Lenovo’s next ThinkPad notebook is laptop with a 14 inch display and a small screen bezel — the company says the Lenovo ThinkPad S431 is about the size you’d expect a 13 inch laptop to be.

It’s also reasonably svelted, at 0.8 inches thick. That puts the ThinkPad S431 squarely in ultrabook territory — although I’m not sure if the base model will have all the hallmarks of an ultrabook.

Lenovo plans to start shipping the notebook in June for $699 and up.

Lenovo ThinkPad S431

The Lenovo ThinkPad S431 has multitouch display that opens to a 180 degree angle, a 5-button clickpad with a glass surface, and a pointing stick in the center of the keyboard.

Lenovo will offer the notebook with an Intel Ivy Bridge processor, up to 8GB of memory, and up to 500GB of storage. The press release doesn’t make it clear if you can configure it with a solid state drive, but technically in order to count as an ultrabook you’d need to have at least a small SSD.

The notebook has 2 USB 3.0 ports, a backlit keyboard, and an aluminum lid that will be available in silver or black colors. Lenovo is promising up to 9 hours of battery life, which sounds optimistic.

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14 replies on “Lenovo ThinkPad S431 notebook coming in June for $700 and up”

  1. Clickpad? Pass. Well I’ll have to try how it feels when using with the trackpoint to make sure I’d pass or not.

    1. Both are USB 3.0 though and would have plenty of bandwidth to support a HUB… Mind, for some people even three is not enough…

      1. I would be one of those people, unless its super slim and light I want 4 ports :D!
        If its ultra svelte, make it one to two ports, Im fine with such tradeoff.

  2. I hope it’s not a 1366×768 screen. 768px in 2013! Not even phones get so little pixels nowadays. 1600×900 is the lowest tolerable resolution, but a 16:10 would be better: same width, more height.

    1. Lowest tolerable resolution depends on screen size! Same resolution on a smaller screen gets a higher PPI or lower on a bigger screen.

      For example, 1600×900 on a 15″ gets you about 122 PPI. While 1366×768 on a 11.6″ gets you a higher 135 PPI.

      Even on a 13.3″, 1600×900 only gets you about 138 PPI, which makes it comparable to the 11.6″ with the lower resolution!

      Besides, there are still plenty of phones with lower resolution. Only the high end models have started to push the high resolutions.

      Also, you don’t need as high PPI to reach the so called retina quality because laptops aren’t kept as close to the user as phones and tablets are used. Since distance from the screen is another factor…

      While resolution also has nothing to do with whether the screen has good color range, color saturations, viewable angle range, contrast ratio, and brightness.

      All those factors have to be considered to really determine whether the screen is good enough!

  3. Wow, I got my wife a e535, and I can state one hundred percent and without reservation that it has the worst click pad I’ve ever used… And it looks exactly like the one on this. In fact that track pad pretty much gurantees that I’m going to be very leery of buying another Lenovo, or recommending them ever again.

  4. Why are they releasing notebooks with IVY bridge in June?
    By that time or in July, Haswell will be ready.

      1. Yes, it takes awhile to ramp up production… Meanwhile, the lower TDP version of Ivy Bridge, Pentium, and Celeron are coming out soon too… Mind many of the early Haswell release will be for desktop and high powered laptops… The mobile range will take a bit longer to come out, along with other versions and it can take a year or more to fully transition to Haswell…

        But we should see some products come out before the end of the year that should make good back to school and holiday season options.

  5. What is the screen resolution on this? It might be my next thinkpad, but not at a crappy 1366×768 resolution.

    1. It was shown at CES with 1600×900 resolution… So should be okay for a 14″ display…

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