While I didn't purchase this item from Amazon, I would like to say that as someone who relies on Amazon quite a bit for reviews I wanted to share my experience.Unboxing:
The unboxing process was pretty straight forward, very minimalist packaging. The machine is fairly well protected in styrofoam blocks on either end of the laptop. The AC adapter and cord was stored in 2 little cardboard boxes and the user guide was also included (about the size of a CD jewel case). Just a note, there were no drivers or OS discs included, these are on the Lenovo recovery partition.
First Startup:
Usual Windows 7 experience. My one gripe was that it was bloatware galore. Many of these programs are kind of interesting (face recognition for login), various other "feel good" kind of apps that I can just imagine are sucking all of the performance out of this machine. The initial impressions are that the keyboard feels outstanding, not very much flex, good responsiveness and comfortable to type on. The control button on the bottom left is actually to the right of the function button which has taken a lot of getting used to. There are a lot of soft-keys that serve various purposes (quick launch of favorite programs, etc.), but I don't use those too much. This thing has LED's galore for anything and everything you can possibly think of, reminds me of those movies with machines with a ton of blinky lights that don't really do anything.
The touchpad is exceptional for a PC laptop. Macs have the market cornered with their glass touchpads that are a dream to navigate on, but this has to be a good alternative. The touchpad is textured so the tactile feedback is nice when you're moving the cursor around. There are 2 touchpad buttons, and they are a little bit on the smooshy side but not too bad.
The screen is 1366x768 (yes I know everyone is going to complain that it's not 1080p, but to me this wasn't a big deal). For laptop gaming, lower resolutions will probably get you better framerates anyway (if that's your purpose for buying this machine). I found the screen to be very clear, decent horizontal viewing angles but the vertical viewing angles weren't that great.
The power cord hooks in to the right side of the machine, but it's far enough back that it shouldn't be too big a deal. Plus, they were smart enough to make the power plug a right angle so that when you plug it in the cord goes backwards parallel with the case. The last notebook I tried had a cord on the right, but the plug wasn't a right angle so the cord went straight into the space where your mouse will probably be if you're a righty.
The DVD drive sounds like a jet engine, but most of them do anyway. The machine is very quiet, when gaming some fan noise can be heard but it isn't too bad. If you're looking for a quiet gaming machine, take a look at the G53/G73 Asus (Asi?). Those also have the added advantage of making you invisible to enemy radar.
Ports: On the right you have a USB and USB/eSata combo port along with an ExpressCard slot, power port and Kensington slot. On the left you have VGA, HDMI, LAN, 2 USB ports and Mic/Headphone ports.
Gaming: I'm not going to throw framerates / settings at you because those will be very subjective based on your specific configuration and whether or not you know what you're doing. I will just say I've played Rift, Mafia 2, BFBC2, L4D2, Supreme Commander 2 and TF2 on this machine so far and they played very well at respectable settings. I wouldn't categorize this machine as a desktop replacement, I still use my desktop for primary gaming, but the Lenovo will take very good care of you when you're away from home or if you are on a budget.
Upgrading RAM / Hard Drive So incredibly easy that it's not even worth talking about. Make sure you have a good set of computer / precision screwdrivers and you're set. This isn't surgery like removing an appendix or anything-1 panel and you're pretty much done.
If you have a Windows 7 HP disk or if you know how to download a clean one from Microsoft, I highly recommend doing a fresh install. If you don't overwrite the Lenovo partition you can use it as the source for all of the drivers you need, and if you need to put it back to "factory" settings you can easily do that as well.
So, to summarize:
Pros:
Keyboard/Touchpad, great action and feel.
Decent performance
Sandy bridge
Cons:
Why Lenovo had to put the function key in the bottom left instead of control, we'll never know.
5400RPM Hard drive, easily upgraded
Fingerprint magnet, get a good microfiber cloth
UPDATE:
Make sure you have latest drivers. Dithering effect on screen was driving me bonkers, but the right driver goes a long way. Also, I've noticed that dithering effect comes back if you put the machine in standby and then wake it up (sometimes). If you experience dithering, do a full reboot and make sure you have latest drivers.
