Lenovo ThinkPad T420 and T520, up to 15hr battery

Lenovo’s ThinkPad T420 and T520 impressed us on specs alone, promising Intel’s 2011 Sandy Bridge processors along with up to 15hrs battery life, and now the 14- and 15.6-inch notebooks are finally on sale. Priced from $799 for the T420i with a Core i3-2310M processor and $899 for the T420 with a Core i5-2520M processor (or $819 for the T520i and $919 for the T520 with the same starter CPUs), you’ll have to spend a little more if you want the longest battery life.

That’s because Lenovo supply a 6-cell battery as standard; the bigger 9-cell battery is a $50 upgrade. Standard spec includes Intel HD Graphics 3000, 2GB of DDR3 memory, a 250GB HDD, DVD burner and WiFi b/g/n, while options include faster chips, Bluetooth, WWAN and a 720p HD webcom.