Thinkpad T410 Unboxing, Review, and Some Videos!

[phaxmohdem]

Thinkpad T410 Unboxing, Review, and Some Videos!

Well, it finally happened. Today the friendly UPS man showed up at my door and delivered a box that has been a long time coming. (At least it sure feels like it's been a long time). Thankfully (perhaps) for you I held off on tearing open the box, and flinging its contents about to get to my new toy, and waited until I could grab my video and still camera and get some shots of the packaging, unboxing, and initial operation of the computer.

I will post a review, pictures of it, as well as some benchmark scores later on (tonight or tommorrow depending on response), but first I wanted to ask you, the Thinkpad community what kind of benchmarks you would like me to run, so as to be of the most benefit to this community,and people considering purchasing this model.

The basic specs of my system are:

• Intel Core i5-540 (2.53GHz)
• 4GB RAM
• Integrated Graphics
• 250GB 5400RPM HDD
• 1440x900 WXGA+ Screen
• Windows 7 Pro 64 Bit (Benchmarks need to be Windows based... or able to run off of a Linux LiveCD)

Also (admins) concerning pictures, would it be alright to make small thumbnails of the images (~10K or so each) and post those as links to the larger images, or should I just stick to straight links to the large pictures? (I took quite a few of them)

In the mean time, here are a couple videos (both about 10 mins long), that I shot of the new beast for your enjoyment:

Video of Initial Unboxing, and Unit Overview

Video of First Bootup Experience

[yak]

First of all, thanks for the videos. Really fun to watch. Finally a video review from someone knowing ThinkPads.

Per forum rules you are allowed to post a max 50 KB inline pictures as long as you put a warning in the subject:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 39&start=0

You got the same config as I would like to get. I would be most interested in graphics performance during normal work and playing high-def videos (while watching the CPU load). Maybe you could connect one of these high resolutions monitors you got there and check how it's working. A 3D benchmark would be useful but not crucial.

Then of course the power consumption and battery life test. Set it to say, half brightness and power saving mode, and see what the Power Manager is showing (including wattage). Maybe try to drain the battery this way and see how long it lasts for real. Please also check if the charging thresholds setting is available in Power Manager.

Take a closer look at the build quality, look for any creaks on the palmrest and stuff.

Oh, and please report back on the temps and fan noise.

Thanks a lot!

[phaxmohdem]

New video is up, this one explores the Powered USB port, and when it actually is powered, and when it isn't. I'll keep editing this post to add new video links as I make and upload them, so stay tuned.

Video: Powered USB Port Explored

Video: Keyboard Removal, and What Lurks Beneath!

Video: HD Video Playback

Video: LCD Viewing Angles

[HFat]

If you haven't done so already, please check the "our T410's are in for reviews" thread for suggestions about what you could review.

You're asking about benchmarking software. Much of the interesting stuff can't be benchmarked easily but I would be interested in one easy test, provided you have the hardware for it: an HDTune run with a fast drive (ideally an SDD) through the eSATA port, the Ultrabay and the regular internal HD port.

[phaxmohdem]

Thanks Hfat, I did check out that thread shortly after I posted this, and got a few ideas. Most of the benchmarks being asked for I am not equipped to measure scientifically (temperatures, screen brightness, etc) but I can offer subjective opinions on those. As for your HDD test, that is a very interesting thing, unfortunately I have neither an SSD, or an ultrabay adapter to test those with. You might post that in the main benchmark thread though for the pros if you haven't already.

[yak]

Really nice work man. Haven't expected to see the insides . Keep it coming.

(btw, I'm the yak2be guy from YouTube)

[HFat]

... I am not equipped to measure scientifically (temperatures, screen brightness, etc) but I can offer subjective opinions on those.

It seems you're into pictures and that you have nice monitors... so I think you could take pictures of the T410 next to a solid monitor with the same images such as the images from lagom.nl (google "lcd test").

As to temperatures, your new laptop is equipped with sensors. TPFanControl is one of the many applications which should be able to display that for you. No, these sensors aren't likely to be very good but at least everyone will have the same instruments at the same locations so these values would be useful for comparisons.

You might post that in the main benchmark thread though for the pros if you haven't already.

Which thread is that?

[phaxmohdem]

Here is the thread where you can request specific benchmarks by the pros

viewtopic.php?f=45&t=84532

[yak]

Video: HD Video Playback

Thanks for the video test.

It should be possible to get better results. This Intel page specifically lists the GPU in i5-500M processors family as having hardware acceleration for MPEG-2/AVC/H.264 codecs:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/article ... -graphics/

Like you said, this might be a driver issue, some setting or maybe the QuickTime player, which you apparently used, may not support HW acceleration. We know it doesn't work out of the box.

BTW, all your YouTube videos were in 480p, just the one about HD playback is only available in low res

[phaxmohdem]

Holy Boyz! My unboxing video is on the homepage of Engadget right now!

[yak]

Holy Boyz! My unboxing video is on the homepage of Engadget right now!

You've been slashdotted Yeah, you're the first one showcasing the new T4xx model.

BTW, any more videos in the works?

[san40k]

phaxmohdem, thanks a lot for videos, much appreciated!

[junkeeroo]

yo phaxmodem,

thanks for the great vids. btw your reviews are all over the net and being used by every website. just do a google search for a t410 review. nice work! you even been called some "random guy" in a link.