Lenovo recently updated its Y line of laptops with the addition of the 14-inch Y460 and 15.6-inch Y560. These new models offer faster graphics accelerators than their predecessors. An ATI Radeon 5650 is installed in the Y460 and an ATI Radeon 5730 is installed in the Y560. In this review, we will look at the younger model - IdeaPad Y460.
Configuration of the test Lenovo IdeaPad Y460:
Display - 14.0 inch HD widescreen LED backlit display with 1366x768 resolution
Operating system - Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Processor - Intel Core i5 520M (2.40GHz, 3MB cache)
Graphics Card - ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 with 1GB VRAM and integrated Intel GMA HD
System Memory - 4GB DDR3-1066 RAM (2x 2GB)
Hard Drive - 500GB 5400 RPM (Seagate)
Wireless communications - Intel Wireless Wi-Fi Link 1000BGN, Bluetooth v2.1 + EDR
Optical Drive - 8X DVD-RW
Battery - 6-cell lithium-ion battery (11.1V, 57Wh)
Construction and design
The new Lenovo IdeaPad Y460 has a huge design change from the previous model. The outer display lid has a familiar dark shade with an orange border, but the novelty has large chrome hinges, whereas they were previously slightly recessed into the case. Internally, in the previous model, the white keyboard and its bezel have been changed to a black keyboard with a metallic painted bezel. The previous design, which used white throughout, was impractical and disliked by many users, and the new design of the laptop looks significantly better. Other niceties in the new Y460 are the inclusion of JBL speakers located under the screen, as well as a matte finish on the display lid to help hide fingerprints.
The build quality is very good for a regular laptop, the plastic is durable, the screen mount is also solidly made. The paint and finish of the plastic are scratch resistant, and the display lid has a unique texture that does a very good job of hiding fingerprints and minor dirt. The wrist and touchpad areas have good stiffness and the flexing is almost non-existent. On the other hand, the keyboard has a slight flex in the optical drive area, but you will hardly notice this until you apply significant pressure here. The bottom cover of the laptop has ample ventilation holes, indicating that the manufacturer has provided the ability to dissipate a significant amount of heat under load.
Those users who want to upgrade their laptop will find it very easy to do. Lenovo has three sockets on the bottom cover for accessing Wi-Fi, WWAN, hard drive, RAM, processor and cooling fan. The remarkable thing is that the Wi-Fi card can be accessed without even having to unscrew the screws. Most likely, this slot is also used by the manufacturer to accommodate the SIM card slot. The rest of the panels are fastened with special screws, which are held by clips, so that they will not be lost when unscrewing.
Display and speakers
The IdeaPad Y460 has a single option; WXGA resolution 14-inch panel. Of course, with a powerful graphics subsystem, I would like to see improved monitor characteristics, for example, WXGA + (1440x900) or HD + (1600x900). The lower resolution panel certainly costs less, so the manufacturer just wanted to keep the cost down. The display matrix is average, has good colors and contrast, but is certainly inferior to the best displays on the market, such as the one you can see on the HP ENVY or Apple MacBook. At maximum backlight level, the brightness was 218 nits, which will be sufficient in indoor lighting, but not for sunlight. The glossy finish of the screen will also interfere with sunlight exposure, as there will be a lot of reflections of foreign objects on the screen.
The IdeaPad Y460 is virtually unrivaled when comparing speaker quality to 14-inch notebooks. JBL and Lenovo have teamed up to create an audio system for the Y460 and the result is outstanding. Sure, the bass of these speakers sounds a little worse than big laptops or those with subwoofers, but JBL speakers perform very well in the high and midrange. The peak volume level is sufficient for small to medium sized rooms, making them great for watching a movie in a dorm or office room. It's better to use headphones on the road, and use the HDMI output at home to connect your laptop to your home audio system.
Keyboard and touchpad
Lenovo kept the keyboard design on the Y460 by changing the color of the keys to black. The keyboard is full size without the numeric keypad. Another nice change in the keyboard layout is the placement of the home, end, page up, and page down keys on the right side of the keyboard. They are easy to find at the same time and it is convenient if you work a lot in office programs.
The keyboard leaves a pleasant feeling of comfort when typing, the pressing force is average. The design of the keys is classic, the noise from pressing is minimal, when pressed, a slight "click" is emitted.
The laptop offers a variety of touch-sensitive buttons located below the screen for media purposes as well as quick access. You can assign a program to each button so that you can launch it with one touch.
Lenovo is equipped with a large multi-touch touchpad manufactured by Synaptics. It supports two-finger scrolling, zoom, rotation function. The surface of the touchpad has a glossy texture, which matches the tint of the surface for the wrists, it is covered with small dots embossed in the texture. The touchpad's sensitivity is very high, so some may even need to lower it a little. The touchpad buttons are large and have very good feedback. When pressed, a slight "click" is felt.
