T490 vs E490?

[GreyGnome]

Hello,
I am looking to replace my old T430s with a new machine. I was leaning heavily to the T490 but then the E490 caught my eye. It's so much cheaper! I don't really care about the CPU or graphics card- what matters to me are:
* The excellent Thinkpad keyboard (which I should get in the E490, I think).
* 32GB of RAM, at least. Both machines have it.
* A 1920x1080 screen with better quality than my barely-passable T430s screen. I don't care if it's super bright; the brighter settings hurt my eyes anyway. But color, contrast, and reasonable off-axis viewing are important.

If I can get all that in the E490, I don't see the need to pay the Thinkpad premium. Has anyone seen the two machines side-by-side, and especially compared the displays? I'm thinking about the low-power T490 display. Would the IPS panel on the E490 be decent, or does it really suck?

Thanks.
-GreyGnome

[MikalE]

Home use or on-the-go business use?

[GreyGnome]

Home use mostly. I take the laptop on the train every day and write programs, watch educational videos, things like that. No gaming. I run Linux, so I do a little OpenOffice stuff.

I have a few terminals open with old-school green-on-black displays.

[MikalE]

For on the go business use you will probably wish you had the build quality of the T series rather than the low end E consumer series. The T series is more robust and built better than the E series.

If you're going to leave it on a desktop and use it as that or take it to the living room while watching TV I'd say go for the E series.

[theterminator93]

E series aren't really ThinkPads in my book - despite the product branding. They are a consumer market product that Lenovo released as the "Edge" series a number of years ago, as a product line under the L/SL series (the equivalent to the old R series). The L series is a pretty big step up in terms of quality over the E series, and the T series is yet another step up from the L series (although IMO the difference between E and L is much more apparent than L and T).

Essentially, E series = consumer product; L series = entry level business product; T series = mainstream business product.

When I took over a handful of client accounts I was having my teams buying E series (E550, E560, E570...) but we were seeing lots of "stupid" quality issues. E.g. video and video output issues on an entire series. So we've been deploying L and T series now - T/L480 and T/L490s so far mostly. Granted we haven't had as many out there for as long as the Es, but no such issues have cropped up so far.

The L series has a price break of usually a couple hundred bucks over a similarly configured T series. The E is usually another couple hundred less than the L. Considering my perceived quality steppings, the L series is a pretty good bang for the buck. I say skip E series and focus on L or T.

The el cheapo HD+ TN screens are just that... basic. If you spend a lot of time in front of it, you'll appreciate having the better screen - truly. If it was me and I could afford a T series but only with the basic screen option, or an L series with an IPS FHD... I'd get the L series.

[w0qj]

Hey theterminator93, well said!

And congrads on your #1000th posting!!

[GreyGnome]

Thanks for the replies! They were helpful.

What do you think of the Yoga 730? I saw one at Best Buy today and it seemed really solid, with a nice 15" screen and a good keyboard feel.

[mikemex]

E/L490 has the advantage over other models of being the most upgradeable of all. They have both DIMM slots and 2.5" drive bay, which is a rarity on such recent models.

I'm unsure of the build quality, though...

[kfzhu1229]

What do you think of the Yoga 730? I saw one at Best Buy today and it seemed really solid, with a nice 15" screen and a good keyboard feel.

That would be a country mile away from what you want, if something like the T430s is what you want.
I like to think of ThinkPad T series as the ones that stand up to the testament of time that we all know of, and the R series as something not as premium as T but will still survive just fine (like a Dell Latitude 3xxx series), and the E/L series would simply be a no nonsense version of home laptops, and is most certainly built with consumer grade plastics (like a Dell Vostro series).
For instance, while a T430/T430s easily survives 10 years of abuse, the same cannot be said for E430, which you can see dozens and dozens of them with snapped hinges! While the E420 I worked on is immune to this problem by avoiding drop down hinges mounted on crap plastics, well let's just say I've had Acer Aspires with better lid rigidity than that on the E420.
Going with a Lenovo non-ThinkPad however, you are going for something of a big wildcard here. Most, if not all of those types of Lenovo laptops I've worked on have all sorts of small issues that plague their owners but you simply cannot find the root cause of

[mikemex]

well let's just say I've had Acer Aspires with better lid rigidity than that on the E420.

From time tto time everyone screws it up. I have two T420s and both have a wobbling lid. Why the hinges on the T420s are much weaker than T420, if they are otherwise almost identical, only Lenovo knows...

[kfzhu1229]

From time tto time everyone screws it up. I have two T420s and both have a wobbling lid. Why the hinges on the T420s are much weaker than T420, if they are otherwise almost identical, only Lenovo knows...

Actually what I meant is that the lid flexes like crazy if you twist it. Like if you operate the hinges by the right corner, the left corner gets left behind and the whole screen twists. This is horrible for the screen long term because after so much of these crazy twists on the LCD panel itself (and the LCD doesn't even have a frame on this one!), you will get lines on the screen and then the screen gets destroyed.
Haven't had the T430/T430s but on a T520/T530 the lid strength is fantastic. Despite all of its build quality problems in the bottom casing, the lid on them are well built.
I mind much less if it's simply just hinge wobbling, and I think these s models will naturally come with more wobbling because it's almost like fitting a X3xx series with a 14" screen so the hinges feels a bit overloaded. I had the Latitude E6430s, which is literally retrofitting a 13.3" E6330 with a 14" screen and that hinge wobbles far more than the standard E6430 too (if your hinges aren't worn down). But none of these things have much of a twisting flex on the lid at all, because even the E6430s has a thick boarder 14" screen that's surrounded by another magnesium frame and aluminium lid (hence why the T430 and T430s are much lighter and less bulky than the Dell counterparts)