Lenovo ThinkPad W540 impressions

[jonashendrickx]

I purchased a W540 two weeks ago.
And I have to say I quite like it.
My previous glorious W-series was a W530, so it took a little time for me to get used to the slightly reduced build quality.
But in fact the W540 is quite loveable.
And the temperatures stay below 65-70C almost all the time.
Even under heavy loads.
And the 3K IPS display is just gorgeous to look at.

The only thing I am missing is those dedicated trackpoint buttons. But I have no real complaints so far besides that the palm rest feels a little warm when playing a few games.

But it is definately better than my W530 in some aspects.

[ajkula66]

But it is definately better than my W530 in some aspects.

I'm curious: apart from the screen, what do you like better on W540 when compared to W530?

[jonashendrickx]

What I like:

• The extra numpad area is very welcome. When working with Excel sheets, it comes in quite handy. Also with specific games that require more keybinds than others.
• The ThinkPad W540 runs much cooler than the ThinkPad W530. Now I know the palm rest feels quite warm or hot under really heavy use. But generally K2100M is floating between 55C-65C under load and the CPU is mostly sitting in the 60ies. You can also undervolt the Haswell processors with Intel XTU. And create profiles per app.
• I like the reduced weight very much. The machine is much more portable.
• The W530 I had had an issue where the screen or base unit looked bended, the corners seemed to have a huge gap between the lid and palm rest. But I could never figure out how it bended. Now I don't seem to have this with the W540.
• The RAM slots are easily accessible, they are all located at the bottom. (W530 had 2 slots below keyboard and 2 slots at bottom)
• Two pairs of USB ports (The W530 had one pair on the left, then one at the rear, and one at the right.)
• I remember that the speakers of my W530 were catching some dust, which was very hard to remove.
• Camera quality seems to be improved in well lit environments as opposed to the W530's camera. But both perform equally in low lit environments.

Don't like:

• The HDD/RAM door broke when I tried to open it. I accidentally broke off a clip at the side when I tried to access my RAM and HDD. Now someone told me you actually have to squeeze the HDD/RAM door at the side to remove it. Although lucky me, I could still glue the broken off part back on. And a new RAM or HDD door costs 7 EUR. The RAM/HDD door is really made of bad quality. Feels a little bit cheap.
• Warm palm rest on the left under very high loads. Although it is bearable. And there is nothing to worry about as the actual temperatures of the video card and CPU are safe.
• No TrackPoint buttons; Although the ClickPad seems to be of okay quality. I have seen some bad ClickPads with the Haswell series. But the W540 has one of the better ClickPads I have used.

There are some likes and dislikes. I can live with the dislikes. Maybe not the best ThinkPad I had in mind. But I am seeing some improvements despite the decrease in build quality. I only hope they choose a better chassis material for the Skylake generation. Glass fiber reinforced plastic ain't really my thing. Since you can clearly feel where the magnesium structure frame is missing.

[Takeda]

Next month will be a year since receiving my W540. My previous system was a W520. The only complaint I have is the Ultrabay slot is not easily accessible to change from DVD drive to HDD adapter. With a M.2 SSD CACHE, I7 4930MX CPU, 1TB Hybrid drive, and 32GB of RAM, the system is extremely fast!

[kevincaus]

what are the colours like? are they accurate? my past matte screens ips have had very poor reds.
Not sure wether the screen is at fault or the video card/onboards hd4000 graphics.
Its a matte screen right?

[bmwman91]

Have you observed any CPU / GPU performance throttling issues? I was about to buy a W540 a couple of months ago, but then I read about performance throttling being a huge problem due to a firmware bug, and it sounded like Lenovo never acknowledged or fixed it. So I bought a maxed-out W530 instead.

[wayne_i]

I have a ThinkPad W540 with the i7-4800MQ, 32G ram, 1TB SSD, Win 7 Pro and the 3K screen. My primary use is for photo processing (Lightroom 5) and general computing (including programming). I have the old W500 which was never suitable for quality photo editing (I have been using a MacBook Pro with retina display). The cost to increase the storage on the MacBook was excessive (have to buy a new computer) so I bought the W540 ($1500 USD) and added ram (came with a single 8G module) and 1TB SSD (came with a 256GB SSD - now used as a backup device in place of the CD/DVD drive). As far as the display goes, it is excellent for my purposes. The build quality is very good, not as solid as the MacBook, but certainly better than most other computers. The trackpad is not as 'solid' as the MacBook, but is certainly usable (but I mostly use a mouse of Intuos graphics tablet). Performance is excellent, battery life is good (about 6-7 hours), and the number pad is very welcome. The offset keyboard took a little time to get used to, as did the arrow keys and the delete key. The backlit keyboard is good, not quite up to the MacBook, but certainly useful. The ability to add a second drive (m.2 in the WWAN slot) is also nice (great for backup) and mine is setup as a drive rather than cache. I thought about installing Win 8, but decide to wait for Win 10 (public release later this year). No problems with the graphics switching and the power management seems to work fine. You must use Lenovo's ThinkPad tool for checking for updates also. The fingerprint sensor is also nice, as that is one less password to remember.

I am not thrilled with the W550, as I need the graphics power of the W540 as well as the ability to add more ram (16GB is a limiting factor when editting very large raw files) and when multi-tasking. The W541 might be the best compromise, but I would check for low pricing on the W540.