I just received this laptop today. This PC runs very fast, which matches its high tech specs, i7+4g ddr3+ati 6570. Therefore, it basically can handle everything I need to run on it.
I tested two games on it, WOW and SC2. Both of them run very smoothly on this machine at high settings. Temperature does go up a bit when gaming, but its quite tolerable.
Speakers quality is good.
Not heavy as a 15.6 laptop.
Price is competitive for a i7+dedicated video cards.
Cons:
Poor build quality, totally like a plastic toy. It's like you can break it quite easily.
Comes with only one partition that is C: and I can't resize it in Windows. Though I handled it with a small partition software I don't like the producer's attitude that put all disk space into one partition.
Power cable is on the right side, if you're using mouse on a small table, it would annoy you.
5400 rpm hard disk.
Some bloatware.
Overall, it's a good laptop with good specs. I hope the poor build quality can last long enough because I carry laptop to school almost everyday.I've had my ideapad y560p for about 14 months now. The machine is great. People talk about the bloatware in some of the reviews but these must be people who've only dealt with home built or business grade machines. Trust me, the amount of extra software on this thing is minimal and doesn't slow the machine down at all. (Curses to you HP & Dell in this regard!) The extra software bits that are on the machine are useful like a program to create split screens for programs, one to create full backups of your system and software, etc. And instead of hundreds of bloatware programs the machine only comes twenty or so. Their removal is easy enough if you chose. It won't take you hours like a commercial HP or Dell machine will.
First thing though you'll probably want to remove is the installed anti-spyware. It comes with McAfee, a notoriously bad software bundle. Microsoft's firewall and spyware protection is free and doesn't cause you any issues. You'll probably want to remove the facial recognition/log-in program too. After playing with it for a few weeks you'll notice that even though it's cute, it will not recognize you easily in low light conditions and it delays the boot-up.
The keyboard is solid, which is why I went with the machine. The Thinkpad line is sturdier built but are costlier. It was the keyboard that brought me to this machine. Most consumer grade PCs outside of the Apple realm have horrid keyboards. You will notice that this machine's keyboard has switched the spots for the 'ctrl' and 'alt' keys. If you're used to an Apple keyboard, or so I'm told, this won't be a bother. It is something I've learned to overcome in time.
The machine produces excellent video quality and runs like a dream. The speakers are fantastic, producing better sound than the small HD TV I have in my son's room.
The track pad is decent & responsive. A little too responsive. When I type I will rest my hand on the track pad and accidently move the mouse & my cursor when I least want to. It also uses a scrolling method where your two fingers are to be slightly spread and not together. This is annoying and the only thing I've not learned to do consistently. In the end I use a wireless mouse for most of my activities and have the track pad turned off.
In the end it is a solid machine. I would have given it a perfect 5 stars, except for the track pad weirdness. Yes, the track pad is great but its quirks are more of a headache for someone who uses their laptop 90% of the time for typing.I believe it deserves 4 stars (for non-gaming), but 2 stars if you need the external monitor connected.
I don't write reviews as often as I should, but the problems that this machine has prompted me to write a review.
I don't use this laptop for gaming (no time).
I use it for programming, scripture research, listening to music and browsing the Internet, and other things.
PROS:
Works when used for non-gaming tasks.
Plays music well WITHOUT monitor attachment.
CONS:
* Plays music / sound close to horrible when external monitor is attached.
The monitor as well as the music consume the first CPU core, and so when it gets busy, the music gets ruined.
So forget about playing movies or music on this machine while it's VGA-output is connected.
* Rendering w/ Maya 5.0 fails. It worked on my older PC. Perhaps a more latest Maya would render correctly. But I just can't render with this machine. So no Maya work on this machine! This is indicative of possible other rendering issues, which are unknown.
* Minor: if you have an audio plug inserted, while listening to music, and then you unplug, the audio won't transfer to the internal speakers. However, a work around is to put the PC to sleep and then wake up, and then audio will play into the internal speakers.
So the biggest problem for me really is not being able to use the VGA output, as I like to use the big monitor to do work more efficiently while listening to music. Also, I can't watch movies with a projector or big screen TV.
*I don't know about HDMI-out however! Maybe it won't ruin the sound stream. *
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