Lenovo ThinkPad T420 Spotted in the Wild

Despite the important speed and battery improvements the Sandy Bridge architecture brings to notebooks computers, computer manufacturers have been slow to release such solutions into the market, but Lenovo seems to be getting ready to officially launch the ThinkPad T420 as the laptop has already been spotted in the wild.

According to the VR-Zone website, which managed to get a few pictures of Lenovo's upcoming notebook, the T420 bears an eerie resemblance with its predecessors, the ThinkPad T410.

There are, however, some changes as the laptop now features a 16:9 display as well as a repositioned fingerprint scanner.

On the inside, the model that VR-Zone spotted, is built around a dual-core Intel Core i5-2540M processor which runs at 2.6GHz (up to 3.3GHz in Turbo Boost mode) and features Hyper-Threading support.

The notebook also gets 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 7200RPM 320GB Hitachi Travelstar hard disk drive, an integrated Intel 82567LM GbE PHY Gigabit Ethernet network card as well as a new Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 WLAN card.

The native resolution of the display seems to be set at 1366x768 and graphics is handled by the integrated Intel HD Graphics 3000 on-die controller.

When officially released, the ThinkPad T420 will be available in a wide array of configurations, users having the option of selecting from various Intel second-generation Core chips.

In addition, the notebook can also be setup to feature discrete Nvidia graphics cards, HD+ displays with a maximum resolution of 1600x900, and supports Nvidia's Optimus technology. The base version of the ThinkPad T420 weights about 2.24kg.

Together with the T420 Lenovo will also release a 15.6-inch version of the notebook, called the T520, which also features faster processors and supports higher display resolutions.

To find out more about the performance of Intel's latest mobile Sandy Bridge CPUs, be sure to check out our in-depth review which is available here.