Lenovo preloads the ThinkPad T560 with a couple of helpful utilities and a minimal amount of bloatware. Lenovo Companion runs hardware scans on your laptop, finds system updates and provides easy links to support resources. Lenovo Settings lets you configure your Wi-Fi card, sound, camera and display. Unfortunately, like most Windows 10 systems, the laptop also comes with Flipboard and Candy Crush Soda Saga preloaded, along with a shortcut tile that goes to the Photoshop Express page of the Windows Store.Lenovo ThinkPad T560The ThinkPad T560 comes with a standard one-year "depot" warranty, which covers parts and labor, along with the cost of shipping a defective laptop in for service. If you're willing to spend more, you can extend the warranty term up to five years and add on-site service or accidental damage protection, for prices ranging from $19 to $579. See how Lenovo fared in our Tech Support Showdown and Best and Worst Laptop Brands.
The ThinkPad T560 is available in a number of different configurations. If you purchase it from Lenovo.com, you can pick key components, such as the screen, CPU, storage drive, battery and amount of RAM. The display is available in 1366 x 768 nontouch, 1920 x 1080 nontouch, 1920 x 1080 touch and 3K nontouch resolutions. The processor can be a Core i5 or Core i7, and the storage drive can be a mechanical hard drive, a SATA SSD or a blazing-fast PCIe SSD. A backlit keyboard, fingerprint reader and smart-card reader all cost extra.
Though you can't configure a ThinkPad T560 with discrete graphics on Lenovo.com, third-party retailers sell a few versions of the laptop with low-level, Nvidia 940MX graphics on board. For example, PC Connection sells a T560 with a Core i5-6300U CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, a 1920 x 1080 display and the Nvidia GPU, for $1,564.
Enduring for an epic 21 hours with the six-cell battery, the T560 is the longest-lasting laptop we've tested.
The $809.10 starting configuration comes with a 1366 x 768 display, a Core i5-6200U CPU, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive and a three-cell battery. Our $1,286.10 review unit came with a 1920 x 1080 nontouch screen, a Core i5-6300U CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, a six-cell battery and Windows 10 Pro. We strongly recommend configuring the ThinkPad T560 with the six-cell, 72-watt-hour battery (a $15 premium), getting at least the 1080p nontouch screen (a $50 upgrade) and choosing an SSD over a mechanical hard drive.
If you're looking for a mainstream business laptop with a 15-inch screen, the Lenovo ThinkPad T560 should be at the top of your list. Lenovo's laptop is a joy to use because of its sharp, colorful display; comfy keyboard; and pair of accurate pointing devices. Even better, the T560's hot-swappable battery offers the longest battery life of any current laptop, and its MIL-SPEC-tested chassis ensures that it can withstand years of constant use.Users looking for a laptop that's easier to carry should consider either the consumer-oriented Dell XPS 15 or the 14-inch ThinkPad T460. However, if you want the ultimate 15-inch productivity laptop, the ThinkPad T560 is your best choice.It's not unusual to see a little bit of fire in an robot-fighting competition, generally in the form of a flamethrower. But the blaze you'll catch in this middleweight match that happened at RoboGames 2016 is something different altogether. This is a battery gone bad, and the ensuing inferno is nothing to sneeze at.
What likely happened here is probably catastrophic failure due to puncturing. Essentially, a violent enough jolt can break the non-conductive wall that separates a battery's anode and cathode, which causes a big, nasty short inside the system. This rapid, uncontrolled exchange of electricity creates a lot of heat, which can start to affect the electrolyte in the battery, causing it to expand and creating extreme pressure inside the battery. That's bad enough as it is, but then sometimes the battery also explodes from that pressure, and the electrolyte catches fire due to all the heat, which is when things gets really bad.
Why does all that matter? This is the same type of battery you're likely to find in your phone or laptop, and it's subject to the same sort of failure.That doesn't necessarily mean that your phone is a bomb waiting to go off; the lithium-ion design of many phone and laptop batteries is more physically robust than so-called "lithium-polymer" or "LiPo" designs often found in RC vehicles and other devices that need to use a ton of power and need to use it fast. The two function with the same basic chemistry, but LiPo batteries pack in more power in a smaller, more fragile frame by using flexible pouches instead of more rigid containers. Some phones and laptops opt for LiPo for space reasons, but many still use the more rigid variety. After all, those gadgets don't need all that much power in the grand scheme of things.
But increasingly popular electric people-moving devices do need all that power. Take hoverboards, for instance, the two-wheeled, self-balancing crafts the Consumer Product Safety Commission just recalled of half a million of, citing concerns about their batteries. When you're dealing with batteries on the scale of the flaming on you see above, it pays to be extra, extra, extra careful when it comes to quality. That's why the CPSC introduced a new certification for the devices, and has been slowly but surely clearing the safe boards for sale in the United States.Most of the time, if it's made by a reputable company and treated with care, a battery is completely safe and the only real danger is running out of juice. But it's good to remember just how much power is packed into these things, and the damage it can do if it gets out the wrong way.
Imagine your laptop, phone, or other battery-driven piece of tech recharging in less than 15 minutes? That’s at least an hour faster than the fastest smartphone recharging systems can manage today, and something most of us would find extremely beneficial. The good news is, the world’s first graphene battery pack is here, and it promises to deliver exactly this level of performance.Revealed by Chinese company Dongxu Optoelectronics, the battery pack is called the G-King. It has a 4,800mAh capacity, which is considerably more than what we see in a smartphone, and more inline with small tablets, or compact laptops like the 11-inch MacBook Air. Dongxu claims the battery regains its lost charge in 13 to 15 minutes. The battery shouldn’t fall over after a single recharge either. Dongxu says the cell is strong enough to be discharged and recharged 3,500 times, which it states is seven times the strength of a conventional Li-Ion battery.
Dongxu G King Battery
China Xinhua News/Facebook.com
It’s all thanks to graphene, the wonder-material we’ve been hearing about for some time, which has the potential to revolutionize the world of battery technology. Apart from making the batteries inside our gadgets more efficient, graphene makes flexible screens possible, and can be used to improve heart rate and fingerprint sensors. It’s graphene’s ability to make batteries better that has the world all excited though, particularly in the area of electric cars.
Dongxu’s G-King battery was shown off at an event in Beijing at the beginning of July, and seemingly was demonstrated on stage, but that doesn’t mean it’s about to be fitted inside your next smartphone. The company didn’t give any idea when the G-King or a derivative would reach us, and for now remains tantalizingly out of reach. However, the fact it has reached the stage in development where it can be officially unveiled this way represents a positive step closer to fitment inside the devices we use everyday.Looking to appeal to two types of business users, Samsung today unveiled a pair of Windows 10 devices, adding more options to its current lineup of enterprise-geared mobile products.