Review Lenovo ThinkPad T430s Notebook

The encompassing matte design and style of the ThinkPad T Series change very little year-to-year and the 2012 models continue the trend. In fact, not much has changed from the previous Sandy Bridge T420s in terms of construction work. The secure latches, smooth magnesium alloy base, gray hinges, thick lid and black tones are all signature qualities of the ThinkPad and are all present in full force. The base is quite good at hiding fingerprints, though grease on the lid and keyboard are more visible and harder to clean off. Thickness upfront appears thinner than the thickness from the rear, but this is mostly due to the more elevated rubber footing on the back. Regardless, the T430s officially averages 23.6 mm in thickness compared to the 29.9 mm thick T430 -- a very noticeable difference. This also directly influences the weight: 1.79 kg vs. 2.166 kg. Users, especially constant travelers, will absolutely feel the weight discrepancies.

The thinner profile may worry some users about reduced robustness, but we can safely say that the T430s is about as resilient as any standard-sized T model. Side-to-side twisting of the base is negligible and the lid only minimal. The center of the lid and keyboard are very resistant to pressure as expected from a ThinkPad unit and vibrations from typing or high volume are almost non-existent. The hinges appear somewhat weak at first glance due to their small size, but they are stable nonetheless all the way up to the 180 degree angle. There is, however, slight visible warping when pressure is applied to the palm rest areas of the base and at certain areas underneath where the chassis can feel somewhat thinner. Though only very minor complaints, the T430s is in general slightly less stiff than its larger and loftier variant.

System performance was assessed by way of the usual PCMark 7 and PCMark Vantage tools with final scores of 2415 and 8155 points, respectively. Since our review model lacked a solid-state drive but included a discrete GPU and a standard voltage CPU, its scores are similar to a handful of ULV notebooks with SSDs and integrated graphics.  The popular Samsung 900X4C (i5-3317U, HD 4000, SanDisk U100), Asus N56VM (i7-3720QM, GT 630M, Seagate Momentus) and Envy 14 Spectre (i5-2467M, HD 3000, Samsung 128 GB SSD) clock in with similar PCMark Vantage or PCMark 7 numbers. Equipping the T430s with a SSD can potentially raise final scores by thousands of points, though we found system responsiveness to still be ultra-smooth even with the included HDD.

Buyers have multiple preconfigurable options for storage ranging from 320 GB 7200RPM HDDs with Full Disk Encryption (FDE) to 500 GB 5400RPM or 7200RPM drives. SATA III SSD options exist up to 180 GB if the user is willing to invest in the alternate storage type. Lenovo even offers Ultrabay hard drives with 500 GB and 1 TB capacities for $90 and $350, respectively, so users can always install an SSD as the primary and a HDD as the secondary for additional space.  The notebook can also be preconfigured with a 16 GB mSATA drive for cache for $40 or users can add their own onto the available mini PCI-e slot underneath. The same mini PCI-e slot can also be used to install a WWAN card as the necessary antennae are provided as well. We were able to install our own 60 GB Renice X5 mSATA drive without issues.

Our review model in particular is equipped with a standard Hitachi 500 GB 7200RPM drive. The HDD returns a very high average transfer rate of 98.9 MB/s according to HD Tune, which places the drive as one of the top performers amongst 7200 RPM drives in this regard. In fact, this is the exact same hard drive model as found in our review of the T430. The 17 to 18 ms access time is a typical range for hard drives rated at this speed so users who aren’t ready to jump into SSDs should still find the Hitachi satisfactory.

Of the theoretical 500 GB capacity, 13.67 GB is reserved for system recovery and 450.62 GB is immediately available in the C: drive. See here for our growing list of HDDs and their benchmark performance numbers.

Though not its original intention, the NVS 5200M is very capable of gaming with overall performance between that of the GT 620M and GT 630M. In our small sample set of GPU friendly titles and a couple of intensive ones, the DirectX 11-capable business-class GPU was able to output respectable frame rates on at least medium settings without issues. Latest releases like Diablo III and Guild Wars 2 are fair game for the T430s.

Bear in mind that although the GPU performs fairly well in modern games, gamers looking for the best performance per dollar can do better than the T430s as the notebook is not designed to meet the need of hardcore gamers. For the occasional and casual gamer, however, the T430s fulfills that role effortlessly.

System Noise

At a measured 33.7 dB(A) when idling, the 430s will always be modestly audible assuming no background noise and an unrealistically quiet work environment. The idle sound levels are about as soft as the T420s but a bit louder than the larger T430. Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much to bump automatic fan levels to a more audible 35.8 dB(A) with heavy browsing or HD playback, but we still never found fan noise to be an issue during daily workloads.

Fan noise when under load returned mixed results. During our stress testing as detailed in the Temperature section below, we recorded fan noise upwards of 39.8 d(B)A, much louder than the T430 and original T420s. Once the CPU reached 90 degrees C, however, the GPU throttled down and fan noise automatically dropped back to a more manageable 35.8 d(B)A. This behavior was not observed in the T430 or T420s and may have been a response to the uncomfortably high core temperatures (96 to 99 degrees C) of the T420s during stress. In any case, the loud 39.8 d(B)A fan was only temporary and will almost never occur during typical workloads and even gaming where uninterrupted 100 percent CPU and GPU utilization is uncommon.

