Today we return to the normal morning routine of blogging after I wake up. Sadly this morning it just took me a really long time to get up and around. Yesterday when I got home from work I was feeling awesome, and made all these plans for today. This morning it feels as though the world has been dropped on top of me… and I want to do exactly nothing. Here is hoping a revisit from my old friend caffeine will jump start my systems. I had been trying to stay away from caffeine since I had been having heart palpitations, but this morning I need to use and abuse my old friend.
Lenovo Y500
At this point I have had roughly half a week to get used to my new laptop. My last three blog posts were written using it in fact. I have to say overall I am absolutely loving it. I had been concerned about whether or not I could get used to the smaller form factor, but right now I am finding I greatly prefer it. I loved my Asus g73sw but it was really heavy laptop… when I carried it in my backpack it was a noticeable strain on my back. Additionally it was a pain to try and balance on my lapboard as I barely had any room for my mouse.
The Y500 on the other hand I have worlds of room and could bump up a larger mousing surface and still have plenty of room on my lapboard. Additionally it doesn’t feel as heavy on my legs as the Asus was… after using it for awhile on the sofa while reclined, when I got up my thighs would be almost cramping. The fact that the Y500 packs all of its power in a 6 lb package… I would say 8 if you are carrying the power brick with you… is really remarkable. This is no “ultrabook” but it is seriously compact for the gaming juggernaut it is.
The Performance
Laptop graphics will always be slightly worse than their desktop counter parts. This has been my experience with every laptop I have ever owned. So if you can run the game at high on your desktop… the equivalent card will likely only be able to run it at medium in a mobile form factor. However I have been pleased with just how well the dual video cards in this model perform together. In the past I had one of the early SLI configurations, and I was not terribly happy with it. It always felt like I got far better performance with just a single card and SLI disabled than I did with SLI mode engage in most games.
That luckily seems to be in the past as I have gotten really solid performance out of all of the regular games I play. Rift runs happily on very high settings and the game looks amazing, and I am able to run around smoothly in the content at 1920×1080. Additionally a bellweather for me has been Star Wars: The Old Republic. My desktop has always run the game on high settings and had plenty of graphical processing power to spare. However the Nvidia 460m in the Asus laptop struggled with the game mercilessly.
I could never quite find a setting that made things feel smooth, even on the lowest of possible graphical settings. That said I have heard a lot of problems with the 460 and that game even on desktops. This laptop however runs Star Wars: The Old Republic happily at high settings on 1920×1080 resolution and a framerate that fluctuates between 45 and 60 frames per second. Quite honestly every game I have thrown against it, it has done well with. I feel like the last few days have been mostly taken up by downloading a game and seeing how it runs on the Y500. But I guess that is pretty average when you have a new toy to test out.
The Features
- 12 GB DDR PC3-12800 Ram
- 15.6” LED Screen – 1920×1080 max resolution
- Intel Core i7-3630QM 2.4 ghz Quad Core Processor
- Windows 8 64 bit
- 1 TB 5400 rpm hybrid hard drive with 16 GB SSD Cache
- Dual Nvidia GeForce GT 650M Video Cards with 2 GB DDR5 Ram per card
- lots of other little things that wont seem nearly as important
I have to say it is the dual video cards that really peaked my interest. The concept of a SLI setup in a laptop just seemed grossly improbable. But so far the laptop does an amazing job of what it does. You would think that it gets absolutely molten hot with all that processing power. However the cards run relatively quiet and while it gets warm it is nothing uncomfortable. This is in a large part due to the massive cooling system. If you look in the above picture the big trapezoid shaped grill is loaded with fans.
The panel can be removed for easy cleaning… however the Y500 goes one step further. The other day when I was fiddling around in some of the preinstalled software, I noticed a power control system that had something interesting… fan cleaning mode. It is exactly what it sounds like… your system fans turn backwards for a short period of time extremely rapidly… sounds kinda like a jet fighter taking off when it happens… but it spins free any dust clinging to the blades. I thought this was pretty innovative and a feature I wished I had seen in other laptops.
The Price
The laptop is definitely not cheap, but it is a bargain for the features included. This performs as well as entry level Alienware laptops for like half the price. Essentially you have two options for buying the laptop. You can get it from one of the various discount resellers… I ended up getting mine for Tiger Direct, but you can actually get it cheaper overall from Lenovo. The problem with ordering from Lenovo they are currently having like a one month lead time before they actually ship your laptop.
Additionally I decided to order my laptop refurbished. I have always had good luck with refurbished products in the past. Some people shy away from it, but realistically it is the only time you can purchase electronics and know for certain that thorough testing has been performed on it, and that it will be guaranteed to power on. usually electronics are unit tested, and your individual unit may or may not have had a full battery of tests performed. Anyways… usually buying refurbished also knocks about 100 bucks off the price… and since this was a replacement for a dead laptop… and not a planned expense, dropping the price in any way I could is a huge plus.
This is the precise laptop I ordered, and it has actually come down in price a little bit.
That is always the way it goes. You buy something and it drops in price, but fortunately it was only like $50. So far like I said I am really loving the laptop and it has been able to do anything I can think to throw at it. Essentially if you are looking for a solid gaming laptop I would highly suggest it. I know a few other gamers in my little circle have purchased them and had similar glowing reviews. I never really would have considered Lenovo capable of creating a solid gaming machine, but they somehow have. I would be interesting to see if they follow through and start releasing prebuilt gaming desktops as well.
Wrapping Up
Hopefully I did not just bore you with a lot of hardware review… but I thought it would be good to do a deep dive into my experience. Also as I said I have mostly been testing the laptop rather than seriously gaming the last few days. I hope you all have an amazing weekend and I hope I manage to get up and around and productive. At this point I am going to go back to more testing of the laptop and maybe even a little actual gameplay.
Tales of the Aggronaut – Lenovo Y500 – http://t.co/kTWrSvmtGj I do a deep dive into my experience with the Y500 laptop