Lenovo ThinkPad T410: Built for Business
by Jarred Walton on March 26, 2010 4:00 AM ESTBig Battery = Decent Battery Life
So let's get this out of the way first: the T410 "cheats" by using a 9-cell 94Wh battery compared to 6-cell 48 to 64Wh batteries in competing laptops. The default battery on the T410 is also a 6-cell unit, but if you want more battery life it's nice to have the option of grabbing a higher capacity battery. For a comparison of how the laptops really stack up, look at the relative battery life chart where we factor in battery capacity.
Even with the large battery, it's still clear that the ThinkPad T410 offers very respectable battery life. Lenovo provides some additional utilities that help in this area, with a Power Manager tool that has a "battery stretch" feature. Enable battery stretch and you can have the audio, networking, and optical drive power down. We used the appropriate options during battery life testing (i.e. everything off for the idle test, optical drive disabled on all tests, audio muted except on the x264 playback test, etc.) to provide maximum battery life. We've done the same for other laptops, where possible, so these results are a best-case scenario. Note that we also uninstall and disable any unwanted applications to reduce system demands and improve battery life; if you're running a firewall and anti-virus software, you can expect slightly lower battery life (and of course batteries will degrade over time).
With the 9-cell battery, you can get over four hours of x264 video playback, five hours of web surfing, and 7.5 hours best-case (i.e. idle). We calibrated the LCD for ~100nits and found that a brightness setting of 38% in Windows (or 11/15 with Lenovo's controls) gave us the desired result. Relative battery life puts the T410 in close competition with IGP solutions like the Gateway NV58, but it appears the i5 + HD4330 in the Inspiron 1564 is slightly superior overall. On the other hand, a last-gen laptop like the Dell Studio XPS 16 clearly draws more power from several of the components. The ThinkPad strikes a nice balance between performance and battery life, and getting over five hours of heavy web surfing shows that the T410 with a 9-cell battery will be enough for most business users looking to go all day without recharging.
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kimt - Monday, September 13, 2010 - link
@Belard, can you please share which install method you used to install osx86 ?Gholam - Friday, March 26, 2010 - link
Call me when Apple actually releases a docking station, or lets you hook up a VGA projector without daisy-chaining seventeen dongles.takumsawsherman - Thursday, April 1, 2010 - link
Ring..Ring...It only takes 1 dongle. It's called the Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter. In fact, since most decent laptops will not be shipping with VGA, you will need a "dongle" no matter what you buy. The nice thing about the Apple is that upon insertion of the Dongle it automatically detects everything and sets it up. You should try it.
anishannayya - Tuesday, April 6, 2010 - link
"Finally, while the LCD resolution and matte coating are great, the contrast ration is disappointing."Ratio is spelled wrong, just thought that you might want to correct that.
Growly - Thursday, April 22, 2010 - link
I'm an avid ThinkPad lover. I fell in love with the T43, so backtracked to a T23 (what I could afford at the time) and have owned and loved almost every generation of ThinkPad since (with even a few prior). To give you a better idea, I had up to 15 at one stage but decided to sell a couple of X60s before I could justify any more. I'm a little disappointed by the aesthetic design changes in the T410, preferring the T400, but I understand that Lenovo has to do something to make its laptops a little more modern to make up for the plain appearance. (It should go without saying that I absolutely adore the quietly powerful and functional form of the ThinkPad.)I used to stick to the T{x}p series laptops to harness the raw power on top of all the construction quality. Unfortunately, after using my 15.4" T61p for a few years (when Lenovo decided that smaller ~p models were unjustified), I got a little sick of the weight and size. It was a venerable powerhouse, but lugging it around just for web browsing, word processing, and laboratory work became a hassle. I decided that for the remainder of my studies I would be better off with a smaller alternative, like the T410.
So far it has proven to be delightful. So, while convincing myself to forgive Lenovo for the weak graphics card (it's really quite disappointing, if not unnecessary), and trying to convince myself that I wouldn't be better off with a W510, I'm enjoying the keyboard and solidity of the unit (which is better in some ways, not in others). It's so cute! Ah how I love ThinkPads!
topsecret - Sunday, April 25, 2010 - link
I was just wondering if it would be worth it to upgrade from an i5 (2.53) to the i7 (2.66). It seems kinda silly as the price is 150 more dollars for 110 mHz. Thanks in advance!cptcolo - Monday, February 14, 2011 - link
The monitor can be tweaked to a large degree to get rid of the faded look of the screen.1. Open Intel Control Center. (Start button, type "Control Center")
2. Click on "Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel"
3. Under display click on Color enhancement
4. Reduce the "Gamma" to 0.8, and increase the "Saturation" to 12
Blacks are still no very black, but pictures and videos look much better and the faded out look is largely gone.
actionjksn - Saturday, September 24, 2011 - link
I tried it and it worked great! I didn't realize how bad it looked until I adjusted it according to your specs.adamjems - Tuesday, August 7, 2018 - link
Lenovo Thinkpads is just wow. I am using a T410 with Core i5-540M and in my review the reliability of these laptops are unmatchable.For more - https://lenovosupport.org/lenovo-support-number/