Lenovo Launches ThinkPad T431s, Lightest T Series Ever
Mar 17, 2013 02:30 PM EDT by 
We’ve long been fans of Lenovo’s ThinkPad T Series of business notebooks because of their strong performance, best-in-class keyboards and epic battery life. Now the company is adding its lightest T Series yet, the 3.6-pound, 0.8-inch ThinkPad T431s, which features an all-new industrial design that includes a new 5-button touchpad and eschews an optical drive.
Unveiled today and set to ship in April for a starting price of $949, the 3.6-pound, 13 x 8.9 x 8-inch ThinkPad T431s is 10 percent lighter and a bit more compact than its predecessor, the 4-pound, 13.5 x 9.05 x 0.83 – 1.02-inch ThinkPad T430s. The T431s features a much slimmer bezel, strong hinges that can bend back 180 degrees and a matte screen that comes standard with the 1600 x 900-pixel resolution that was only an option on the T430s. With its carbon-fiber lid and magnesium chassis, the notebook promises to continue the T Series’s long tradition of durability.
To save weight and space, the T431s does not have Lenovo’s popular Ultrabay port, which comes with an optical drive that can be swapped out for a second battery or hard drive. In 2013 it makes little sense to have a built-in optical drive on a lightweight laptop, but users may miss the optional second battery, which added 3.5 hours to the T430s’s endurance in our tests. Unlike the T431s, which had a removable battery that lasted 5 hours and 9 minutes on our tests, the ThinkPad T431s comes with a built-in, 47-watt hour battery that Lenovo claims will last up to 9 hours.
Like its predecessor, the ThinkPad T431s has an island-style keyboard with an optional backlight. However, the touchpad and pointing stick combo have a radical and potentially controversial new design. Instead of providing dedicated left, right and scroll buttons for the pointing stick, those features are built into the top of the clickpad, which has its own set of right and left click areas on its bottom side. While Lenovo’s clickpads are more accurate than most, we’re eager to see how the built-in trackpoint buttons compare to their tried-and-true predecessors. Lenovo says that building the buttons into the clickpad allows more room for multitouch gestures, particularly Windows 8 gestures.
Despite its svelte frame, the ThinkPad T431s has room for all of the major ports a business user could want, including Ethernet, VGA, MiniDisplayPort, two USB 3.0 connections and an optional Smart Card reader. The notebook also includes an optional fingerprint reader that can boot the computer and log in to Windows in one swipe and a 720p webcam.
The ThinkPad T431s is powered by your choice of Intel third-generation low-voltage Core i5 or Core i7 processors, up to 12GB of RAM and Intel HD 4000 graphics; there’s no discrete graphics option like there was on the T430s. In terms of storage, the notebook will be available with hard drives ranging in size from 320GB to 1TB or SSDs up to 256GB capacity. An optional 24GB mSATA flash cache will speed up the drive and, if you don’t get it, you may be able to use the empty mSATA slot to add a full-capacity SSD on your own. Consumers and IT managers who don’t want Windows 8 will be happy to know that the T431s will also be available with Windows 7 Professional or Ultimate.
- 10 Best Lenovo Laptops
- Lenovo 2013 Brand Rating
- ThinkPad Type-Off: Is Lenovo’s Island Style Keyboard Better or Worse?
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March 17th, 2013 at 6:33 pm
From what I can see, it looks like the t431s actually has 2 USB ports (both 3.0). Perhaps you guys mistook the power connector for a USB port?
March 17th, 2013 at 6:48 pm
Dear clueless people of Lenovo, please, get rid of the half an inch of lover bezel and change the LCD on this laptop to 1080p IPS panel. If you have to, make this a paid option. I would gladly pay you few hundred dollars for it. How do you expect to sell any of those laptops with the current crappy screen?
March 18th, 2013 at 10:05 am
My apologies for the long comment… But I would really appreciate having this one posted.
While I have some optimism, I hae a bad feeling about this, too. I really wish that Lenovo would begin to change the default scrolling implementation with the trackpoint. I have to use a third-party tool like “DragToScroll” to make the TrackPoint scrolling and zooming smoother across all applications, including IE10.
Of note, I feel that most Windows apps scroll and zoom extremely well with inertia/momentum on Windows touchscreen devices. I also think that OS X handles scrolling extremely well across all applications. However, scrolling in Windows with default touchpad drivers is (in my opinion) terrible unless a user opts for mods like Machater’s TwoFingerScroll Mod. Even then, the zooming is subpar and often not detected, compared to that via a multi-touch display in windows (or the trackpad in OS X).
I think a radical change in scrolling and zooming alone with the trackpoint and touchpad will make a significant difference to the user.
Of note, if I use DragToScroll and TwoFingerScroll with the synaptics drivers at the same, I run into issues where sometimes my touchpad and trackpoint don’t work properly, as if one mod is interfering with the driver. As a result, I disabled the touchpad on the X220 — it’s trackpoint only for me.
I also used an X60s for a bit. I also feel that the trackpoints on the older models were so much better (i.e.more precise at higher sensitivites) than the later ones with Synaptics touchpads. (Yikes! That was one long reply)
March 19th, 2013 at 9:40 am
If they’d give it a nvidia gt640m or something similar, I’d probably buy one, assuming the screen quality is decent.
June 4th, 2013 at 7:33 am
The Trackpad on the t431s does not work well, compared to the older style Thinkpad with dedicated buttons for the mouse click. I’ve had the system for a week and will be returning it. The click is very noisy, takes more pressure than the button and it is impossible to be precise or quick with clicks. If you leave mouse-movement enabled, you will get movement as you try to click, and often land on the wrong link or pixel. I’ve also developed sore wrists from the sharp corner, where my wrists fall when using the trackball. Quite frequently, I have to click several times to make the click work. The system weight is great, but the design did not think enough about the trackball user. The other gestures, like zoom – have so much latency, they are worthless.