Lenovo rethinks the ThinkPad with the surprisingly sleek T431s

Lenovo is overhauling its latest ThinkPad, the T431s and, according to an official blog post, it “combed the world for user input during its most ambitious project yet.”

Lenovo is clearly looking to change its exceptionally boring, yet business-friendly ThinkPad lineup. The official blog post goes into plenty of detail about the people, and how Lenovo sourced the people for ideas or as it puts it “the continual process of refinement.” The PR babble hurts, but Lenovo does outline some decent new ideas for the future design and hardware direction of the ThinkPad T431s, which will cost US$949 and ship this April.

Change is great

The inside is now going to look simpler, with the black colour of the case set to be enriched and darkened (it’s call Graphite Black now). There’ll also be a lot more ports now, as seen in the image above. Over 26 aspects of the T431s were overhauled, this includes the drop down hinge and latch. The hinge now tiles to a full 180-degrees. As for the latch, it’s been completely removed.

The keyboard and trackpad, one of the most derisive features of the ThinkPad, sees a multitude of positive changes. The trackpad is now larger, as the buttons are now unified into a glass touchpad. There are now also a five customisable Windows 8 specific buttons, with the trackpoint buttons highlighted by subtle red lines. The hateful red dot, that rubber nipple from the early nineties survives. The keyboard is now clean and seamless, thanks to Lenovo removing the colours from the keys.

Design aesthetics are rounded off by the speakers, which are now hidden under the hinges for a hear, but don’t see effect . The same goes for the volume and microphone keys which are now neatly integrated into the shell.

As for the biggest change? According to Lenovo, it’s the placement of the ThinkPad logo, which now faces away from the user, but is orientated in the correct direction for anyone else staring at this hunk of Graphite Black plastic. The logo now has an LED built into it, and glows when the laptop is in sleep mode. Lenovo calls this “the heartbeat”. Romantic.

Specs for last

We’ve left the specs for last, as it’s the evolution of design, not the inclusion of beefier specs that make the T431s stand out. The 14-inch, 1600×900 display is passable, the 320GB SSD is decent enough, but it’s the 1.66kg weight that impresses. This is a very light laptop with 4GB of upgradable RAM. There’s an ethernet port, a VGA port for some reason (not everyone has HDMI yet, but they should), a card reader and two USB 3.0.