The Lenovo ThinkPad T450s Review: Bridging The Ultrabook
by Brett Howse on September 15, 2015 8:00 AM ESTWireless
Lenovo has leveraged the Intel Wireless AC-7265 solution for wireless connectivity, and this has been a very popular M.2 card in many notebooks this year. It has 802.11ac capabilities with 2x2:2 which means it has a maximum connection speed of 866 Mbps. We have seen it not being able to deliver much more than about 400 Mbps transfer speeds in other notebooks.
On the T450s, I was only able to get 346 Mbps which is below average in transfer speed even with this wireless card. It is not a fantastic result. For those that need faster connections, The T450s does have a Gigabit Ethernet port which is the Intel I218-LM controller. For many businesses, Ethernet is still the only way to go so it’s great to have a built in port. It of course also supports Ethernet with the optional Docking station.
Speakers
Like many Ultrabooks, The T450s has stereo speakers which are downward firing at the front of the notebook. It’s not ideal for frequency response to have the speakers fire downward.
The speakers on the T450s are adequate but not overly loud. I measured a maximum SPL of just 83 dB(A) which is certainly middle of the road compared to most notebooks. Sound quality was ok though even at maximum volume, but as usual with speakers this small the T450s lacked any low end at all.
Temperatures and Noise
As a notebook gets thinner, cooling it becomes more difficult. Because this notebook has a Broadwell-U series processor, it needs to be actively cooled unlike some devices with Core M. There is 15 watts of TDP to account for, and as devices get thinner it gets more difficult to expel that heat. The T450s, being slightly thicker than most Ultrabooks, has one of the better cooling systems I have seen on this class of system.
At idle and low impact workloads, the cooling fan is either not running or not audible. I was unable to detect any noise at all with a sound meter at idle, which to me is a great feature. This isn’t the only device to do this at idle though. What is even more impressive is how the T450s responds under load. In order to stress the system to the full 15 watt TDP, I ran our DOTA 2 benchmark for an hour. During that time, the maximum temperature of the SoC peaked at just 67°C, which is pretty cool for an Ultrabook. But perhaps the most interesting part of that is the cooling fan slowly ramped up in speed, peaking at close to 4000 rpm but the sound pressure was just over 39 dB(A) measured just over the trackpad. Many notebooks can be well over this, hitting 41-44 dB(A) in the same workload. For those that like a quiet notebook but don’t want to compromise performance with a fanless model, The T450s is one of the best around.
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fackamato - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
Would you actually use the touch screen?nerd1 - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link
They are very useful when you use the laptop in bed...Human Bass - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
Wait, there is no hdmi output? That is dumb. I love to connect my notebook to my tv to watch a movie or a stream.evilspoons - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
It has a MiniDP output, which you can adapt to HDMI passively.gamesclub201 - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
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I have one of these (1080p non-touch, 5300U, 500GB hard drive + 16 GB cache SSD, Win 8.1), and I absolutely love it. Keyboard is excellent, the 1080p screen with Win8.1/Win10's display scaling gives you about the same "workspace" as 1440x900 but with nice crisp text when stuff is zoomed out for coding. It's also nice and light but still substantial enough that I don't feel like I'm going to break it in half all the time, like with most ultrabooks.nerd1 - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
You can put a 42mm m2 SSD for boot drive, and I do recommend that.evilspoons - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
Yeah, I got the model without a smart card reader or fingerprint reader so it has like 3 m.2 slots. I just can't find any 42mm m.2 drives locally :(Hulk - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
I have a t450s and don't recommend using the M.2 slot for the boot drive. I set it up that way, fresh Windows install and after about 10 to 30 minutes of use it would lock up and only a hard restart would fix it. I'm pretty sure it was due to the M.2 being the boot drive and it's probably why Lenovo says NOT to use this drive for the boot drive. On the other hand the 2.5" Crucial BX100 500GB SSD I'm using for the boot drive works perfectly. And I cloned the M.2 to the BX100 so I don't know what else could have been the cause of the freezing I was experiencing? But as always most of the people around here are smarter than me so it could have been something else;)nerd1 - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
I put mydigitalSSD 42mm drive on my thinkpad yoga 12" and it worked flawlessly. You may double check the BIOS settings?