Lenovo ThinkPad T430u review

The Lenovo ThinkPad T430u is the Ultrabook version of Lenovo’s popular T range of business notebooks. It looks almost identical to its significantly more expensive cousin the T420, but the slim T430u stands just 21mm thick and weighs 1.9kg. It isn’t the lightest Ultrabook we’ve ever seen, but it is portable, and its soft touch finish complements its business-orientated design.

Our review sample came with a dual-core Intel Core i5-3317U processor that runs at 1.7GHz (although it can Turbo Boost up to 2.6GHz within certain thermal conditions), 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard disk. The T430U managed to score a respectable 44 overall in our multimedia benchmark tests, which is lower than we expect from an Ultrabook at this price.

Its integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000 chipset provides the graphics, and the T430u was just about capable of playing Dirt Showdown on High Quality settings and a 720p resolution, averaging 16.6 fps in our benchmark tests. You may get away with playing some modern 3D games, but you’ll really have to reduce the display settings to get a playable frame rate.

Excellent viewing angles and a matt finish make the screen ideal for work

The T430u has maximum resolution of 1,366×768, and its 14in display lets you make the most of it. The T430u also has superb viewing angles, with 180-degree screen tilt to help you find the perfect working position no matter where you are. Its matt finish posed no problems with reflections either, but it did make the screen slightly dimmer overall, which meant colours were often not very bright or vivid.

The T430u also has a plentiful supply of connectivity options to suit any kind of business professional. Unsurprisingly, there’s no optical drive, but it does have two USB3 ports, a 4-in1 SD card reader, an HDMI port for connecting it to an external monitor or display, a mini DisplayPort, and a combined headphone and microphone jack.

Mini DisplayPort is useful, but there’s a more common HDMI port at the rear

This is a great range for an Ultrabook, and it’s rounded out by a Gigabit Ethernet port and Bluetooth support. The T430u also lasted for six hours and 52 minutes during our battery test, so it should get you through the working day away from the mains.

It’s good to see Gigabit Ethernet and USB3 ports

Unfortunately, its full-size keyboard really doesn’t lend itself to prolonged periods of work. We had no problems with the keys themselves, as they provide plenty of tactile feedback. You may need to get used to the unusual position of the Ctrl and Fn keys, as the Fn button is now in the bottom left of the keyboard instead of Ctrl, but the well-spaced Chiclet-style keys have plenty of depth.

The main problem comes with the plastic wrist rest, which has a hard, sharp rim surrounding the keyboard tray. This dug into our wrists while we were typing, and it not only made it really uncomfortable to use, it also ruined what’s otherwise an excellent laptop.

The keyboard doesn’t have a backlight, but it does have a small spotlight embedded in the bezel that illuminates the keyboard in low light conditions. It’s not very powerful, but it’s better than simply using the light from the T430u’s screen.

The keys are great, but the plastic case cut was uncomfortable to lean on

This is a real shame, because the responsive all-in-one touchpad was an absolute joy to use, and its textured surface meant we had no trouble using multitouch gestures like pinch-zooming. The T430u also has a secondary touchstick with accompanying buttons, but we found this was much less accurate than using the touchpad, and far more fiddly to use.

The Lenovo ThinkPad T430u is a competent business Ultrabook, but we found its sharp, uncomfortable wrist rest to be a real problem. It makes working on the T430u unpleasant, and at £870 it simply isn’t good enough. Unless you’ve got wrists of steel, we recommend the Acer Travelmate P6 and HP Envy 4 instead.