Quick Review : Lenovo Ideapad Y560

The Lenovo Ideapad Y560 is a feature-packed multimedia laptop with a big price tag.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Y560 has some serious firepower - it has an Intel Core i7-720QM (1.6Ghz ) processor, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 graphics chip with 1GB RAM, JBL stereo speakers and Bluray combo drive.

It also has numerous ports such as three USB ports, and a VGA and HDMI out as well as a 6-in-1 card reader for easily accessing files from memory cards.

The Y560 is marketed as a multimedia notebook and it does not disappoint. The sound quality of the JBL stereo speakers are a lot better than most laptop speakers.

The speakers were great for listening to songs, watching movies and playing games. When listening to songs, the speakers were able to handle gradual changes in notes. And when watching movies and playing games, the speakers produced enough bass to make it a fun experience.

Design

The Y560 has a slick black body with red linings and decals on top. This multimedia notebook looks really impressive even though the plastic body feels cheap and flexes easily.

For a laptop of its class and price, we expected the Y560 to have a more solid design.

The Y560 weighs 2.7kg which is unusual for a notebook of this size but it's probably because of its plastic exterior.

NEAT: The Y560 has a sliding touch control that gives you quick access to applications.

The interior of the laptop is glossy which is nice but is prone to smudges. It has a large touchpad and touch-sensitive buttons located just below the screen. The buttons allow users to customise shortcuts for the programs of their choice.

To test the graphics chip, we played games like Dawn of War 2 and Far Cry 2 on the Y560.

We ran DoW 2 at the highest setting and even when there were a lot of units and explosions, the notebook didn't falter. It was the same for Far Cry 2 - the frame rate was stable and the game sessions were lag free.

The notebook is also great for watching movies as it comes with a Blu-ray combo drive. We watched movies like BBC World's Earth: The Biography and The Phantom of the Opera.

The Blu-ray movies looked great on screen the 15.6in widescreen and played very smoothly. The resolution of the screen is not full HD (1,080p) as it is only 1,366 x 768pixels. That's slightly higher than 720p and is still great for watching movies.

HIGH DEF: The Y560 also comes equipped with a Blu-ray drive for watching high definition videos on the go.

Surprisingly, even after long sessions of watching and gaming, the surface of the laptop remained cool.

The efficient but noisy cooling fan does a great job at venting out the hot air from the system.

An unfortunate problem with most multimedia notebooks is battery life and the Lenovo Y560 is no different.

Even at the lowest brightness setting, the battery life is just under two hours with normal usage. Running more programs in the background will significantly shorten the battery life.

Conclusion

The Lenovo IdeaPad Y560 is a good multimedia laptop with the proper specs to handle graphics and processor intensive programs.

Watching movies and playing games on it is also great because of the nice and large screen, and powerful JBL stereo speakers.

POWERFUL: The notebook's dual JBL speakers sound better than the average notebook speakers.

Sadly, the notebook's main shortcoming is its build quality. For a notebook of this price, the Y560 doesn't feel solid.

Another shortcoming is the battery life but this is not surprising because most multimedia notebooks don't have long battery life.

Overall, the Lenovo IdeaPad Y560 is a decent multimedia notebook if you don't mind the build quality.

Pros: Good performance; stays cool.

Cons: Cheap build quality; noisy; pricey.

Ideapad Y560
(Lenovo)
Multimedia notebook
Processor: Intel Core i7 (1.6GHz)
Memory: 4GB RAM
Display: 15.6in (1,366 x 768pixels) with LED backlight
Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 1GB RAM
Storage: 500GB
Connectivity: WiFi, 10/100 Ethernet port, Bluetooth
Optical drive: Blu-ray combo drive
Ports: 3 USB ports, eSATA\USB combo port, VGA out, headphone and microphone jack, 6-in-1 card reader
Battery: 6-cell
Other features: JBL stereo speakers, 1.3-megapixel webcam
Dimensions (W x D x H): 388 x 33 x 255mm
Weight: 2.7kg
Price: RM4,999

The Dell Alienware M15x is a massive laptop with potential for serious gaming.

Once you turn it on, Alienware gives you the option of letting your face be your password. The facial recognition software uses the built-in webcam and is pretty neat.

It is easy to set up, you do not have to “remember” your face and it is arguably more secure than a password.

