Tuesday April 28, 2009
HD on the go
Lenovo wows us with the entertainment-centric Ideapad Y530 notebook which is armed with a Blu-ray drive.
By ONG CHIN HAN
Ever since Lenovo bought over IBM’s personal computer division, I’ve been ever doubtful about the quality of notebooks and PCs churned out by it.
Call it stereotyping, but so many stories of half-baked products made in China and personal experiences have had some effect on me.
Anyway, my mistrust was unnecessary as the Ideapad Y530 notebook turned out to be quite a good piece of machinery after all.
Design
The Ideapad is not one of those ultra-portable netbooks you see in the market nowadays.
It weighs in at a hefty 3kg and it’s more suitably classified as a high-end notebook for work or even as a desktop replacement.
The exterior has a robust texture on its surface and the underside is the usual strong plastic body found on most notebooks.
Open it up and you are greeted by a glossy screen and metal body which adds to the bling factor.
The keyboard provides great feedback and is easy to press, and the touchpad is as responsive as it is expected to be.
Specifications
Under the hood, we have a Core 2 Duo P8600 2.4 GHz processor, 2GB RAM (easily expandable to 4GB as there is another empty slot), 320GB hard disk and a GeForce 9500M with 1.2GB VRAM.
These specs provide the firepower that is necessary for it to dish out the rich HD visuals it was built for.
If you’re looking for a certain type of connection for a peripheral, you won’t be disappointed with the Ideapad.
It has three USB ports, a phone jack for modem, an Ethernet port, a Firewire port, Bluetooth, WiFi, VGA out, HDMI, 3.5mm audio/ SPDIF jack, microphone jack and, the one I like best, the built-in card reader slot.
I would expect the card reader to be extremely useful to owners of digital cameras as they can easily access photos stored on their SD cards.
Multimedia centre
One thing the Ideapad was designed for was great multimedia functionality.
This is already highlighted by the fact that it has a HDMI port, and an optical drive that is a DVD burner and is also a Blu-ray player.
With great visuals, it must have great sound — there are four tweeters and a tiny subwoofer on it to simulate Dolby Surround Sound.
Yes, you read that right: A subwoofer on a notebook. Sound coming out of the speakers is commendable for a notebook with good highs and mid tones with the bass better than average thanks to the subwoofer.
However don’t expect the bass response to compete with a dedicated PC subwoofer.
There are a row of multimedia playback touch controls along the top of the keyboard that allows for control of your media playback with Start, Pause/Stop, Previous, Next, Mute, and even equaliser and volume settings.
Also, as a nice little extra, there is the OneKey Rescue button which is used to bring up a suite of backup and recovery options to save your data and settings in the event of a crash.
Software
Lenovo has also installed its own suite of applications onto the Idea-pad to make things easier for users.
The VeriFace Recognition is the more interesting one. Get your mugshot scanned by the Ideapad’s webcam and have it matched to your user account.
The next time you want to log in to your account, just sit in front of the notebook, have your face scanned by the camera and it will log you into the appropriate account.
Pretty nifty and worked quite well.
Performance
The worst thing I could find to punish the Ideapad with was (the rather dated) Fallout 3.
Loading speed was good, graphics turned out okay and the sound was decent. All in all, the Ideapad performed pretty well.
Editing 15-megapixel photos on it was also a smooth process as not much lag was experienced.
As for battery consumption, the Ideapad is quite power hungry because of its specs.
A full charge should last you about two hours. So if you want to watch a long movie like the Lord of the Rings, you had best plug it into the wall socket so that you’re not interrupted.
Charging the battery to full capacity also takes only two hours.
The Ideapad also gets rather warm when you are doing intensive work on it and it is easily noticeable as the heat is concentrated on where your left hand would normally rest.
It is a little uncomfortable having your hand rest on something hot especially when you have to work long hours.
It would probably be a good idea to invest in a notebook cooling pad.
Letdowns
The main thing that bothered me about the Ideapad was the 15.4in screen. It has a very narrow viewing angle and I found that out while editing photos.
Just slouching or sitting straight would make what I thought was a nicely adjusted photo look too bright or too dark.
Drilling down to the specs, I also discovered that the screen resolution was 1,280 x 800 pixels.
Call me a nitpicker, but that would mean you wouldn’t be getting native support for 1080p HD videos and movies would have to be resized.
Lenovo could’ve bumped up the resolution so that it would be a nice match for the Blu-ray movies you would want to watch.
Conclusion
Everything on the Ideapad is great except for the screen which I just felt was a mismatch for HD videos and great sound system.
Aside from that, the Ideapad is a powerful and durable machine for entertainment and work.
If you’re not into top-of-the-range performance desktop machine, the Ideapad could even make a nice replacement for your desktop.
Pros: Solid body and stylish design; good speakers; lots of functionality and applications.
Cons: Screen resolution is not 1080p.
IdeaPad Y530
(Lenovo Group Ltd)
Multimedia notebook PC
Processor: Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo P8600 (2.4GHz)
Memory: 2GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce 9500M 1.2GB VRAM
Display: 15.4in WXGA (1,280 x 800 pixels) LCD
Storage: 320GB SATA hard drive
Connectivity: WiFi 802.11a/b/g, Bluetooth 2.0
I/O ports: Three USB 2.0 ports, 3.5 mm audio/SPDIF jack, microphone
Operating system: Windows Vista Home Premium SP1
Other features: Card reader, VGA port, HDMI, multimedia controls, Blu-ray reader/DVD writer, 1.3-megapixel webcam, OneKey Rescue System
Dimensions (w x d x h): 36 x 26.2 x 3.3cm
Weight: 3kg
Website: www.lenovo.com
Price: RM 4,899
Review Unit courtesy of Lenovo Technology Sdn Bhd (03)7681-8000
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