An important part of the Thinkpad identity is its black case with cheap looking plastics flavour. This might sound bitter, but handling  this notebook quickly puts this impression into perspective.

Generally this 14 inch notebook's robustness is excellent. A waste of time to try to deform the Thinkpad T61 under pressure. However, if you, legitimately for a notebook of this class, scrutinize the case, you'll still find some parts with smaller weaknesses.

E.g., the plastic cover next to the Thinkvantage buttons yields and silently creaks somewhat under pressure. Similarly, the same can be observed for the region of the optical drive at the bottom side of the notebook. Especially, the weakness at the UltraBay slot is one, which already exists since some Thinkpad generations.

Let's finally stop complaining. The T61's workmanship is as expected very good and also the stability of the case is first class. This is supported by a metal frame inside the notebook and magnesium parts at its surfaces.

The display of the T61 is especially strengthened, and so, it scores better now than the also very robust T60. A special comb construction under the displays cover further increases flexural rigidity and pressure resistance.

The display stands out because of the strengthened molding at its edges, known as ClamShell design was further reduced. While  it exceeded the display frame by about 1 centimeter at the top part of the R50, now only a gentle rise is apparent. So, the look was clearly improved and while it is still  sufficient to guarantee a nearly seamlessly closed display. So, dust and dirt particles cannot accumulate in the interspace.

Also the look of the hinges were slightly adapted. Their height got smaller, but in turn their width increased. The edgy and massive form still stayed the same. Still the metal hinges are capable to absolutely securely keep the display's posistion.

The same is true for the ramshorn hook, which secures the closed display and is easy to handle by a switch placed at the front edge of the display.

The provided interfaces and their order is typical Thinkpad. In order to be able to also use especially huge high-capacity batteries with this notebook, the battery was again located at the T61's backside. So, batteries with higher capacity can exceed the case and so provide more cells. This is a special aspect for the T61, but we'll discuss this later.

Back to the ports. A main difference to the T60 series is that the audio ports and the Firewire port were located at the front edge. So, a permanent use of these ports especially at a fixed place is difficult and using a docking station is recommended. So, also the missed out DVI ports can be overcome.

Some more words to the security aspect, which is a special consideration of the Thinkpad series: The T61  provides comprehensive security features, e.g., a shock protection for the hard disk, a fingerprint reader and a TPM chip including compatible software.

Loudness

During idle mode the notebook stays relatively quiet. The measured noise level of 35.3dB is caused by a whirring which can sometimes be heard next to the fan. This got especially evident during battery operation. The hard disk deserves special mentioning, because it could even hardly be heard, if accessed.

Under load we measured a maximum noise level of 40.3 dB, which subjectively did not overly annoy.

Temperature

The Lenovo T60's top side stays comfortably cool with a maximum of up to 34.8°C. Even at the bottom side the temperature only moderately increases. The measured maximum was about 41.5°C.
So, in total the fan control and the ventilation system of the Thinkpad T61 are mature.

Even the technical specification of the provided standard 2600 mAh battery did not allow to expect too much. In practice our assumptions were verified.

With optimized energy settings the T61 reached a maximum of 2.5 hours runtime. At maximum performance only 45 minutes runtime were possible. Even results of practice near tests, like WLan operation, could not really convince with only about 1.5 hours runtime.

Anyhow a bigger main battery with 5200 mAh is available for the T61, which  is able to approximately double the runtime. Furthermore, an Ultrabay battery is available, which can further increase the maximum runtime.