Throttling was again tested with Prime95 and FurMark both independently and simultaneously while running the monitoring tools HWiNFO and GPU-Z. With Prime95 active, CPU jumped from its base clock speed to its promised 3100 MHz for both active cores. Core temperatures hovered around 80 degrees C and maintained the Turbo Boost clock rate without any issues.

When only FurMark was active, the discrete GPU maintained a 715 MHz clock according to GPU-Z. During this time, we noticed fan speed alternating between its maximum recorded noise level of 39.8 dB(A) and its medium level of 35.8 dB(A) in a periodic fashion. The louder fan automatically ensues whenever the GPU core reaches 87 degrees C, which subsequently cools down the GPU to 83 degrees C. Once at 83 degrees, the fan will then automatically spin down to a more manageable 35.8 dB(A) until the cycle repeats when core temperature again reaches 87 degrees C. This behavior can be observed in the real-time FurMark temperature graph.

The full stress (Prime95 + FurMark) resulted in an even more interesting outcome. After initiation, the discrete GPU operated at 715 MHz as expected. After a minute or two, the GPU clock dropped and maintained 44.7 MHz and a <10 percent memory controller load according to GPU-Z. This resulted in the FurMark rendering dropping from 11 FPS during the beginning of the test to a paltry 1 FPS for the rest of the test following the dramatically reduced clock rate. Its temperature had also fallen to a relatively cool 64 degrees C and fan noise had become flat at 35.8 dB(A). In contrast, the CPU was able to sustain a 3100 MHz clock rate at 82 degrees C throughout the test and never faltered.

Based on observation, the T430s appears to sacrifice GPU power in favor of maintaining maximum CPU Turbo Boost performance during prolonged moments of heavy workloads. The conditions for this to occur, however, are extreme enough that most users will very likely never run into the issue. A 3DMark 06 test immediately following the stress test showed no significant drops in both CPU and GPU performance, meaning that the throttling observed above will have little to no effect during typical workloads.

The dual speakers are overtly located on either side of the keyboard with rather large and prominent grilles, implying larger-than-normal speakers for a notebook this size. Sound quality, unfortunately, does not match the looks as balance seems off even at the 50 percent volume range. Bass is noticeably distorted and certain sounds and voices can be more high-pitched than usual. The disparity only becomes worse at higher volumes. The speakers are loud enough that they should be acceptable for office use, but external solutions are recommended for long multimedia or music sessions.

A removable 6-cell 44 Whr (3700 mAh) battery is surprisingly light (290 g) and comes standard with every T430s – no other size options exist. This contrasts the T430 where 9-cell options are available. There is, however, an even lighter (245 g) 3-cell 32 Whr (2650 mAh) Ultrabay battery for $120 should the user require the secondary battery for longer runtimes. The notebook can power from only the Ultrabay battery if so desired. Our test results below only include the standard 6-cell battery as the Ultrabay battery is an optional item. Based on the electrical charge ratings, however, the total runtime provided by the addition of the secondary battery can be roughly calculated by multiplying our results below by 1.7.

To test maximum battery life, we set the brightness to minimum, disabled auto-sleep and wireless radios and allowed the system to run on the Energy Saver profile with the BatteryEater Reader’s Test until automatic shutdown. Under these conditions, the notebook lasted for 5 hours 28 minutes.

Minimum battery life was tested in a similar fashion with brightness set to maximum, WLAN enabled and then allowing the system to run on the High Performance profile with the BatteryEater Classic Test until automatic shutdown. Runtime was recorded to be 1 hour 10 minutes.

In a more real-life scenario, we set the notebook to 150 cd/m2 brightness (9/15 setting) on the Balanced profile and looped our standard WLAN test script to simulate typical browsing conditions. Under these scenarios, the notebook lasted for 3 hours.

Lenovo promises a combined 13.2 hour runtime when running off of both the primary and secondary batteries or 7.6 hours from just the primary battery. Unfortunately, our tests were unable to reproduce Lenovo's claims. Compared to the full-size T430 and previous generation T420s, the T430s is no match in terms of runtime and runs at least an hour shorter depending on the workload. It is, however, worth noting that the battery capacity of the T420s is slightly larger at 3900 mAh and the T430 even larger at 7740 mAh. Despite the differences, the battery life of the T430s is nowhere near the promised results even after our unrealistic settings during maximum battery life testing.

In our original verdict of the T430, we stressed that the notebook brought no surprises but was an otherwise solid addition to the ThinkPad series because it stayed truthful to the design and quality that define the ThinkPad. The T430s deserves the same praise – a standard, well-engineered notebook worthy of the ThinkPad name, only this time in a lighter package. Construction has suffered very minimally from the trim down and virtually all hardware and connectivity features have been preserved. The amount of available docks, add-ons and accessories are quite impressive and definitely add to the longevity of the notebook. If the lighter weight and thinner chassis can outweigh the additional $100 - $200 MSRP over the T430, then the T430s can be just as reputable as the T430. This is, of course, subject to user preferences and needs.

A few drawbacks to keep in mind are its average screen quality for multimedia playback and meager battery life, especially when up against the T430. We highly recommend opting for the 1600x900 resolution display not only for the additional pixels, but also for the higher maximum brightness for better outdoor usability. Battery life can be extended via an Ultrabay battery, which should bring runtimes to more respectable figures. These two features certainly make the T430s a better notebook if the user is willing to put down the money for it.