Hands on ThinkPad T440 review

 

For

• Low starting price
• Choose touch or no touch
• Plenty of ports
• 12-hour battery life standard

Against

• A bit chunky for an ultrabook
• That 17-hour battery life claims requires a bulbous battery, not included

It has Haswell, but read the fine print on that 17-hour claim

This time last year, we saw Lenovo reworking the design of its classic ThinkPad laptop. Gone were the lid locking "sweater-catchers," the dedicated volume button and classic touchpad design.

Everything became a bit more unibody, clean to look at and a bit more Apple MacBook Pro-ish.
Then Haswell arrived and it became time to change out the internals as well.

Thats just what Lenovo has done, introducing the ThinkPad T440 at IDF 2013. The same chip that put the MacBook Air past the ten-hour mark in battery life powers this Windows 8 ultrabook.

Its a bit chunky for an ultrabook, weighing 4lbs in its most basic configuration. Adding a touch display adds a bit of weight to it, as well as extra cost. Its still only 21mm at its thickest point though.

The MacBook Air might be thinner and lighter but the T440 has more ports. In addition to two USB 3.0 ports, theres an SD card slot, Ethernet and VGA.

Storage options are big and functional as well, with the option of either a 512GB or 1TB SSD. The T440 can also get up 12GB of DDR3L, though were not sure youll need that much, since an i5 processor is your only option, not i7.

RAM and storage aside, Lenovo is really bragging on 17-hours of battery life. Manufacturer claims are always a bit inflated, but you should know that to get this MacBook Air beating longevity, youll have to pony up for a second cell.

Not only does it cost more, its awkwardly large. Its has a bulbous rounded bottom that makes the T440 sit at a propped up angle.

Were not sure itll be worth the hassle and cash, especially since the T440 already claims 12-hours with its normal battery setup. It actually has two batteries by default, one thats internal and another thats swappable.

If you do decide to purchase extra batteries, theyll work on a number of the new T-series machines, basically all of them expect the T440P, so your IT department will get its moneys worth. You can also hot swap the cells without shutting down, providing the internal battery still has some charge.

Early verdict

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