Review by Kate Stokes for Lenovo Y550P 324156U 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black)
Rating:
After using Macs exclusively for 3 years, I switched back to Windows because of one reason: I wanted a quad core laptop (i7 specifically) and Apple has yet to make one. Furthermore, I know that when they do it will only be offered at first on the highest end of the 15″ and 17″ MacBook Pro models and will likely cost between $1800-$2200. When this laptop went on sale for $999.99, I knew I could no longer justify staying with Apple because $999.99 just happens to be the price of their lowest end laptop. For $999.99 (PC vs Mac) you can get processor quad core vs. dual core, HD 500GB vs 250GB, Ram 4GB vs 2GB, max ram 8GB vs 4GB, LCD 13.3″ vs 15.6″, and internal graphics of 256MB shared vs 1GB discrete. To me this is no contest. I was able to switch my Adobe programs over to PC by calling Adobe customer service and performing a cross platform swap. I needed to update my MS Office suite anyway so I didn’t mind spending $170 to get MS Office Home/Student 2007 plus Outlook 2007. I will describe my experience with the Lenovo through a Pro/Con list, and I will compare the Apple and PC experience where necessary.

Pros:

*i7 quad-core laptop for $999.99

*i7 quad-core = very, very fast

*1GB discrete graphics will satisfy every need except only the highest of professional/gaming graphics processing needs.

*looks very nice and seems well-built

*4GB of ram is enough for now and the option to expand to 8GB later is great

*ExpressCard 34, eSATA and SD card slots are most welcome

Cons:

*fan is audible a good bit of the time, and most of the time during even moderate application usage. I was aware of this issue with quad-core laptops prior to purchase so it did not come as a surprise, but at the same time I do think it belongs on the con list

*terrible sound output quality and volume from the built-in speakers

*terrible sound output quality and volume as well as crackling/popping while using external speakers, so terrible that I had to buy a Creative XFI Expresscard Sound Card (which did, incidentally, fix all of the audio issues)

*audio out jack located on the front of the laptop (I know this is all too common on today’s laptops but it is annoying nonetheless; the Creative XFI card also solved this issue)

*occasional high pitch whine (the source of which is still under investigation) which can be quite annoying

*location of the cooling fan inlet vent means that you will not be able to use this on your lap or on top of a bedspread unless you first put a hard flat object under the laptop first; the laptop essentially is designed to only be placed on hard flat surfaces

*no DVI, mini-DVI or mini-DisplayPort ports; HDMI and VGA (VGA?!?!?!?!) are the only video ports

*the built-in trackpad experience is truly atrocious: the trackpad has a raised grid surface (instead of a flat smooth surface like 99% of the laptops made) which makes navigation uncomfortable and imprecise. In addition, the scrolling bar is laughably unusable. It is made for hands with fingers the size of baby’s fingers and using it requires tapping down once first to turn it on; one can not simply move their fingers over it to scroll

*battery life is terrible, but I knew this going in because all quad-core laptops have terrible battery life as a result of their power-hungry processors. You will not get the 4.5 hours of battery life as advertised, trust me. I don’t know how they were able to achieve that number but virtually everything must have been disabled and/or turned all the way down.

*a moderate amount of bloatware which I am still deleting/tinkering with after a week of ownership

*built-in LCD not particularly stunning but I find nothing objectionable about it either

*would have liked to get Windows 7 Professional/Ultimate considering this is a high-end laptop but I did know prior to purchase of course that I was only getting Windows 7 Home

*hard drive came partitioned into 4 parts which is very, very annoying. In addition a few of them took up massive amounts of hard drive space for no apparent reason. It took me a few days of messing around with various freeware utilities to get all (but the essential) of them deleted. (hint: check out the free “Ultimate Boot CD” it is what finally got rid of the pesky partitions that Windows disk utility wouldn’t let me touch)

In my opinion, this is your basic garden-variety “desktop replacement” laptop. With an external keyboard, mouse and monitor this makes a great desktop that can sometimes be carried out of the home when need be. I find the “laptop only” experience to be sub-par. This is perfectly suitable for someone like me since my laptops have always spent over 95% of their time at home plugged into external I/O devices. If you are someone who is just the opposite, however, I can not recommended this unit because of the issues described above. Overall, I am satisfied with the unit primarily due to the performance specs and the price. There is just no arguing with the value of an i7 laptop with 1GB discrete graphics for $999.99. The length of the con list, however, was sufficient to cause me to drop the rating to 4/5.

