Customer Reviews
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful.
Great deal for the price
By Sean Dustman
PROS-At the time of printing, this might be the lowest price Core I7 laptop on the market, solid metal body which does not feel cheap at all. A huge 750 gig hard drive, keys were felt smooth to use and not too much bloatware. The sound is great and I was a little upset by the loss of a fingerprint reader until I realized that it had built in facial recognition software called Lenovo VeriFace which turns on the camera and it puts a Borg circle thing around your right eye and automatically logs you on (this StarTrek gear impressed me and my coworkers)No USB 3.0 (at least I haven't found it yet) which should be automatically included with any I7 processor, the mousepad takes some getting used to with the pebbled surface, while I like the keyboard, the number keys and the keyboard are squished together. The metal surface is nice but a fingerprint magnet. No Blueray player and only 4 gigs of RAM. Also, finding stats on the Lenovo website such as max RAM, what exactly is under the hood, those guys need to do some work on their web development, a polished product like this should be backed by good customer support online and PR, instead, you have to fight in circles to dig out gold nuggets of information. Also the included documentation in the box is skimpy.Overall-A great buy for the price, beautiful and quick laptop with a top of the line processor for half of the price I paid for my last laptop. So far it seems to do my HD video processing well which is why I upgraded. For a big purchase like this, so far I've had little buyer's remorse and would likely make the same purchase again.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Great Laptop for the Price
By Arnold Law
I've had the computer for a few weeks now and it has been absolutely fantastic!Yes, it should have better screen resolution and a better graphics card. It's only 1366 x 768 and has an Intel HD 3000 graphics card, but honestly, you're paying half of what a normal Sandy Bridge Core i7 should cost. It's also got a lot of space, 750GB and the RAM can easily be upgraded with $50 to 8GB with the Corsair chip mentioned in one of the previous reviews in less than 10 minutes.It's a great system with some bloatware that is easy to get rid of. The battery life is fantastic, I get 3.5 to 4 hours on average when doing simple tasks and no one runs any game on a laptop without being plugged in anyway, so that's not an issue.The speakers are surprisingly really good. I am very very impressed with the speakers.For less than $800 (with frequent Amazon sales) this laptop is seriously a steal. I've been a Dell customer for over 10 years, but since my last laptop, I decided to try something new and also much cheaper. I was thinking of getting an Alienware for "max performance", but decided it was way too expensive and happily ended up with this computer.It's got all the right ports, although lacking USB 3.0, but that's not a big deal for me. And as for the warranty that, I believe, some people have mentioned, with such a cheap computer, just bring it to your local computer shop to get it fixed or just get a new one. You'll be spending the same amount of money on two of these as you would with one 'branded' laptop (Dell, Vaio, etc.).Pros:-Great Value-Fast-Lots of storage-Easy to upgrade to 8GB RAM-Runs quite cool even when running games-The 'Lenovo Enhanced Experience' is nice and makes booting up really fast as well as other functions very convenient like regulating battery performance and battery life (there's a function that allows you to prolong the life of your battery by charging your battery only to 50% when it's plugged in).Cons:-Low resolution/entry level graphics card-Keyboard takes a little getting used to since it includes a number pad (I find myself pressing 'num lock' more than the backspace)-The Touch Pad doesn't work with the keyboard at the same time, which is annoying when you're playing a game that requires you to move using 'WASD' and use the mouse to click on things (you can plug in your mouse, but sometimes it's inconvenient to use a mouse like when you're on a couch or something)If you're looking for a great deal on a great performing laptop, this is the one for you!P.S. I'm not sure if the Amazon Prime Student deal is still going on, but I got this laptop with that promotion and got a free Xbox 360 with it!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Great Laptop
By Randy
I got this Lenovo because I essentially needed a jack-of-all-trades laptop that could replace a desktop while I'm stuck living in a small apartment. To that end, it has served me really well.Keyboard 9/10--------Keyboard is really nice. I have heard all Lenovo keyboards are great; this is my first Lenovo, and I do agree. Very comfortable, and it comes with a 10-key pad on the side which I like to use. I would give the keyboard 8/10, because the volume buttons are soft touch-sensitive buttons, which are a little too sensitive and clumsy for my liking.Trackpad 7/10--------The trackpad on this laptop is OK. It's a little sticky, and under Windows 7, I have had problems using the two-finger scrolling and zoom features. I will say that this is definitely a software/driver issue, because booted into Ubuntu the two finger scrolling is buttery smooth. So hopefully Synaptics can fix this. Other than that, the trackpad is a decent size, and the two physical buttons underneath it feel solid, and do not make any annoying loud clicking sounds.Audio 9/10-----The speakers are apparently designed by JBL or something. I don't know too much about that, but one of the main reasons I picked this laptop was for its speakers. I use this as a desktop, so I watch movies on it, YouTube, music, etc. and the speakers are really nice for a laptop in my experience. Pretty loud, and very clear.Display 8/10-------1366x768 is really common in laptops now, so I guess I can't really fault Lenovo for using it. Viewing angles are not amazing, and the resolution is OK. The brightness can go pretty high, and it looks great at 720p. More resolution would have been nice, but then the price would reflect that and make this a whole other beast.Connectivity 9/10------------This thing has it all except USB 3.0. I love the HDMI jack, because I just swap the cord off of the back of the PS3 and stick it in this thing and I can watch movies or shows that I have on the HDD. There's also 4 USB inputs, two on the right side and two on the left, one of which is the eSata/USB combo. This is awesome. I have my mouse plugged into one, while both my phone and my girlfriend's charge, and there's still an extra port for sticking in a thumb drive or whatever. There's also a multi-card reader, which has been really convenient for getting photos off of my camera for editing, storage, sharing, etc. Separate headphone and microphone jacks as well. Also included is Bluetooth. So you can hook up a wireless mouse or transfer files from your cellphone or whatever you want to do.Hardware 9/10--------The 2630 QM 2.0Ghz i7 is really nice. It's really quick, and the extra horsepower helps with the integrated HD3000 graphics. I can play Starcraft 2 on low settings perfectly (that's all I like anyways, but if you need graphics get something with a discreet card) and Diablo 3 with AA on, and all settings high with shadows off. I have been quite impressed with the HD3000 graphics for my light gaming purposes; if you're a hardcore gamer who likes eye candy I won't sugar coat it and confuse you though. I also upgraded to 8GB of ram, which I do recommend if you're playing games or using heavy software, but the 4GB included is more than enough for general use. The HD is a large 750GB, although it is only 5400rpm so this is where it seems to bottleneck outside of the ram and CPU. I might stick a SSD in there, or put one in the optical drive bay when I'm ready to part with that (it has a dvd/cd R/W pop-out drive).Final Impressions 9/10-----------------The gunmetal grey aluminum finish is pretty attractive. It's not a unibody design or anything, so you can't really drop it or call it super-durable or anything. Just makes it look nice. Opening up the laptop from sleep mode is anywhere from instant to 2-second response time, so that's nice. The fan is nearly always silent, unless the CPU is doing something graphics-intensive, but the palm rests never get hot. All-in-all I have found this laptop to be a joy to use, and I would highly recommend it.
See all 8 customer reviews...
Bad keyboard design, crashed after 2 months
The speaker sound sucks! But overall okay.
