Lenovo IdeaPad Y560: Entertainment Delight

Entertainment Delight

If you find the Lenovo IdeaPad Y560 to be quite familiar, or at least a case of deja vu, it's because this model is actually an update of another notebook that we reviewed earlier this year - the. Both models are basically 15.6-inch notebooks, and appearance wise, the Y560 greatly resembles its older ancestor.

From the exterior with its matte textured surface to the layout of the ports, the Y560 is basically the Y550P updated with much spiffier hardware. Expect a speedier Core i7-740QM quad-core processor, a beefier Mobility Radeon HD 5730 discrete graphics, a larger hard drive and a Blu-ray drive. For direct spec comparisons, . So just like any hardware refresh, it's the inside that counts. So it's no surprise that the notebook's design and layout is rehashed, even down to the location of USB, HDMI and LAN ports. Note though, one USB port has been upgraded to support eSATA as an eSATA+USB combo port.

Touchy Interior

When you open up the Lenovo IdeaPad Y560, you'll find the usual glossy screen and like the Y550P, the SlideNav touch-sensitive bar, keyboard and trackpad. The SlideNav allows you to control various aspects of your notebook, including launching files, changing the wallpaper and the more interesting action of locking your computer in a zipping motion. Cool stuff really, but the SlideNav controls are still a tad finicky.

As for the keyboard and trackpad, we didn't find any issues with both, though we do question the placement of the Function key (Fn) as we've seen other 15.6-inch notebooks of a similar category use a more standard layout for most notebooks. There's also no numerical keypad, unlike some multimedia 15.6-inch notebooks in the market. These are minor details nonetheless, but one that may or may not potentially break your decision in getting the IdeaPad Y560.

Performance Benchmarking

Packing in an Intel Core i7-740QM (1.73GHz) processor, 4GB RAM, 750GB HDD and discrete graphics in the form of an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730, the Lenovo IdeaPad Y560 looks to be packing in plenty of horsepower for its form factor. We'll find out how it does in our benchmarking tests versus similarly (or close enough) equipped notebooks.

PCMark Vantage

Scoring a respectable 5820 PCMarks is the Y560 and it's a pretty good score to be sure. It does beat the older Y550P by around 200 PCMarks, which isn't a lot. That's because there's not too much of a difference between the processors used. Let's see if things change for the better when it comes to the graphics in the 3DMark06 benchmark.

3DMark06

With the very capable ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 powering its 3D performance, it would seem like the notebook would deliver very good results. Indeed, it beat the older Y550P's score of 7,709 3DMarks with a neat 8,669 3DMarks. Although, we were expected even better performance from a mid-range discrete GPU. Of course, synthetic benchmarks don't mean everything, so let's see how it scores in Far Cry 2.

Far Cry 2

The IdeaPad Y560 scored a whopping 66.14fps on the "Medium" setting at 1024 x 768 pixels resolution and 41.37fps on "Very High" for our Far Cry 2 test. That's pretty impressive, which means you're good to go for playing games as long as you stick to the Medium settings for most modern games. But as this intensive game has proven, even high quality settings are no problem for it, but you'll have to balance quality versus screen resolution.

Battery Performance and Portability Index

With the 15.6-inch form factor, you can't really expect the IdeaPad Y560 to be a portable device, but sometimes, on the off chance that you'll need to bring it around with you, it's a good thing to have some staying power in terms of battery life.

Putting it though its paces, the Y560 lasted just about 98 minutes, or 1 hour and 38 minutes, on our DVD looping test (which in this case, the notebook didn't quite have enough time to loop our video). The Y560 isn't really any better than the Y550P, which lasted just 92 minutes. There really isn't that big of a difference between both units, though the Y560 does last a little longer thanks to its slightly larger battery capacity.

As for the power efficiency of the notebook, we're pleased to report that it's actually better at not wasting energy as can be seen in the graph below. That's quite an improvement so despite the faster and more powerful hardware, the notebook still manages to come out better in power consumption. Good work on Lenovo.

Lastly, our Portability Index is a test where the notebook's uptime is divided by the product of its weight and volume. What you get is a ratio, and the higher the number, the more portable a notebook is compared to other similar notebooks. The key here is comparing it with notebooks of a similar class. In this case, the Y560 fares somewhat reasonably against its competitors, though keep in mind that it's still well under 2 hours of battery up-time.

Concluding Thoughts

If you already have the Lenovo IdeaPad Y550P, chances are you won't need to upgrade anytime soon unless you have cash to spare and a desire to get slightly better graphics. On that note, the IdeaPad Y560 is a decent machine in its own regard. You get a speedy processor and good discrete graphics for gaming. The quad-core CPU is an overkill for usual usage, but it will come in plenty handy when you're crunching some serious work like in AutoCad or Photoshop among others.

We do have some issues with the finicky touch controls, and the lack of number pad is a slight drawback when compared against the full keyboard set of other 15.6-inch notebooks. These aren't really deal breakers, so if you're keen to get your hands on the Lenovo IdeaPad Y560, then it can be yours for just S$1699, which is quite good value.

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