Review by Katherine for Lenovo Y550P 324156U 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black)
Rating:
Pros:

– The keyboard is a nice size. It feels nice, and types well.

– The LED lights look sweet – and the little ideapad logo is really neat

– The sound on this thing is nice – it has a subwoofer – which is noticable when tested against my fiancee’s MacBook Pro that is broken and basically plays sound far too loud.

– The screen is bright and easy to read

– The computer can run, illustrator, photoshop, world of warcraft and google chrome with no slow down.

– Great at running any application or game with the processor

– The graphics card helps with games – my games look excellent

– Lots of storage – 500 GB I’ve only used maybe 200 GB , a good portion of that photos.

– Windows 7 is great. I have little to no problems with it.

– The computer is light and is carried easily in a backpack (I’m 5’2″)

– I love the orange accents

– HDMI port yes!

– Not a loud fan. I heard others complain about this but I don’t see it at all. Not when I have an airplane launching in the MacBook Pro that always sits next to me.

Neutral (But more good than bad)

– It doesn’t get hot – if it does it’s only on the left side and the fan really kicks in to push the air out.

– The slide bar nav is a cool idea, but I never use it. I set it up, but I just use that taskbar.

Cons:

– Why is there a key to basically erase your harddrive? I immediately disabled that.

– You have to spend about an hour deleting stupid software in the beginning – which takes a bit because some of it you might end up needing…. (Like drivers for the camera)

– Trackpad is a bit funky – I have the Razer Orochi bluetooth mouse and rarely use the trackpad

– Only 2 USB ports – never been a problem but may be for some

- Pretty awful battery life, but I always plug in. Get a bigger battery if you need this to last more than 2 hours.

– I hate where the power button is. How I use my laptop, I have accidentally pressed it in the middle of the game when moving about 3 times and shut the computer off and lost my game – no!

Overall, this is one of my favorite laptops. It is built well, looks nice, and runs like a dream. Mostly, it runs like a dream. The cons don’t really bother me – nothing is falling apart, etc etc.

This is a great computer for 999. You can’t beat a core i7 processor for that price!

I like this a lot — better than any other computer I have had:

These are other computers I owned in order that I liked them:

Apple tangerine iBook

Sony Vaio FW

Apple iBook G4

Apple MacBook Pro

Review by J. Borgeson for Lenovo Y550P 324156U 15.6-Inch Laptop (Black)
Rating:
Maybe I received a previously loved model, but this computer sucks for several reasons. I had it for two weeks and this is what I observed.

While fast, I never really had a chance to put it through hoops with any gaming or true test of the processor. ALso, it bricked itself about once a day from hardware (no blue-screen or Windows 7 equivalent), just the screen turned black and emitted a buzzing noise until I held down the power button for a few seconds.

1) Screen resolution: 1366×768 is considered acceptable now? My last computer was 5 years old and not even top of the line at that time, but I was shocked to see these Jitterbug-like icons and general ugliness on a 2010 device. I don’t know how these marketing jerks can think they can get away with calling this HD when it is nowhere close.

2) Touchpad is terrible. The scrolling bar on the right seems like it was intentionally designed to be frustrating. In addition, the multitouch frequently reacts if I have my other palm anywhere resting on the keyboard (like if you use keyboard shortcuts like a normal user). Finally, I agree with the other review that the bumps on the pad are distracting and lead to errors.

3) Sound – not great to begin with and one time when I accidentally had two sounds start at once it decided that it would never again play anything at full volume. I tried for an hour to find out why and looked through the troubleshooting for the sound card and the sound driver. No dice.

All in all, it is obviously a cheaply made part that would probably fail in more ways if I kept it any longer. Two weeks is enough. I want my $1000 back.