, “BlackBerry”, “iPod or iPhone”, and “Other USB devices”. This is interesting.
- The CPU page has settings for Multi-core processing, hyper-threading, virtualization, and Intel VT-d.
- While in the BIOS setup, the W510 got very hot. Perhaps because power management is disabled while in setup.
- Display adapter is listed as NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M
- DVD/CD-ROM is HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GT30M
- IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
- Intel 5 Series 6 Port SATA AHCI Controller
- Ricoh PCIe Memory Stick Host Controller
- IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers
- Ricoh 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller
- Imaging devices
- Integrated Camera (properties indicate Ricoh)
- Network adapters
- Intel 82577LM Gigabit Network Connection
- Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN
- Ports
- Intel Active Management Technology – SOL (COM4)
- Processors
- (8 entries) Intel Core i7 CPU Q 820 @ 1.73GHz
- SD host adapters
- SDA Standard Compliant SD Host Controller
- Sound, video, game controllers
- Conextant 20585 SmartAudio HD
- NVIDIA High Definition Audio
- Universal Serial Bus Controllers (redundant entries eliminated)
- Generic USB Hub
- Intel 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller – 3B3C
- NEC Electronics USB 3.0 Host Controller (and Root Hub)
- Windows Experience Index (WEI)
- Processor 7.0
- Memory 7.3
- Graphics 6.4
- Gaming graphics 6.4
- Primary hard disk 7.3 (Samsung SSD installed)
- Internal hard drive Seagate 320GB 7200.4 delivered with system
- Avg 78.8 MB/sec, burst 138.5 MB/sec
- Internal hard drive Samsung SSD 256GB PM800
- Avg 123.3 MB/sec, burst 174.0 MB/sec
- USB 3.0. Note: External drives plugged into the powered USB ports were not recognized until I entered the BIOS setup and set the charging mode for the powered USB to “Other USB Devices”
- With USB 2.0 device – 31.4 MB/sec (several devices tested)
- With USB 3.0 device – 95.5 MB/sec (SSD in Brando USB 3.0 enclosure)
- eSata
- 78.5 MB/sec, 109 MB/sec burst (BlackX eSata hard drive dock)
- The eSata is also a 4th USB port. You have to carefully insert the USB connector into the eSata port and maybe push a little harder than normal, but it does work.
- PCMark Vantage benchmark
- 10427 PCMarks (default settings)
- 3DMARK06
- 6395 3DMarks
- SM 2.0 score 2571
- SM 3.0 score 2395
- CPU score 3087
- Note: Both PCMark and 3DMark identify the GPU as “Generic VGA”
- Everest
- Memory read 13311 MB/sec
- Memory write 11164 MB/sec
- Memory copy 13219 MB/sec
- CPU Queen 15773
- CPU PhotoWorxx 23016
- DisplayPort
- I hooked up a DisplayPort-to-DVI cable to the W510 and drove an external monitor at 1920x1200. The 30” monitor I was testing with goes to 2560x1600, but I can't drive beyond 1920x1200 without an active DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI converter, which runs about $99. The converter's maximum output resolution is 2560x1600. So, I'm ordering a Matrox TripleHead2Go DP Edition to split the DisplayPort resolution to two 1920x1200 outputs. Using a Matrox DualHead2Go DP or TripleHead2Go DP is, I believe, the only way (currently) to get more than 2560x1600 resolution out of DisplayPort.
- VGA
- Again, the highest resolution the W510 would let me select was 1920x1200 on VGA. This surprised me. I checked to “all modes” on the FX880 adapter, and it maxed out at 1920x1200. I stopped short of creating a custom resolution on the NVIDIA control panel. I’ll dig into this more a little later. For now, however, it appears that the W510 has fewer multi-monitor capabilities than the Thinkpad T6x series. I have a Series 3 Plus dock on order, and I'll know a lot more when it arrives.
- The W510’s fan is just slightly audible. It seems to be always on. It gets slightly louder under load. It slightly louder than the fan on my T60p, which was very quiet.
- The system is very well cooled. The only warm area is the memory access cover underneath the system. Sitting here typing this post, the exhaust vents are just barely warm and I can hear the fan only if I put my ear up to the vents. But, when put under load, the W510 heats up quickly and the fan kicks in.
- I’ve heard no humms, buzzing noises, or anything else out of place.
- The color sensor seems to work well. I used it and it worked as expected. It suggested a color profile that at first I thought wasn't good, but after spending time with it I really like it.
Updated 2/6/10 to change comments about DisplayPort, fingerprint reader, add formatting, and add a final summary paragraph.
Updated again to fix typo on screen resolution.
Updated 2/15/2010 to correct error on eSata/USB port interoperability.