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Lenovo IdeaPad Y560

A lot of gaming laptops are already launched with Core i5 processors and nVidia Geforce GT 425M graphics, but we must not forget about the ATI Radeon 5730 graphics cards that also work well with Intel’s Core i3/i5/i7 processors, better than the Geforce GT 425M actually, and with AMD’s mobile processors as well, of course.

Today we’re looking at a Lenovo IdeaPad Y560 laptop with medium configuration that costs around $1200 in Europe. This relatively pricey configuration includes an Intel Core i5-450M processor (2.4GHz, HyperThreading, Turbo Boost 2.66GHz, 3MB L3 cache, socket PGA988), 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 500GB 7200RPM Seagate hard drive, a slim type Super Multi DVD burner and of course the ATI Radeon 5730 graphics card.

Before we go into other details, it needs to be said that the Radeon 5730 is much more efficient than the GT 425M. AMD’s graphics card consumes only 26Watts while the much slower nVidia card needs 35Watts. According to Notebookcheck.com both cards are second class products (first class includes more powerful single, dual GPU and dual card solutions), but the Radeon 5730 is 11 places ahead of the GT 425M.

Such a graphics card is enough for this laptop because of the low resolution of the 15” display panel, only 1366 x 768 in a time when FullHD (1920 x 1080) 15” screens are also being implemented in gaming and multimedia laptops. LED backlighting is adopted by the big majority of laptop manufacturers, so I probably won’t mention its huge advantage over the traditional fluorescent lamp backlighting. LEDs have about the same lifespan as the fluorescent lamp solution, but they only need a certain amount of power to light up, so this has a direct effect on the laptop’s battery life. With the exclusion of fluorescent lamp backlighting there’s no need for high voltages in the laptop any more, making it a lot safer for the user to spill liquids on it or smash it and create short circuits.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Y560 comes with Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit to allow the system to use all installed memory up to 8GB and the 1GB of DDR3 graphics memory.

All these ventilation holes help a lot in the cooling of internal components (if you don’t cover them of course), although this laptop is in fact one of the most cool-running designs thanks to the extremely efficient graphics card and to the medium level of performance of the 35Watt Core i5 32nm processor.

Above the keyboard there are two JBL high quality speakers which deliver very impressive, clear high frequency sounds, while decent bass is not an option at such small speaker diameters.

For a moderate gaming laptop its a bit unusual to run up to 6 hours on battery power using the integrated Intel GMA HD graphics processor or up to 4 hours with the ATI Radeon 5730. This is possible thanks to its efficient hardware components and to an improved 6-cell battery design that offers 57Wh of power. Lenovo ships these laptops with 95Watt power supplies, that allow the laptop to run at full speed while still having power left to quickly charge the battery.

All in all, it’s a very good laptop at a fair price, I would recommend it for everyday computing and for its multimedia features as well, because it has a decent amount of horsepower that becomes active whenever you need it without sacrificing much efficiency.