Lenovo ThinkPad T470s Review: A Slim And Nimble Workhorse
ThinkPad T470s Review Summary
The ThinkPad T470s is an excellent performer ideal for business use and offs respectable entry-level gaming performance as well. Despite its full 15 Watt Kaby Lake Core i5 CPU, it never exhibited hot spots or suffered from throttling issues due to thermal challenges. The Lenovo ThinkPad T470s remained cool to the touch even under heavy, repetitive during benchmark runs. It also just so happened to score top marks versus similar class machines, in virtually our entire suite of benchmarks.
We would be remiss if we didn't cover the software setup of this ThinkPad and we will say that it's nice to see Lenovo has broken its habit of heavier-than-most bloatware installation on its laptops. A few years back, the first thing you had to do on unboxing some Lenovo machines was to remove all the junk software that was loaded on it. That has ended thankfully and all you get is the basic Windows 10 loadout with the ThinkPad T470s, with the option of purchasing Microsoft Office when you buy it direct from Lenovo.
Battery life with this machine, as we reported here, is fantastic. Further the T470s' display is solid even for the lower-end 1080p non-touch config we tested, though it could be brighter. The T470s' keyboard is, as we've come to expect from Lenovo, best of class and as usual, very comfortable and responsive. The trackpad is responsive and accurate as well, but requires a bit of adjustment out of the box to set pointer speed to your preference. We can debate the positioning of the button mouse control above the trackpad, and some may swear by it actually, but again this is a user preference area and base functionality is excellent, generally speaking.
Despite being nearly as thin as an average-sized paper notebook, the ThinkPad T470s crams a lot of ports into its side edges as well, including full sized Gigabit Ethernet port and HDMI ports. Also, thankfully and probably more importantly for many users, this machine has a discrete microSD card slot on the right edge as well and it's located for convenient access this time.
As a work laptop, the ThinkPad T470s might just strike an ideal balance for many mainstream users. However, starting at $975 and for $1319 or so as tested, this is a premium ThinkPad model with a price tag to go with it. Great performance and excellent battery life are what many are looking for, followed by light weight, a decent display and ample IO connectivity options. It just so happens, the Lenovo ThinkPad T470s has it all.
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