Summer is now largely over, with the last major holiday of the season now behind us, most of the kids back in school, and in some places the weather even starting to show signs of cooling down a bit. But the coming of fall isn't slowing Lenovo, as the company looks to bring out fully five new models in the ThinkPad line, following up on reported teases from last spring.
Back last spring, Lenovo teased the ThinkPad T431S Ultrabook, and Lenovo quickly followed up that tease with some big new product announcements. Each product in turn has some exciting new features to it that makes Lenovo's line of ThinkPads a lot more business-ready than some might have seen coming.
The S440 offers up slightly lower resolution than some may want in a display, going to 1600 x 900 and allowing for the use of Lenovo's OneLink dock, which in turn opens up access to USB, HDMI and Ethernet connections from just one cable. Other configuration points include as much as eight gigabytes of RAM, 500 gigabytes of hard drive space and a battery life of six hours.
The S540, meanwhile, upgrades to a 15-inch display—Lenovo's first 15-inch Ultrabook model geared toward business, at last report—up to 16 gigabytes of RAM, a terabyte of hard drive space, and a nine hour battery life with the option to upgrade to a 256 gigabyte solid state drive and an AMD Radeon HD 8670M GPU. There's no word on when either model will arrive on shelves, or for how much it will sell when it does arrive.
The T440S, for example, kicks things off with a 14 inch display that can show in full 1080p resolution, backed up by a fourth generation Haswell processor and a variety of design changes, like a 180-degree hinge, a lid without a latch, and a trackpad without buttons. Outside of North America, meanwhile, all this will be available with an optional Nvidia GeForce GT 730M GPU, and a variety of different options in terms of RAM, storage size and the like. The T440S is set to sell starting at $1,149.
The T440—close cousin, so to speak, of the T440S—provides a similar set of configuration options, including as much as 12 gigabytes of RAM, the user's choice of a one terabyte hard drive or a 500 gigabyte solid state drive, and a comparable set of processors. The T440 weighs about a half pound more than the T440S, and the resolution on the T440 tops out at 1600 x 900, much like the S440. The T440, meanwhile, is set to sell starting at $899.
Finally, there's the X240, the updated version of the X230 from last year. The processor has taken a bit of an upgrade, but the real winner here is the design. The new buttonless trackpad, drop hinge and latchless lid are all here, both touchscreen and non-touch options, and display resolution going up to 1920 x 1080. Better yet, the X240 has a sealed internal battery to back up two swappable batteries. The X240 starts at $1,099 and goes on from there depending, as ever, on configuration. The X240, the T440, and the T440S are all set to go on sale in October.
Clearly, there are big releases coming soon from Lenovo, and though there's plenty of competition in the market, there's always room for a product that can do the job and do it will. Only time will tell, however, if the market counts Lenovo as just such a product.
Edited by
Alisen Downey 
QUICK LINKS 
