These days, the line between business and pleasure is blurrier than ever as mobile professionals demand systems that can help them prepare sales proposals, stay connected to the office network from the road, watch a movie on the flight back, and allow them to play World of Warcraft when they finally get home. Lenovo’s new Centrino 2-powered SL series caters to this market by combining entertainment-oriented components such as an optional Blu-ray drive, HDMI output, and discrete graphics with work-related features like the ThinkPlus Secure Business support service and AT&T mobile broadband.
The ThinkPad SL400 is the 14.1-inch member of the SL family and, if it’s any indication of what we can expect from the entire line, Lenovo has a hit on its hands.
View our video hands-on with the SL400 >>
Design Offers Pizzazz, But Blocks Ports
Though no one would confuse this notebook with a sleek ultraportable such as Lenovo’s X300, the SL400 offers several major tweaks to the tried-and-true ThinkPad look. The coarse, rubberized plastic of the traditional Lenovo lid has been replaced with a shiny piano-black surface that sports our favorite design change: a sexy ThinkPad logo where the dot in the letter “I” is a laser-red light that reminds us of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s eye in The Terminator. However, this glossy exterior is prone to attracting fingerprints.
Like the X300, the SL400 has replaced the traditional ThinkPad’s ugly steel hinges with color-coordinated black hinges which are completely hidden when the lid is closed. The lid is also pleasantly latch-free, so users don’t have to struggle with a lever just to open the clamshell.
While the black deck and red TrackPoint pointing stick remain a staple, the interior of the SL400 sports a flashier look than most other ThinkPads, with a long speaker bar placed snugly above the keyboard, an attractive set of green status lights for the hard drive on the right side, three volume controls, and a ThinkVantage button on the left.
The ThinkVantage button, which launches a Lenovo Care control panel, remains illuminated in blue as long as the computer is on. Unlike some other ThinkPads, the Wi-Fi status, battery, sleep, mobile broadband, and Bluetooth lights sit on the front lip of the system, underneath the touchpad buttons.
Unfortunately, there’s a major chink in this shiny new armor. To accommodate the downward, tapered edges of the chassis, the ports on both the left and right sides are recessed, making them difficult to see when you’re attaching external devices. Plugging a USB flash drive into one of the two right USB ports was a major pain because we had to turn the notebook to see where to stick the connector.
The edge of the chassis on the right side is so obtrusive that it blocks thicker USB devices, such as a MuVo Micro N200 MP3 player, from connecting. It's difficult to see in the picture at right, but the ExpressCard slot is embedded in the lip of the plastic right above the ports so, if you have a card installed, you may not to be able to attach even the thinnest USB plug.
Fortunately, the USB ports on the left are a bit more accommodating, though they are stacked on top of each other, making it difficult to use both of them simultaneously.
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