Lenovo IdeaPad Y700 15.6″ Gaming Laptop

Description

The Lenovo IdeaPad Y700 15.6-inch is generally a powerful laptop but also a mid-range system in the world of beefy gaming notebooks. It doesn’t feature high-end video cards such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M or 980M. It utilizes the mid range GTX 960M 4GB which is still a good solution for most gamers. All modern games are playable on the 960M and display’s native 1080p resolution, but you’ll probably need to dial down graphics settings here and there.

The positive thing about not having a powerful video card in a laptop is that there isn’t too much heat, so the notebooks can be made slimmer and lighter. The Lenovo IdeaPad Y700 is quite portable for a gaming-class notebook. It weighs in at 5.7 pounds and is 1″ thick, just like some of the average mainstream laptops. In addition, the laptop sports a quite attractive design. It combines black brushed metal lid with soft-touch palmrest and red accents.

The Y700 has what many gaming notebooks don’t – toushcreen display. The Full HD or optionally 4K panel supports 10-point multi-touch input and has IPS technology for ultimately wide viewing angles. A Full HD model we had a chance to see live offered a great picture quality with excellent sharpness brightness, contrast, and viewing angles.

If you’re a traditional keyboard/trackpad type, it’s worth noting the laptop has a full-size keyboard with red backlight and numeric pad and a spacious trackpad with integrated click buttons instead of physically separated. Although the keyboard keys have a nice tactile feedback when compared to those on majority of other notebooks, it’s still just a standardly shallow laptop keyboard, not a gaming-class one.

As for the processor, the IdeaPad Y700 offers the latest Intel Skylake technology. Lenovo has chosen the Intel Core i7-6700HQ quad-core chip for this model. Since it is a brand new processor, reviews are not available yet. But it should be generally slightly faster than its i7-5700HQ precursor, while offering a better power efficiency and multimedia-related capabilities. The i7-6700HQ and the i7 quad-core series in general are among the fastest processors for laptops and therefore can serve for intensive operations besides the routine daily tasks and gaming. Besides the i7, Lenovo is also expected to offer the laptop with the mid-range Intel Core i5 processors. The PC maker has included DDR4 system memory in the Y700. You can have up to 16 Gigabytes of RAM. For storage, you can have a 1-Terabyte hard drive optionally paired with up to 512GB of solid state drive storage.

The Y700 has 2 x 2 Watt stereo speakers with large speaker chambers for richer sound and a dedicated 3W subwoofer speaker for improved bass. The JBL-branded speaker system is Dolby Home Theater certified.

Lenovo has omitted a built-in DVD optical drive, but all other necessary features are included. There’s a 720p web camera, 802.11AC Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless connections, two USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0 port, HDMI video out, media card reader, and combo mic/headphone audio jack.

Given the laptop has a 15.6″ display, power-hungry components, and a decently-sized 60 WHr battery, one can expect a battery life of around 4-5 hours with light usage.