Ports and other equipment
Lenovo IdeaPad Y460 has a wide variety of communication options, every centimeter of the side surface is used sparingly. To begin with, three USB 2.0 ports, one eSATA / USB combo port, VGA and HDMI out, Ethernet, and audio out. You will also find an SDHC card reader, ExpressCard / 34 slot, and a DVD burner. As they say, you will not wish it.
Performance
The performance of the IdeaPad Y460 is beyond praise. An Intel Core i5 processor in combination with an ATI Radeon 5650 graphics card could handle everything that could not be launched, and of course, in modern games this is best seen. Considering the size and weight of the laptop, it would be correct to compare it, for example, with the 13.3-inch Apple MacBook Pro. And this comparison is clearly not in favor of Apple.
Wprime CPU performance score (the lower the score, the higher the performance):
PCMark05 measures the overall system performance (the higher the score, the better the performance):
3DMark06 measures performance in games (the higher the score, the better the performance):
CrystalDiskMark measures hard drive performance:
When the laptop is running in mode using the integrated Intel GMA HD graphics chip, it can handle any task except gaming. In everyday use, we can recommend using this particular mode, since the case does not heat up at the same time, but the laptop is still able to play HD video and other multimedia tasks. Playing Flash HD files also did not cause problems with the IdeaPad Y460.
With the discrete graphics enabled, our IdeaPad turns into a gaming laptop thanks to the ATI Radeon 5650 graphics card. To test the graphics card, we used the game "Left 4 Dead 2", which was launched at standard screen resolution 1366x768 with AA disabled and vertical sync. The results speak for themselves:
The average frame rate was good and the gameplay was smooth. When AA (anti-aliasing) was turned on and then set to maximum, the system still produced frame rates at 60FPS.What this laptop lacked was a 7200 rpm hard drive or SSD. Lenovo has a 5400 rpm hard drive that can handle normal tasks well, but the system would get a significant boost with a faster hard drive.
Heat dissipation and noise
Lenovo IdeaPad Y460 has two temperature profiles: almost cold and perceptibly warm. In the first mode, the laptop works when it uses the integrated graphics system - the case temperature does not exceed the average for the same small laptops. But when you switch to a discrete card, the case starts to heat up gradually, especially during 3D games. While playing Left 4 Dead 2, I noticed a significant increase in temperature on the left side of the keyboard and on the underside of the laptop near the fan. A significant part of the bottom cover warmed up above 43 degrees and the heat was not localized at one point. So you will definitely feel it when you place the laptop on your lap. In all fairness, it should be noted that the Core i5 processor and ATI Radeon 5650 graphics card are located in a very limited space, so most likely this heat will be typical for any 14-inch laptop. So I think most will put up with the minor inconvenience in the form of excess heat generation, in return for a productive 14-inch gaming laptop.
Standalone operation
The Lenovo IdeaPad Y460 has the advantage of switchable graphics in terms of battery life. For those cases where system performance does not matter, the user can switch the laptop to use integrated graphics and save battery power. Having tested the Y460 in both modes, you can see what disabling discrete graphics gives the user. With screen brightness set to 70%, Wi-Fi on and web pages refreshing every 60 seconds, the Y460 lasted 4 hours and 52 minutes. Under the same conditions, but with the discrete graphics card turned on, the laptop lasted only 2 hours and 59 minutes.
Conclusion
The market offers gamers more and more options. The Alienware M11x is currently one of the popular offerings on the market, but it often features an already underpowered Intel Core 2 Duo processor that uses undervoltage. The Lenovo IdeaPad U460 gives you the power of a 2.4GHz Intel Core i5 processor and ATI Radeon 5650 discrete graphics, while the Lenovo weighs just 200-300 grams more than the M11x.
The gaming performance was excellent, and this is undoubtedly the merit of the Radeon 5650 GPU, so the frame rate in the game "Left 4 Dead 2" at maximum settings did not drop below 60FPS. If we compare the graphics power of the ATI Radeon 5650 and the PS3, Xbox-360 game consoles, then the Radeon 5650 will undoubtedly be the winner - it supports Directx11, has 400 shader computing units, while the graphics architectures of the consoles were developed 4-5 years ago based on video chips the same ATI and Nvidia. Synthetic performance was also strong, well above the average for comparable notebooks. If you do not play on the laptop, the battery life is about five hours (in this case, you need to switch to using the integrated video adapter), which is very good for a 14-inch laptop with a 6-cell battery. So the Lenovo IdeaPad Y460 would be a very good choice.
Benefits:
Outstanding gaming performance
Good battery life
Significantly improved design
Disadvantages:
The case gets warm during games
Limited choice in terms of display matrix resolution.
