Digital Trends

Lenovo ThinkPad SL400 September 8th, 2008 | by Nick Mokey

Performance

In Windows, our well-optioned SL400 ripped through everything we could throw at it with ease, leaving us wondering what use most business users would really have for a 2.8GHz processor (only available on the T-Series) anyway. The machine handled buckets of Firefox tabs, IM windows, and even live voice messaging without flinching, leading us to assuredly say that the SL400 will not disappoint when it comes time to multitask.

The flip-side to this coin was boot time, which turned out to be quite abysmal, even for a Vista notebook. The SL400 took 1 minute and 4 seconds to even reach the Vista login screen, and nearly another 25 to reach the desktop and open a Firefox Window. As mentioned, we’ve seen this problem consistently with Vista notebooks, but the SL400 was a particular disappointment. If you need to bring the SL400 to life in a hurry to share something with a client, you had better be good at small talk, because it’s going to be a while. 

Since our machine came equipped with an Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS video card, we took that as an invitation to run it through the ringer with a few games. Unfortunately, the card falls on the lower end of Nvidia’s 9-Series notebook cards, so gaming performance wasn’t one of the notebook’s highlights, but it’s passable if you’re not playing the latest and greatest titles. For instance, it squeaked by with modern games like Need for Speed ProStreet and BioShock, but needed the settings toned down to play nicely, and still choked on certain scenes that demanded that extra bit of computing horsepower. Given the machine’s position as a business machine, though, we can hardly count it against it; just know that paying the extra $125 for discrete graphics won’t turn a mild-mannered business notebook into a screaming gaming rig.

With the extended nine-cell battery our SL400 came equipped with, we managed to milk a hair over three and a half hours out of the machine with average use. That can’t be considered bad, but considering that it’s with the largest battery you can plop into this thing, it certainly doesn’t come off looking like an energy miser either. If you plan on working away from home for long, you’ll definitely need to bring the power brick along. Fortunately, it’s lightweight and won’t add much bulk to your notebook case.

Image Courtesy of Lenovo

Size & Weight

The SL400 starts at 5.5 pounds, which puts it dead in the middle of the weight spectrum for 14.1-inch machines, right on par with competitors like the Sony CR, Dell Latitude E5400, and Gateway T-Series. If you’re unfamiliar with notebook weights, this is the kind of heft you can expect to throw in a bag and carry quite easily, but not exactly forget it’s there. Options that add some significant weight, like the 9-cell battery, start to push the SL400 into the uncomfortable-to-carry category.

As far as dimensions go, the SL400 could definitely be considered on the chunkier side. It measures a uniform 1.5 inches deep, which is really nothing to be proud of when a 15-inch MacBook Pro is just a hair over 1 inch. Lenovo has positioned the SL series as a budget machine, though, and that extra flab piled on under the keyboard gets shaved directly off the price tag.

Software

Lenovo’s basic ThinkVantage suite of programs worked to our satisfaction, but some of the supplied shortcuts seemed like pure clutter. For instance, our machine had a link to ThinkVantage GPS 2.0 placed on the desktop, even though our computer didn’t come equipped with any GPS features, and the SL400 in fact cannot come equipped with any internal GPS. Meanwhile, we had to dig hard and actually search online to find any information about ThinkPlus maintenance, one of the most hyped services available for the SL-series notebooks. Spraying shortcuts all over the desktop of a brand new machine is bad enough, but finding irrelevant ones stuck in the mess makes the situation even worse. Lenovo needs to spend more time tailoring the preloaded software to the hardware it actually ends up on. “One size fits all” is for oversized t-shirts and cheesy vacation hats.