Strangely, the biometric connection to the webcam is not always functional. Sometimes when you turn it on it says the facial recognition is not available and you have to log in via regular password.

From the exterior, I was happy that this unit came with thee USB ports (one eSATA combo port) as I am not fond of using USB adaptors.

ALIEN TECH: The Alien head is the power button and its eyes blink to hard disk usage.

However, the touchpad has some serious bugs. Right off the bat, you can see the lag and unresponsiveness of it. It is not a vital component of any laptop, much less a gaming laptop, but you still expect it to work.

Game on

This model must have been one of the last to come with Windows Vista. Sure enough, it came with a coupon for a free upgrade to Windows 7. However, I figured I may as well try on Vista since it came standard with it. Before installing any games, I decided to update Vista and install Service Pack 2.

This did not seem to speed up the start-up process which I found to be unusually long for a device that is built for speed. Good riddance, Windows Vista.

The first game I installed was Far Cry 2 and it ran fantastically well even on the highest resolution and graphics detail.

There was a little distortion if I had a browser open when I loaded the game but nothing overly distracting or catastrophic.

To be fair, that could be attributed to Vista as I could only minimise the game and surf about one out of three tries (by using Alt + Tab) without the game crashing. Some of us like to surf a little in-between levels!

If the current rave about Windows 7 is true, this could all have been fixed with the Windows 7 upgrade.

Red Alert 3 worked a little better. It crashed less on minimising, perhaps half the time.

Considering RA3 is a real-time strategy game it is more static than Far Cry 2 which is an open environment first-person shooter. That is probably why it crashed less.

The graphics, again, was handled superbly on high and ultra-high settings.

You can tell by the rapid gameplay that the graphics card can hold its own, especially when you turn up the RA3 game speed and watch ultra-high resolution armies fight to the death.

Wanna play outside?

Besides for gaming, taking this massive thing outside to play will make you think twice at best.

It is more than 4kg in weight and the 6-cell battery will last about 1.5 hours while gaming without an external power source.

Effectively you are lugging around a small child and constantly searching for a place where it can feed.

Even though gaming is generally done indoors, this is still a laptop and one of the reasons you pay more for it is because it is mobile. It is not the most practical thing to carry around by anyone’s imagination.

If you do take it out anyway, it is certainly a head turner. Its sheer size, beaming colours and extra-terrestrial design is pretty awe-inspiring. It is quite literally the (alien) elephant in the room.

Accessories

The review for this model included Alienware TactX headphones and TactX mouse with the Alienware command centre.

Now it should be remembered that these are not included in the RM5,999 price tag, with the headphones priced at RM276 and the mouse at RM365.

With the TactX mouse you are given a command centre CD which is a utility program that allows you to customise the buttons on it, amongst other things.

It was a better gaming experience being able to hear gunfire from the exact direction it’s coming from with the headphones and the customised ergonomic mouse can ruin other mice for you.

The price for the M15X seems reasonable in comparison with its counterparts. For those who were expecting to spend more on a gaming unit may consider indulging on the extras.

Conclusion

It is hard to gauge whether Windows 7 could have cured the distortion and minimisation issues but it’s likely it would have helped in some way.

Besides for that, the Alienware M15X lives up to its promise of top class gaming even for their laptop models but it may be too strenuous to carry around.

The faulty touchpad is also a major concern but overall the M15X is intense both in style and substance.

It is relatively cheap and is can be a highly useful while waiting for friends at a coffee shop, assuming it was practical to haul it over there.

Pros: Great for gaming; cool design; decently priced.

Cons: Heavy; buggy touchpad; minor OS issues.

ALIENWARE M15X

Gaming laptop
Processor: Intel Core i7-720QM (1.6GHz) mobile processor
Memory: 4GB DDR3 RAM
Graphics: 1GB nVidia GeForce GTX 260M
Display: 15.6in widescreen with LED backlight (1,920 x 1,080-pixels)
Storage: 500GB SATA hard drive
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11b/g/, Gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth
I/O Ports: IEEE 1394a, 2 Audio out connectors, VGA out
Operating system: Windows Vista Home Premium
Other features: Facial recognition software
Battery: 6-cell lithium-ion
Dimensions (w x d x h): 378 x 308 x 48.7mm
Weight: 4.08kg

Price: RM5,999