Lenovo ThinkPad T490s Notebook Review: A Hard Worker


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The line of ThinkPad business laptops has not changed much over the years: components, screens, frames are updated

become smaller, and the design becomes thinner andeasier. But these are still recognizable rugged laptops with a strict design and a signature red trackpoint. One of the latest and relatively affordable representatives of the line, Lenovo ThinkPad T490s, came to our editorial office. Let's see what he can do.

  1. What is it?
  2. What makes him interesting?
  3. What is in the box?
  4. How does it look and assembled?
  5. How convenient is it to use the Lenovo ThinkPad T490s?
  6. How good is the screen?
  7. What about performance, autonomy and sound?
  8. In the dry residue

What is it?

Lenovo ThinkPad T490s - thin, light and durablean ultrabook with a 14-inch 1920x1080 IPS display, an 8th generation Intel Core processor Whiskey Lake, 8 GB of RAM, a fast solid-state drive, a backlit keyboard, a proprietary trackpoint and a fingerprint scanner.

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What makes him interesting?


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The laptop received a familiar, well-knownFor fans of the line, a strict black case with a thickness of 16 mm. According to Lenovo, the laptop complies with the military standard MIL-STD-810G and can withstand high and low temperatures, pressure changes and other not very favorable operating conditions. There are no surprises regarding the internals, the typical ultrabuck filling of this year. Quad-core Intel Core i5-8265U Whiskey Lake processor, 8 GB DDR4 2400 MHz RAM and 256 GB PCIe SSD. Display - 14 inches, IPS with FullHD resolution and anti-glare coating. There are a decent number of ports, including USB-C with Thunderbolt 3, full-size USB 3.1 (Gen 1) and HDMI 1.4, a smart card reader and a docking connector. The traditional red trackpoint with additional buttons is also present.

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What is included?

Lenovo ThinkPad T490s Packed in Standarda box of yellow cardboard with the name of the line and basic technical information. Inside, there is only the necessary minimum: a laptop, a relatively compact 65 W power supply, a power cable and documentation:


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How does it look and assembled?


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Externally, we have a typical representative of the lineThinkPad No striking external changes have occurred. Familiar strict design, black color and matte nice finish. The cover collects fingerprints a little, although they are wiped very easily. On the top cover there is only the ThinkPad logo with an LED indicator in the upper left corner. There is also a gray version of the laptop, for those who are tired of too standard black.


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The case thickness is 16.1 mm.It was quite comfortable and there were places to insert full-size connectors. On the right side there is a smart card reader, large holes for the laptop cooling system, a full-size USB 3.0 with charging function when the laptop is turned off, and a slot for a Kensington lock:


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On the back there are silver hinges and a tray.which is similar in design to smartphones. In our case, you can only install a MicroSD memory card in it. Quite a strange location for a card reader. There are laptop configurations with LTE support, in which this tray also has space for a SIM card:


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On the left side there are two USB Type-C 3.1: one with Power Delivery support for LED charging and the second with support for Thunderbolt 3. The second Type-C is located next to the proprietary Ethernet port, in one common recess to which a proprietary dock can be connected. Unfortunately, the kit does not include an adapter for standard RJ-45, but it would be very useful in a business laptop. Next - full-size USB 3.0 and HDMI:


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There is nothing useful in front:


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Below are the cooling system holes,stereo speakers, several holes for securing docking stations, a hole for resetting the laptop and four rubberized feet. The rear ones are slightly larger and higher, due to which the working surface of the laptop is slightly inclined towards the user:


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On the sides of the screen, the frame is quite thin, butbottom and top gaps turned out to be very large. Above the screen is a pair of microphones, an LED indicator and a camera with a ThinkShutter slider to close it. Under the screen is just an empty useless area with the Lenovo logo and model name:


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Discuss the look of the Lenovo ThinkPad T490sthere is no special meaning: a typical representative of the line. So if you liked the past ThinkPad, then you will like this one. In terms of build quality and materials there is nothing to complain about.

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How convenient is it to use the Lenovo ThinkPad T490s?


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Hinges allow you to open the laptop 180° andFixes the screen well in the desired position. At the same time, the laptop can be opened with one hand without any problems. The layout of the keyboard and functional elements is well known from previous ThinkPads: the power button is round, with an LED. Located above the keyboard block. The fingerprint scanner is to the right of the touchpad; it has lost its LED. The top row of F buttons is slightly reduced in height, and at the end of its row there are separate Home, End and Delete buttons. PgUp and PgDn are located on either side of the up arrow, and PrtSc is located between the right Alt and Ctrl buttons. The trackpoint is located between the G, H and B buttons, and above the touchpad there are three additional buttons for it. What’s a little disappointing is that Fn and left Ctrl have swapped places; this solution has been used in ThinkPads for a long time. But previously their purpose could be changed back using Lenovo Vantage; now for some reason they decided to remove this option. This is not critical, but it will take some getting used to:


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The buttons are very comfortable, with a pleasant, noticeable action, as it should be on a ThinkPad. There is a white keyboard backlight with two brightness levels:


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The touchpad is medium in size. In general, it could be done a little more by removing additional buttons for the trackpoint, but then it would not have been a ThinkPad. On the other hand, the sensitivity of the touchpad is very pleasant and not its largest sizes do not impair usability:


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How good is the screen?

