I like this laptop a lot. It’s got a few issues, but nothing fatal.

Pros:

  • Light. Lighter than the 13inch mbp I had before. Probably about the same as the MBA 13
  • Amazing battery life. I don’t work too much on the weekends, but it often gets me through to monday without recharging.
  • Top notch keyboard. Especially after the keys loosen up a bit. It’s also got the new Thinkpad layout with the big Esc and Delete keys, which are nice touches. I still with home/end and page up/page down weren’t so far away.
  • It’s fast. Since the last generation or so, any CPU has been fast enough for any basic use, but this machine still feels fast nonetheless. The Intel IGPU in this one feels adequate on my 30 incher at work, though occasionally, with enough windows open, it does start to slow down a bit.
  • Good docking station. The docking station doesn’t have an optical drive, so it’s completely hot-plug. No eject button required. Also, the audio port on the dock doesn’t sound terrible, like the T410s’s did. 

Cons:

  • Screen. I got one with a TN screen. It’s got a lot less contrast than the MBP’s and bad viewing angle overall. Not recommended. If you’re buying this thing, get the IPS.
  • Touchpad: These things are still god-awful. I would be embarrassed if I were Lenovo. Thankfully, you can disable most of the built in gestures, and instead get the Two-Finger-Scroll utility, which works pretty well. No momentum scroll support, but other than that, works almost as well as OSX
  • Slow Wifi reconnect: Resuming from suspend on this machine feels basically as fast as a mac, but for some reason, it takes a lot longer to reconnect to a Wifi network. On the order of 10-20 seconds it seems. Enough to get errors in your browser when you’re not paying attention. I don’t know if this is an issue with my IT department’s configuration. 
  • Weird default video power saving features. Causes temporary weird visuals in some situations (until turned off). Just feels low quality.

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