Lenovo ThinkPad T490s Notebook Review: Hard Worker

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The ThinkPad business notebook line does not change much over the years: components, screens, frames are updated

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

What is it?
What makes him interesting?
What is in the box?
How does it look and assembled?
How convenient is it to use the Lenovo ThinkPad T490s?
How good is the screen?
What about performance, autonomy and sound?
In the dry residue

What is it?

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

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What makes him interesting?

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The laptop got a familiar, familiarlovers of the line black strict case with a thickness of 16 mm. According to Lenovo, the laptop complies with the military standard MIL-STD-810G and tolerates high and low temperatures, pressure drops and other not very favorable working conditions. As for the insides, there are no surprises, this year's typical ulrabuchny filling. The quad-core Intel Core i5-8265U processor of the Whiskey Lake family, 8 GB of 2400 MHz DDR4 RAM and a 256 GB SSD with PCIe interface. Display - 14 inches, IPS with FullHD resolution and anti-glare. There is a decent number of ports, in particular USB-C with Thunderbolt 3, full-sized USB 3.1 (Gen 1) and HDMI 1.4, a smart card reader and a dock connector. A 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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Case thickness is 16.1 mm. It was quite comfortable and full-sized connectors were where to insert. On the right side is a smart card reader, large openings for the laptop cooling system, a full-sized USB 3.0 with charging function when the laptop is turned off, and a Kensington lock slot:

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Back - silver hinges and tray,which is similar in design to a smartphone. In our case, you can install only a MicroSD memory card in it. Pretty weird location for a card reader. There are laptop configurations with LTE support, in them this tray also has a place for a SIM card:

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On the left side are two USB Type-C 3.1: one with Power Delivery support for charging with an LED and one with Thunderbolt 3 support. The second Type-C is located next to the proprietary Ethernet port, in one common recess, to which you can connect a proprietary docking station. Unfortunately, there is no adapter for standard RJ-45 in the kit, and it would be very useful in a business laptop. Next up is the full-sized USB 3.0 and HDMI:

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There is nothing useful in front:

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Bottom - cooling system openings,stereo speakers, several holes for fixing the docking stations, a hole for resetting the laptop and four rubberized legs. 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 ° andwell fix the screen in the desired position. At the same time, the laptop opens without problems with one hand. The layout of the keyboard and functional elements is familiar from previous ThinkPads: the power button is round, with an LED. Located above the keyboard unit. The fingerprint scanner is to the right of the touchpad, it has lost an LED. The top row of F buttons is slightly reduced in height, at the end of its row are separate Home, End, and Delete buttons. PgUp and PgDn are located on the sides of the up arrow, and PrtSc is 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 is a little upset - Fn and left Ctrl changed places, such a solution has long been used in ThinkPad. But before their purpose could be changed back using Lenovo Vantage, now for some reason they decided to remove this opportunity. This is not critical, but it will take some time to get used to:

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Buttons are very comfortable, with a pleasant, tangible move, as it should be in the 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 installed 14-inchIPS-display with a resolution of 1920 × 1080 and a matte anti-reflective coating. There are configurations with a touch screen and a resolution of 2560x1440. Although it seems to me, the “classic” matte FullHD is the best option for such an ultraportable laptop. Visually, the screen is not bad, with good viewing angles, but the brightness and saturation are not amazing.

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The maximum brightness was 268.375 cd / m2, a rather modest indicator, as for an ultraportable laptop for working in different conditions. For those who are looking for a brighter matrix, there are configurations with a maximum brightness of 400 cd / m2 with coverage of 70% 100% RGB, and will soon arrive with a matrix of 500 cd / m2 and coverage of 100% RGB. The brightness of the black field 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 less than sRGB. It can be seen that a fairly budgetary 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 yet really gone on sale, so all the ultrabooks available on the market are pretty uniform and familiar in their fillings. Inside the Lenovo ThinkPad T490s, an already familiar configuration with a 14-nanometer quad-core Intel Core i5-8265U processor is installed. Recall that the clock frequency is 1.6 GHz (up to 3.4 GHz Turbo Boost), there is support for 8 HyperThreading streams, 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 × 2) and Bluetooth 5.0.

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Typical “office” filling, which is enough forwork with office applications, web surfing, video and elementary photo editing (cropping, twisting brightness, contrast and white balance). For this, the laptop is just designed. Benchmark results are appropriate:

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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. The read speed is just over 3100 MB / s, and the write speed is about 1600 MB / s, which corresponds to the stated indicators.

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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 is set pretty impressive,As for such dimensions, the battery is 57 Wh * h. They promise up to 20 hours of battery life, supports the function of fast charging from a 65 W complete power supply. A full charge takes about 2 hours. Of course, in real conditions, getting 20 hours of work is rather fantastic, but the laptop turned out to be really tenacious. In my usual mode (Wi-Fi, a browser with a bunch of tabs, streaming listening to music, Photoshop, instant messengers, mail and brightness a little above average) Withstood a full 9-hour work day.

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 - a very successful business laptop,which has all (or almost all) the necessary features of such models. He got a practical and durable case, 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 away from the outlet full time. Confused a little just a couple of points. The screen has a modest margin of brightness and a small color gamut. There are strange little things in the design: large gaps above and below the display and proprietary Ethernet (the adapter is not included). The laptop costs about 34 000 UAH It is noteworthy that the same configuration without Windows is also available and costs a little more 29 000 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:

a 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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