Digital Trends

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

Ports & Connectors

Lenovo certainly doesn’t skimp when it comes to connectivity on the SL400 – it had everything we would expect for a practical business machine, and a little more. You have your basics: four USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet and modem jacks, headphone in and out jacks, and VGA video output. But Lenovo also steps up the game with a few more exotic choices. HDMI, for instance, is usually only available on higher end multimedia notebooks, but makes a useful addition to the SL400 since many newer projectors and flat-screen TVs use it, and a 1394 FireWire port can come in handy for hard drives and camcorders.

Display

Our SL400 came optioned with Lenovo’s glossy 14.1-inch VibrantView display, which ratchets up contrast at the expense of adding harsher glare in well-lit situations. Fortunately, it costs nothing as an option when you go to customize your machine, meaning its less an “upgrade” and more a matter of preference. We found that it delivered exceptional brightness and much livelier color than Lenovo’s antiglare equivalent, which always struck us as a little dull. Of course, the tradeoff comes when you try looking at darker screens, like those in many games, at which point it basically turns into an opal mirror. Individual preferences reign here, but business users who will be taking in a lot of black-on-white text and poring through spreadsheets will probably find the crisp VibrantView option more suited to their liking.

Build Quality

No surprises here. As usual, Lenovo has built a rock solid notebook that offers barely so much as a squeek or flex in its shell. From the crisp click of its keys to the smooth and sturdy wrist surface, Lenovo hasn’t cut any corners, despite the budget nature of the machine. The only feature that stood out as a potential weak spot was the DVD-ROM tray, which wiggled a little more than we would have liked, but this is a common problem across notebook optical drives.

Annoyances

Every notebook inevitably delivers a few quirks we’re not too fond of, and while the SL400 was overall quite a tame machine, it did have a few irritating habits. The worst of the them turned out to be the fussy Wi-Fi, which worked reliably after initially connecting, but refused to connect after bringing the machine back from standby, forcing a reset. We’re sure this could be fixed with a driver update or other fiddling, but for a stock machine, this type of enormous headache really irked us.

The fingerprint reader also gave us some hardware issues. It took us far too long to get the hang of scanning with it, and even then, we encountered some problems beyond simple user input error. Sometimes Windows stalled at the login screen while waiting for the results of a scan, leaving us waiting indefinitely and eventually forcing us to just use a password. Overall, it’s one feature we don’t recommend shelling out $25 for.

Finally, the bleep this notebook lets out when plugged in is enough to wake the dead. OK, that’s an exaggeration – and a bad cliché – but it’s more than enough to draw all eyes to you in the back of a quiet conference room or lecture hall when you plug it in, which is just as bad as zombies, as far as we’re concerned.

Conclusion

With the SL400, Lenovo has taken the best features of its iconic T-series, stripped out the fluff, and put a nice gloss (literally) on the final product. Unfortunately, it could use a little more polishing on the inside, given the unusually long nag list that we usually don’t find with Lenovo notebooks. But a few pinholes won’t sink this sturdy business notebook, and we would definitely recommend it to power users who don’t mind figuratively grinding a few rough edges off the notebook themselves. Considering these machines can be had for as little as $639 in usable configurations, they may be some of the most attractive notebooks in Lenovo’s line for budget-minded business buyers.

Pros:
 
• ThinkPad durability and feel
• Powerful Core 2 Duo processor options
• Sharp, bright display
• Reasonable pricing

Cons:

• Glossy lid captures fingerprints easily
• Extraordinary slow boot time
• Glare can be an issue with VibrantView display
• Certain functions seemed buggy