The New Lenovo ThinkPad L412, L512

source – thinkpads.com/ by John Hobbes

In a quiet recognition of the new Lenovo ThinkPad L Series we’ve heard about before, details of the new L412 and L512 notebooks have been made public. But wait: why do these look exactly like the existing ThinkPad SL410 and SL510? Ladies and Gentleman: meet the refreshed SL Series, aka the “new” ThinkPad L Series.

While we have received no official comments from Lenovo, the facts don’t lie: the images appear identical, the specs are near identical and with the introduction of the Edge lineup, Lenovo’s model strategy is finally becoming apparent. What we have here is a rehash of the existing SL Series with a new name and running on the new Intel platform. You’ll find Core i5 processors in the L Series to start with, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see Core i3 show up at a later date.

If you carefully compare the specs of the L412 to the SL410 and L512 to the SL510, you’ll find the port layout and overall features are the same. Dimensions are identical within a tenth of an inch. The main variance is in system weight, but this is typically a convoluted number in the first place and fluctuates a surprising amount based on what options are installed in the system.

We don’t expect these to show up for sale on Lenovo.com for some time, but it is interesting to note that the initial configurations are rather well loaded with Win7 Pro, 2GB or more of RAM, 7200rpm hard drives, and Gobi 2000 WWAN. The biggest change from the SL to the L Series is the loss of HDMI output, instead relying on the “business standard” DisplayPort. This is not a big surprise, considering the “SMB” Edge models get HDMI.

There are no details on pricing or availability at this point, but expect base model configurations to be in-line with or slightly above the $499 prices of the existing SL410/SL510. Well configured models, like those listed in the PSREF doc today, will likely run in the $800 range.