In our configuration it is installed 14-inchIPS display with a resolution of 1920x1080 and matte anti-glare coating. There are configurations with a touch screen and a resolution of 2560x1440. Although it seems to me &#8220;classic&#8221; Matte FullHD is the best option for an ultraportable laptop like this. Visually, the screen is not bad, with good viewing angles, but its brightness and saturation are not amazing.


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The maximum brightness was 268.375 cd/m2, a rather modest figure for an ultraportable laptop for working in different conditions. For those looking for a brighter sensor, there are configurations with a maximum brightness of 400 cd/m2 with 70% 100% RGB coverage, and a 500 cd/m2 sensor with 100% RGB coverage will soon arrive. The black field brightness is 0.373 cd/m2, and the contrast is 720:1. The screen is very well calibrated, there is a very slight bias towards cold shades. But the color gamut is noticeably smaller than sRGB. It can be seen that a fairly low-cost IPS matrix is ​​used:


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What about performance, autonomy and sound?


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Laptops with new 10nm processorsThe 10th generation Intel Core Ice Lake has not really gone on sale yet, so all ultrabooks available on the market are quite monotonous and familiar in their filling. Inside the Lenovo ThinkPad T490s there is a configuration already familiar to us with a 14-nanometer quad-core Intel Core i5-8265U processor. Let us remind you that the clock frequency is 1.6 GHz (up to 3.4 GHz Turbo Boost), there is support for 8 HyperThreading threads, 6 MB SmartCache. The integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620 chip with a frequency of up to 1100 MHz is responsible for the graphics. There are no options with discrete graphics. RAM – 8 GB DDR4-2400. Wireless interfaces: Wi-Fi 802.11 AC (2&#215;2) and Bluetooth 5.0.


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Typical &#8220;office&#8221; filling, whichenough for working with office applications, web surfing, video and basic photo editing (cropping, adjusting brightness, contrast and white balance). This is exactly what the laptop is designed for. The results in the benchmarks are corresponding:


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The drive uses NVMe PCIe3.0x4 SSD produced by WD with a capacity of 256 GB (model SN720):


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The drive is very fast. Read speed is just over 3100 MB/s, and write speed is about 1600 MB/s, which corresponds to the stated figures.


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The cooling system in the laptop turned out to be verysuccessful. She copes with her task and does not make noise. In the office, the noise is completely invisible, in the silence the fan is audible, but the noise level is more than comfortable. With prolonged maximum load, the temperature of the viscera remains at 70 °. Of course, no throttling is observed:


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The ultrabook has a rather impressiveHow about a 57 Wh battery for such dimensions? They promise up to 20 hours of battery life and support fast charging from the included 65 W power supply. A full charge takes about 2 hours. Of course, in real conditions, getting 20 hours of work is rather a fantasy, but the laptop turned out to be really durable. In my usual mode (Wi-Fi, browser with a bunch of tabs, streaming music, Photoshop, instant messengers, mail and brightness slightly above average) the laptop endured a full 9-hour workday.

A stereo system is not the strongest point of a laptop, but it is enough for videos and films in a home / hotel environment. There is software for adjusting sound:


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All basic laptop settings and driver / software updates are made in the Lenovo Vantage application:


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In the dry residue

ThinkPad T490s is a very successful business laptop,which has all (or almost all) the necessary features of such models. It has a practical and durable body, traditional for the ThinkPad line, a very comfortable backlit keyboard and touchpad, an efficient and quiet cooling system and a battery that allows the laptop to work full time away from a power outlet. I was a little confused by just a couple of points. The screen has a modest brightness reserve and a small color gamut. There are strange little things in the design: large gaps above and below the display and proprietary Ethernet (though the adapter is not included in the kit). The laptop costs about34,000 UAH.It is noteworthy that the same configuration without Windows is also available and costs a little more29,000 UAH.

5 reasons to buy Lenovo ThinkPad T490s:

  • Practical and durable case;
  • long battery life;
  • the presence of Thunderbolt 3 and full-sized USB, HDMI;
  • efficient and quiet cooling system;
  • comfortable keyboard and touchpad.

2 reasons not to buy Lenovo ThinkPad T490s:

  • small margin of brightness and color gamut of the display;
  • large gaps under and above the display, lack of a standard Ethernet port or adapter included.

Lenovo ThinkPad T490s

Ultra-portable business laptop with a 14-inch IPS-display 1920x1080, 8th generation Intel Core processors Whiskey Lake, fast SSD-drive and long battery life.

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Technical specifications Lenovo ThinkPad T490s

Display
14 inches, 1920x1080, IPS, anti-glare coating

Dimensions
328.8&#215;225.8&#215;16.1 mm

Weight
1.35 kg

operating system
Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

CPU
Intel Core i5-8265U (Whiskey Lake, 14 nm), 4 cores/8 threads, 1.6-3.4 GHz

Ram
8GB DDR4-2400MHz

Graphics
Intel UHD Graphics 620

Storage device
SSD 256 GB NVMe PCIe 3.0x4

Communications
Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, 2.4 and 5 GHz, Bluetooth 5.0

Connectors
USB Type-C 3.1, 2xUSB 3.1, HDMI 1.4, combined audio 3.5 mm

Camera
yes, HD

Battery
57 Wh