The Lenovo ThinkPad T450s Review: Bridging The Ultrabook
by Brett Howse on September 15, 2015 8:00 AM ESTGPU Performance
With the review unit’s Core i5-5300U processor, we get Intel’s HD 5500 GPU which has 24 execution units, and a frequency range of 300 to 900 MHz. We have seen quite a few notebooks with this GPU this year already, and performance is certainly a step up with the Gen 8 graphics on Broadwell as compared to Haswell’s Gen 7.5. Depending on the processor, maximum clock speed can be as high as 950 MHz, so this model is slightly down on the best possible performance for the GT2 graphics.
As with the system performance, the graphs have a sampling of similar devices but if you would like to compare the T450s to any other notebook we have tested, please use our Notebook Bench.
3DMark
Futuremark’s 3DMark suite is one of the oldest synthetics around, and they roll out new versions with new features. The current version is 2013, and they have updated it several times to include more demanding tests for multi-GPU setups and for testing UHD readiness. With just integrated graphics, the T450s is not going to be able to do those but we ran it through the normal suite. As you can see, the T450s does very well here compare to other Ultrabooks. It is beaten only by the ThinkPad X1 Carbon which has a Core i7 CPU and the top 950 MHz clock speed for the GPU.
GFXBench
GFXBench is a cross-platform test and is one of the staples of our smartphone testing. This is the DirectX version. Once again there are no real surprises here, with the T450s falling in the same range as the other Broadwell-U based systems. The one exception is Alpha Blending which seems a bit low.
DOTA 2
This may be the last chance to try out DOTA 2 since Valve is moving towards DOTA 2 Reborn. Apparently the new take will finally move away from DirextX 9 and the new engine is supposedly better on both low end hardware as well as high end hardware. Once Reborn launches we will take a look at it as a replacement for our iGPU testing. Taking a look at what we have today though shows that the ThinkPad T450s actually falls behind some of the other devices we have tested. Either this can be attributed to a game update, or drivers, since the GPU frequency stayed right at the maximum of 900 MHz throughout the test. I also verified it with a much longer test of this game and the average GPU frequency was 895 MHz. Its lower scores do not appear to be a cooling system issue in this case.
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fackamato - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
Would you actually use the touch screen?nerd1 - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
They are very useful when you use the laptop in bed...Human Bass - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
Wait, there is no hdmi output? That is dumb. I love to connect my notebook to my tv to watch a movie or a stream.evilspoons - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
It has a MiniDP output, which you can adapt to HDMI passively.gamesclub201 - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
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I have one of these (1080p non-touch, 5300U, 500GB hard drive + 16 GB cache SSD, Win 8.1), and I absolutely love it. Keyboard is excellent, the 1080p screen with Win8.1/Win10's display scaling gives you about the same "workspace" as 1440x900 but with nice crisp text when stuff is zoomed out for coding. It's also nice and light but still substantial enough that I don't feel like I'm going to break it in half all the time, like with most ultrabooks.nerd1 - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
You can put a 42mm m2 SSD for boot drive, and I do recommend that.evilspoons - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
Yeah, I got the model without a smart card reader or fingerprint reader so it has like 3 m.2 slots. I just can't find any 42mm m.2 drives locally :(Hulk - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
I have a t450s and don't recommend using the M.2 slot for the boot drive. I set it up that way, fresh Windows install and after about 10 to 30 minutes of use it would lock up and only a hard restart would fix it. I'm pretty sure it was due to the M.2 being the boot drive and it's probably why Lenovo says NOT to use this drive for the boot drive. On the other hand the 2.5" Crucial BX100 500GB SSD I'm using for the boot drive works perfectly. And I cloned the M.2 to the BX100 so I don't know what else could have been the cause of the freezing I was experiencing? But as always most of the people around here are smarter than me so it could have been something else;)nerd1 - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
I put mydigitalSSD 42mm drive on my thinkpad yoga 12" and it worked flawlessly. You may double check the BIOS settings?