2018-01-06, 18:40 PM

Shortly before Christmas Lenovo sent me a pre-production test model of the new mechanical side dock ThinkPad Pro Docking Station along with the new Thinkpad T480s for me to review. Review items are not packaged for sale. Often they arrive without instructions and/or without one or more production model components. Future reviews on production models will be more comprehensive.



ThinkPad Mechanical Side Dock Docking Station





The new side dock connects by just that: a slide-to-connect mechanism. According to specs the dock is designed to accommodate most 12, 14 and 15-inch ThinkPad laptops, I have not had a chance to try it with anything other than the T480s. More reviews will be coming in the future.

The following ports available:



Considering the dock’s compact size, compared with other brands’ older models that I’ve owned, this dock would be fairly easy to travel with for anyone needing to connect mouse, network, power, printer, and other peripherals. Similar to older Lenovo Pro docking stations, a lock is also included.

ThinkPad T480s



Pictured above is the ThinkPad T480s in silver. One nice thing I’ve noticed so far regarding the exterior, is that the paint seems to be more durable than the silver paint on my Lenovo YOGA 900 that has scratches caused by my moving it between various surfaces. As I was attempting to seat and secure the ThinkPad into the mechanical dock I wondered if the paint on the bottom would show any marks, but much to my surprise it is still as clean as when it was unwrapped from shipping.

Ports:



Undocked the following basic Input/Output Ports are available on the T480s:

1 x Intel® Thunderbolt™

3 1 x USB-C

2 x USB 3.0

1 x 4-in-1 Micro SD card reader (SD, MMC, SDHC, SDXC)

1 x headphone and microphone combo jack

1 x HDMI

RJ45 (Ethernet)

Additional specs on the model that I received:

Processor and Memory: 8th generation (Kaby Lake) Intel® Core™ i7 with vPro™ ( 2.10 gigahertz / 8650U)

256 kilobyte primary memory cache

1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache

8192 kilobyte tertiary memory cache

64-bit ready

Multi-core (4 total)

Hyper-threaded (8 total)

Operating System: Windows® 10 Pro 64-bit Windows version 1709, Build 16299.125



Graphics and Display: Intel® HD Graphics 620 Display Adapter, NVIDIA® GeForce® MX150 with 2GB, GDDR5, Wide viewing angle & High density FlexView Display 2560x1440 Monitor (13.9” vis)



Camera: (without ThinkShutter) 720p IR Camera with dual-array microphone

Memory: 16GB

Memory slots:

Total memory slots 2

Used memory slots 1

Free memory slots 1

Storage 476 GB

Battery: Preliminary marketing specs for the T480s show up to 13.5 hours. For my quick tests I did not get that many hours of power, but taking into consideration that this was only a demo model and that battery life varies with settings, usage, and other factors, that is to be expected.

Audio: Dolby® Audio Premium™

Security: Touch fingerprint reader, IR Camera facial recognition, 2.0 Smart card reader, Kensington® lock slot

Display: 14" FHD IPS, FHD IPS touch, WQHD IPS Dimensions (W x D x H) mm: 331 x 226.8 x 18.45 inches: 13.03 x 8.92 x 0.72 Resolution: 1280x720 pixels



Weight: 1.32 kg / 2.90 lbs



WLAN: Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC (2 x 2) AC Bluetooth® 4.1



WWAN: Integrated Global Mobile Broadband PTE-A (CAT9) Sierra Wireless EM7565 with Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ X16 LTE Modem



Watch this CES 2018 board for later reviews, and feel free to post questions.