Friday, November 26, 2010

Packing a Punch-The Lenovo Ideapad Y560

I was recently given an opportunity to try and use one of lenovo's multimedia centric notebooks,the Ideapad Y560.In general people pericieve the Ideapads as inferior to the other offering from Lenovo - the Thinkpad series.But the Ideapads have come a long way from being an Essential series to a Multimedia and feature rich offering.When I only started using this notebook did I realise that indeed it is a heavyweight to reckon with in terms of performance and meets the consumer's day to day multi tasking and media demands.But first let us look at what this powerful machine has gotta offer

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU Q 740 @ 1.73GHz (With 4 processing cores)
Memory (RAM) 4.00 GB (DDR3 at 1333MHZ)
Graphics ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 with 1GB of dedicated graphics memory
500 GB HDD plus inclusion of Intel's rapid storage technology(Lenovo calls this rapid drive)

The inclusion of a highend core i7 processor just makes the package a lot sweeter.Combine all of the above with a 15.6 inches HD screen and you get one of the best multimedia experiences.Performance wise the Ideapad sails through standard benchmark tests including Sisoft sandra and PC mark.The Windows experience Index should give us a basic idea on what to expect from the system



The Intel CPU is undoubtedly the stellar performer here,you can clearly see that it has a score of 7.1(7.9 has been the highest score given by Windows to a CPU)

Aesthetics wise the Ideapads offer covers with self design that give it a new funky look.They come in black and other colors depending upon the Ideapad family you have choosen.Mine came with a design which represents a snow flake theme and it has been one of the nicest things Ive seen till date :)



This notebook also has an ATI Radeon 5730 HD premium graphics GPU.Therefore I wanted to see if it could run some high octane games like Eracer or Need for speed most wanted.Both the games rendered very well at 1024X600 display resolution.



The 15.6 inches LED glare has a very bright output and a good colour production when compared to regular notebook screens out there


Among other things I am a regular user of Linux.The ATI GPU rendered some advanced desktop composition effects which are generally not supported by its regular contemporaries.As a fun factor,I wanted to take this feature for a spin and it worked out pretty well.

The speakers which come with the notebook are JBL certified and come incorporated with Dolby Home Theater experience.The laptop is Lenovo enhanced experience certified which means it will boot 66% faster than the other notebooks.The inclusion of a TV tuner and a Blue ray drive add some muscle to its Multimedia capabilities. People who are looking out for a full fledged Cinematic experience in a notebook can try this one.Its worth the money you put in....

5 comments:

  1. What BIOS version did your system ship with? The pics look great!

    Given your first hand experiences, maybe you can weigh in on some of the forum threads about the graphics? I'd like to get your thoughts on that - especially via PM.

    Thanks!

    Mark

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  2. The Lenovo Ideapad Y560 is my idea of fun because its the one of the best configuration you could get!

    Fun for most of us is either related to music, movies or games and for each of this we need a good mix of excellent technology internally (the processor & memory capacity) but also from the exteriors with a HD screen and large screen!

    I can go on forever, but the fact that it will be an amazing fit in our lifestyle to provide us that one stop shop which will not only be just a PC but a one-in-all gadget that we can *for real* use for movies, games and music - it cant get more fun than this!

    At this time, the Ideapad Y560 will be most apt thing that will add that perfect fun element to our lives! :)

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  3. The Lenovo Ideapad Y560 is my idea of fun because I am a gamer and a gamer needs everything to enjoy his gaming experience and I think this beauty has it all.

    This beauty has the graphics, the sound effects, the 4gb RAM that will make me fall in love with it. I would play on it all day as I love high tech gadgets like this one :D

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  4. The Lenovo Ideapad Y560 is my idea of fun because with the kind of processing power it has, there are no 'off limits'

    ReplyDelete