Lenovo’s consumer-oriented IdeaPad line grows more impressive with each new model. The IdeaPad Y650 shares a little DNA with the more buttoned-down ThinkPad line but turns up the volume with its style. Combine that with a gorgeous 16-inch screen, good productivity and multimedia performance, and some cool features.
Key Specs
Processor: 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8700
Memory: 4GB RAM
Storage: 320GB hard drive
Optical Drive: DVD+/-RW
Screen: 16 inches (1,366x768)
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce G 105M
Weight: 5.6 pounds
Dimensions (HWD): 1x15.4x10.2 inches
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
The designers had even more fun under the lid, where a glossy black screen bezel contrasts strikingly (in a good way) with the glossy white surround of the white keyboard. The Y650 keeps a minimalist look, with just a few round buttons for volume, mute, and power. It’s aesthetically appealing, but we did miss dedicated multimedia control keys. Instead, above the function-key row is a touch-sensitive strip that brings up Lenovo Desktop Navigator: onscreen icons for launching the camera utility, face-recognition utility, OneKey backup/recovery tool, and Lenovo ReadyComm communications-settings applet. You can customize this strip with applications of your choosing.
The Y650 also includes a next-generation touch pad. It’s huge, which makes mousing around the large screen a pleasure. The pad also supports gestures for zooming, rotating images, and more. The mouse buttons were a little stiff, though, taking more pressure to activate than we’re used to. But we have no complaints about the full-size keyboard, which has very good key action.
The real draw of the Y650 is its screen. The 1,366x768 panel is particularly bright and crisp, and colors are exceptionally vibrant. Photos and graphics pop. HD purists will bemoan that the panel isn’t full 1080p (1,920x1,080), but for working in text-heavy applications, such as Microsoft Office or e-mail, the lower resolution makes for more readable fonts at the default setting. With the Studio XPS 16’s 1080p screen, for example, we found ourselves leaning in to read news stories on CNN.com; that wasn’t the case with the Y650.
Watching a DVD copy of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, we noted generally good color reproduction and some motion blur. Unfortunately, Lenovo doesn’t offer the Y650 with a Blu-ray drive, which is a shame for such a multimedia-centric notebook. The integrated JBL sound system delivered plenty of volume, with good stereo separation and decent bass, especially when using the Bass Boost feature of the included Dolby Home Theater utility. The Y650 also includes the OneKey Theater utility: Press the icon above the F10 key (pretty firmly, we should add) and the system automatically boosts the screen contrast and surround-sound setting.
Lenovo has preloaded other useful tools as well. We like the easy-to-use VeriFace 3.5 login utility, which you can use to keep unauthorized users out and to encrypt files so that no one else (aside from an identical twin, perhaps) can unlock them. The Lenovo Easy Capture camera utility is straightforward, and the 1.3-megapixel Webcam delivered excellent low-light performance, though in normal lighting highlight areas tend to get blown out.
Other features are typical for this class of laptop and include a spacious 320GB 5,400rpm hard drive loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium, Bluetooth and 802.11a/b/g/n wireless, and ExpressCard and memory-card slots. In addition to the two USB ports, you’ll also find HDMI and external Serial ATA (eSATA) connectors, a VGA port, and Gigabit Ethernet, but no modem (an increasingly common omission on laptops).
Our test system came equipped with a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 processor, 4GB of RAM, and the Nvidia GeForce G 105M graphics engine. Performance on our productivity and multimedia benchmark tests was impressive. The Y650 scored 3,928 on PCMark Vantage, which is about 900 points above the average for mainstream notebooks tested to date and almost 330 points higher than we saw from Dell’s Studio XPS 16. The Y650 needed only 6 minutes and 6 seconds to complete our Windows Media Encoder test, which is about 2 minutes faster than the average; it is one of the only laptops to finish our iTunes encoding trial in less than 4 minutes (3:58 to be exact). Its score of 5,150 on Cinebench 10 is also among the best we’ve seen for a mainstream laptop. Battery life, however, was a disappointing 1 hour 34 minutes on our DVD rundown test, so plan on buying a second battery if the Y650 is for road use.
The Nvidia GPU is decent for this class, but it’s no 3D powerhouse. The Y650 managed 2,648 on 3DMark06 at 1,024x768 and 2,341 at the screen’s native resolution, both of which are average for the class. Oddly, the game F.E.A.R. would not run, and the machine’s frame rates on the more demanding Company of Heroes were disappointing: 11.8 frames per second (fps) at the machine’s native screen resolution and 16.1fps at 1,024x768 with most effects set to High. By way of comparison, the Studio XPS 16 delivered 63fps at 1,024x768. That said, we did manage to get a good 89.1fps out of the Y650 by setting the screen resolution to 1,024x768 and dropping the effects settings (most notably physics) to low or medium.
Price : $1,399.00
Source : www.computershopper.com
