Lenovo ThinkPad T410s with NVIDIA Optimus Review
Overall Design & Accessories
Let's get the obvious out of the way. The T410s is super thin (0.83 inches) and remarkably lightweight (3.91 lbs). In fact, it's noticeably thinner and lighter than the T410 released in April. If you're looking for a truly mobile notebook that won't weigh you down, this ThinkPad is an ultra portable notebook worth consideration.
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The T410s does nothing to draw attention. It's strictly business with minimal styling cues. While closed, we see a plain, matte black lid and a small ThinkPad logo on the bottom right corner. But besides the absence of style, the materials used to create the ThinkPad's shell offers scratch and finger print resistance like no other with a top-notch quality feel.
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With the lid open, we find an extremely clean layout. Speakers are placed on both sides of the keyboard, while a large, textured touchpad is located below it. Like the lid, the palm rest and screen bezel won't show fingerprints easily.
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Lenovo ThinPad's have a reputation for great keyboards and the T410s delivers. There's the traditional textured trackpad and the heralded "nub" in the middle of the keyboard for those that prefer it. The blue "Enter" key is there, and the Fn and Ctrl keys have been "reversed" in typical Lenovo fashion.
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The optical drive is located on the right side of the notebook. On the left, we find a USB 2.0 port and audio jack. No USB 3.0 connections? That's too bad.
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On the rear of the notebook, we find several I/O ports waiting patiently to be used. From left to right, we find a DC power jack, VGA port, RJ-45 ethernet jack, USB 2.0 port, USB/eSATA combo port, and a DisplayPort connection. It's worth noting here that Lenovo opts to omit the inclusion of an HDMI port, a relatively common connection for current laptops. It's an almost glaring omission these days actually, especially since, with NVIDIA's Optimus technology under the hood, this machine can offer solid multimedia capability over an HDMI output.
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As with the T410, the T410s arrives with very little. You'll get the machine itself, an AC
power adapter and an AC power cord and some instruction guides. No extras are tossed in per se.
On the software front, Windows 7 Professional is installed. Very little bloatware is included on top of the stock install of Windows 7, which is appreciated. Lenovo's connection suite is in there to manage the wireless connections, and a simple overlay on the bottom taskbar is included, but otherwise you won't notice any extra software from random third party vendors that you were never interested in from the start.
